Article- BE FB and Thursday Nights/ TV DEAL

[TyBull]

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Thank You, Thursdays. Love, Big East.

Chuck Finder at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a great piece this week on the state of the Big East and how it relates to the much-talked-about television schedule, specifically the "Big East Thursdays" mentality.

The article points out that the Big East's current contract with ESPN (and to a lesser extent with CBS) is reportedly worth $250 million for both basketball and football between 2007-13. What became the centerpiece of the football side of things was the apparent decision to schedule marquee Big East games on Thursday nights instead of the traditional Saturday.

The positives are cut and dry. The West Virginia-Louisville Nov. 2 game that was the "Biggest Big East Game I" shattered the network's 11-year-old record with a 5.3 rating that translated to 4.91 million households tuned in. Then, a week later, "Biggest Big East Game II" Louisville-Rutgers captured a 5.0 ranking and 4.62 million households. Put simply, Those broadcasts represent the second- and third-largest audiences for regular-season college football broadcasts in ESPN's history, regardless of day.

Athletic directors see these games as a huge opportunity to build a program, like say the Big East champion Cardinals. "If you look at a school like Louisville, they will tell you they built their program playing on Thursday nights before they got to the Big East," Pitt athletic director Jeff Long said. "Otherwise, their games weren't seen on Saturdays."

Opponents of the strategy seem to fall into one distinct camp: Coaches. Weekdays are for high schools, many of them feel. And it certainly cuts into your recruiting ability when you're playing multiple games on Thursdays and your recruits can't attend cause they're getting ready for their game the next day.

UConn coach Randy Edsell says "I really don't like playing on a day other than Saturday. I know we have to do it because of the TV and the money. I don't like it, No. 1, because of the high schools [on Fridays]. And, No. 2, during the week because of missing class. Coaches get put under the pressure of not graduating your players and all that, but then you're going to play during the week." But the flip side is that being on TV in front of a national audience certainly doesn't hurt recruiting.

Personally, I think its a nice little treat every once in a while but now that the Big East is re-establishing itself, I would prefer it if some of the bigger games were saved for the weekend. There is certainly an air of desperation or attention-seeking that playing games during the week calls out. We expect these kinds of things from the WAC or the MAC but we don't expect a BCS Conference to be a sideshow week in and week out. I'm all for carving out a niche and an awareness but I'm for acting like we belong at the dinner table as well.

[Bishop of Bulltown]

I've always disliked Edsall, and I think his quote makes him look like more of a moron.

[Guest]

Here is a link to the Big East Thursday Games story...

He also has a good article from the day before on How TV Took Control of Sports...

[Guest]

Interesting quotes from the Big East article...

Funny he should mention the NCAA. It was shoved out of the college-football TV business in 1984, after Georgia and Oklahoma sued the governing body over antitrust infringement and took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 7-2 in their favor. Justice Byron "Whizzer" White, a former Colorado All-America and Steelers back, wrote in the dissenting opinion that the NCAA's old TV plan fostered "the goal of amateurism," and he warned about the rising "financial incentives toward professionalism." He was onto something, for it grew from the College Football Association that first decade into the every-man-for-himself the past decade (see Notre Dame's $9 million-or-so annually from NBC for home games).

Here's another look at old vs. new: From 1952-84, the NCAA permitted teams just six TV appearances over two seasons; this season, West Virginia was on ESPN five times and ESPN2 three.

Three of those were Thursdays and one a Friday for West Virginia. Pitt this season played one Thursday and two Fridays. Penn State and the Big Ten, for the most part, are a Saturdays-only bunch -- something Rodriguez, for one, envies.

"If we could have the same level of exposure on a Saturday, that would be the ultimate," (Nick) Carparelli (Big East associate commissioner in charge of football scheduling) added. "We don't know if that's possible."

It is a big business: Fox spent $332 million for the right to televise just 16 games, or $20.75 million per game: the Fiesta, Sugar, Orange and national-championship finale for each of the next four years. Fox also is creating a Big Ten Channel with that conference, which separately re-upped with ESPN for $1 billion over 10 years -- quite possibly the richest of the single conference sports contracts.

[bulls96go]

we should stay on thursday nights for our big games esp early in the year.

BE has done well and if the results keep up we should cont. thursday night

[HaulingBull Sucks]

Thursday night games could be a real attendance killer at the RayJay....something that will only serve to delay the building of an OCS.

[USFKT]

especially for fans that travel to the games from out of town....it's pretty impossible to get to thursday games unless you want to take vacation from work

[HaulingBull Sucks]

I feel better now!  I just got a post card from BullsHeaven at leas I' m important to them.

[Bull Martin]

Who cares if we have an empty Ray Jay.  How would playing in an empty OCS make it better?  If Thursday games will give us a little more credence then let's do it.  I'd rather limit Thursdays to one game a year for each team.

An OCS may come eventually.  Let's worry about what's important, and garnering attention is it.

A fancy OCS isn't going to magically make people fans (see UCF next year) a good team with a lot of attention will.  I think the next step in improving USF is to get a national ranking then a Big East title.  An OCS won’t help those goals.

Those goals will help toward an OCS.  As students go through the school wit h the football program eventually season tickets will climb to the point of having the ability to get one, but it wont be looked at for 5, 10, 15 years.  So quit brining it up.

Ray Jay is helping with recruits at the moment.  Some players love touching the field an NFL team plays on.  If anything it’ll give them a chance to meet the bucs (don’t know if it’s true but they might think it).

I hope this does not go any further about OCS.

[HaulingBull Sucks]

Reading comprehension...FCAT :'(