88 what I'm asking must be way above your head.I asked if you guys think more people watch Pitt play football or Wvu play.88 I've said many times on here I'm not nearly as smart as you Pitt grads. I know my intelligent level and don't try to fool people into thinking I'm smart.
next round of expansion..... your thoughts.
- Thread starter benchwarmer04
- Start date
I would say more people watch WVU play. Considering, according to the websites I've checked, WVU has over 10,000 more students which means WVU turns out more fans than Pitt every year so over time more people would watch them. I know its not all WVU and Pitt students that are fans, there are Pitt fans just because they grew up watching or maybe because Pitt is in Pittsburgh and a casual Pittsburgh sports fan may follow them just as WVU has the entire state of WV.
I just think the fact that WVU puts out more alumni than Pitt would make a huge difference in which team gets watched the most. I'm not sure of the exact numbers but Pitt's enrollment is 19,000 and WVU is 31,000.
One thing most PSU and WVU fans never realize is Pittsburgh is divided because there are Notre Dame fans, Penn State fans, West Virginia fans as well as many others in Pittsburgh. I would think Pitt has more, but it is divided. Go to West Virginia and see how many Pitt fans there are.
I just think the fact that WVU puts out more alumni than Pitt would make a huge difference in which team gets watched the most. I'm not sure of the exact numbers but Pitt's enrollment is 19,000 and WVU is 31,000.
One thing most PSU and WVU fans never realize is Pittsburgh is divided because there are Notre Dame fans, Penn State fans, West Virginia fans as well as many others in Pittsburgh. I would think Pitt has more, but it is divided. Go to West Virginia and see how many Pitt fans there are.
I think that's why the B12 agreed to take the Hoopies. They figured that gave them an entrée into the Pittsburgh market.
Do I think more people watch Pitt play football? I'd imagine it is pretty close, but recently WVU should have an advantage because they have been better and face schools with some bigger fanbases and Pitt has been mostly relegated to WatchESPN. Neither school gets great ratings or TV coverage. That should change, somewhat, for Pitt with the ACCN. However, that means absolutely nothing for conference expansion.
You actually didn't ask "if you guys think more people watch Pitt play football or Wvu play", but instead asked "So what you people are saying is that more people watch Pitt play football on TV than Wvu?" That isn't what people were saying. That isn't even remotely important to the discussion.
Contraction is a far more likely outcome with the current state of the TV contracts. I think the programs with small local followings will need to bring something extra to the table like a larger TV market to stay in a P5 conference.
Where Pitt and WVU are concerned, the TV market in PGH is what made Pitt more attractive to the ACC. We can shout about academics and quality but that wasn’t what made Pitt the “right fit”.
Where Pitt and WVU are concerned, the TV market in PGH is what made Pitt more attractive to the ACC. We can shout about academics and quality but that wasn’t what made Pitt the “right fit”.
I just think in the future the number of TV sets in an area will not be the only criteria for conference acceptance.With cable companies eliminating sports channels in their packages it's going to be who will buy these channels. Its not like the old days when they could force a channel on people,times are a changing!
You’re not wrong. But major media markets still have better internet service and greater potential to sell advertising. For that reason, schools in/near major media markets will still have a big appeal.
For what it’s worth, I think WVU is a desirable product based on history and geography. You’re very close to three major markets and a large part of your base is Metro DC.
If it goes to game by game a la carte? Maybe. However, what is likely is a packaging of games via subscription, if the model moves away from basic cable, which is still a pretty big stretch for the vast majority of the product. No conference is going to make any money that moves the needle by getting a share of individual a la carte games for the school. Would more people preferential to WVU buy a stand alone ACC package than people preferential to Pitt? Maybe. The number would be so small you probably wouldn't even be adding $50k (Estimating ~10k more purely WVU fans who wouldn't otherwise buy the product at $50 each) to the bottomlines of current members.
All else being equal (similar records, similar opponents), more people watch Pitt. With 2.5 million people within an hour or so from campus, Pitt has more casual fans who would watch. WVU has the more consistent diehard fanbase but has very very little upside. Now you could argue that Pitt will never reach that full TV potential but networks have always gone based on potential
WVU is stuck in the middle of Ohio State,Pitt,Psu Md andVa Tech.This is a very tough place to be located.Our image isn't the best (but getting better)plus they're in a very poor state.Oliver Luck saved athletics by getting Wvu in the Big12,we were lucky.I'd love to get into the Acc but Nc,Duke and VA would never let that happen.
And how bout dem der deplomas day bin givin out!So you wouldn’t want to add WVU? They’d bolster the conference’s reputation in football and basketball (which means more money for us), give us a true in-conference rival, and would connect the rest of the conference to Louisville and the state of Kentucky. Again, they threw the academic standards out of the window with Louisville; You don’t think they’d do the same with West Virginia? It’d be a glass-house type of thing to block them for that reasoning when one of the conference’s flagship institutions, North Carolina, has had their own run-ins with academic violations.
Also, I try not to act like I’m an English teacher, and no offense GBG, but I find it humorous that your post, which degrades WVU for their academic reputation, has multiple grammatical errors.
The ACC was told that they needed to add Notre Dame, Pitt(Pennsylvania) and Syracuse(New York) which was the critical mass needed to have an ACC Network (starting in August 2019).
HAIL TO PITT!!!!
You have to remember when expansion heated up circa 2009-10. Pitt was on top of its Wanny-era football and Dixon-era basketball games at that point. Pitt has also done very well in media ratings despite its lengthy mediocrity (see table below from 2009), which I believe is partially due to the Pittsburgh diaspora that will tune into any 'burgh. ACC had to pick members that increased the financial pie for everyone (which is why they consulted with their media partners like ESPN on who to pick), that would advance their agenda to dominate the eastern seaboard and eastern media markets, and also fit institutionally.
Remember that while the Big Ten evaluated but decided it didn't want Pitt (no new media market and PSU blackball), and after aTm and CU left, the B12 had essentially invited Pitt before the ACC did. But Pitt was trying to negotiate only going to the B12 if they also took WVU and Louisville and/or Rutgers with them. Pitt didn't want to be on the island that WVU now finds itself even though it had been trying to get out of the Big East for at least a year or more when they saw where media contracts were going with the conference and then how the "Villanova solution" was both terrible and splitting the conference (Pitt led the charge in getting TCU invited and was pushing UCF with WVU and RU...as a side note, Pitt had sent a letter to the other Big East presidents at least a year prior to its ACC invite that it was leaving if an opportunity arose, and if you were acutely aware of reading between the lines, you could tell something seismic had shifted based on the change of how Pitt worded its public statements about the Big East during that time).
But in 2011, the ACC wasn't going to pick WVU at that point because they didn't fit their academic profile. There is along history of WVU being rejected by ACC members to form affiliations. They probably would have had a chance to fill Maryland's spot against Louisville if they hadn't already been in the B12 (which they also fought tooth and nail against UL to get that B12 slot, including paying hefty exit fees that allowed it to join immediately, because at the time it seemed like the last lifeboat off the sinking ship).
Last edited:
Pitt has always considered the BIg Ten as the conference of preference. But Paterno just was adamant that Pitt never join the Big Ten. Shame one narcissistic pig can do so much to a University that he claimed he liked. But I do think the ACC will be the better fit for Pitt and recruit to the ACC. ACC has fertile numbers as to demographics and growth. Pitt will benefit as they take the ACC cash and invest in athletics.
FYI The Pitt TV market is #23 Charleston/Huntington (WV's largest) is #65. Morgantown and the University viewing area is actually the same as Pittsburgh (same TV stations) The populous eastern panhandle is lopped in with the Wash DC TV markets. Therein lies the dilemma. WVU's market is vast but it is also part of other metro viewing markets.
You are describing vast as in total square miles.
I, and the ones looking at how TV market rankings look at vast is the number of eyeballs on TVs.
One need look no further than the population of the state of WV to determine it's lack of value in TV market.
But WVU doesn't bring many eyeballs or carry either the Pittsburgh or DC market. WVU has more traction in Pittsburgh where at least it receives some local coverage behind Pitt and Penn State. In DC, WVU receives absolutely no local coverage and is well behind Georgetown, Maryland, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Navy, and GW.
The PSAC wouldn't want to lower their academic standards.
Yes, 100%. There’s no question about that. Not one but two different conferences have already settled that issue.
I’m sorry but this is a really silly point too.
It’s not like realignment happened 100 years ago, or even 20 years ago, it happened what, four or five years ago. You don’t think the networks that made the membership decisions were factoring in the changes that we’ve all seen coming for years now?
You don’t think the teams of analysts at ESPN, FOX, CBS, etc. knew that things were moving toward online content and what that would likely mean for markets? You don’t think that was at all a part of their analysis?
Nope, all of those highly paid Ivy-educated network executives with decades of experience and mountains of data points to make these multibillion dollar decisions, all failed to see this coming, but PizzaBoy and PantherFan127 and WVU4Life all saw it coming.
Um, that’s just patently absurd.
Isn’t it at least possible that maybe, just maybe, you are grossly underrating the University of Pittsburgh?
Hear me out here because this is probably going to sound completely crazy to you. However, if we were to remove all biases from this conversation and just looked at it analytically, we will likely have our objective answers.
From my perspective, two different conferences reached out to School X before one reached out to School Y - at the last moment. Another school, we will call it School Z, swooped in at the eleventh hour and nearly took School Y’s place in that conference. Had that happened, School Y would’ve been up a creek without a paddle.
Meanwhile, School X was left with the choice all along between which conference it wanted and ultimately chose the conference with the stronger academic profile, likely better future, and the one that was the most geographically friendly as well.
School Y, on the other hand, is having to make due playing teams that are regularly thousands of miles away from them and with whom they have no shared history. As an added bonus, all of the schools in that conference openly hate and distrust each other and it is constantly on the verge of nuclear winter.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d still rather be in School Y’s position than several others in the conversation. However, any reasonable analysis would conclude that School X sits in the significantly stronger position and likely always has.
Now, we could speculate all day as to why two conferences came to that same conclusion, but I would guess that means the analysis concluded that the fans/likely viewers of School X would bring in more advertising revenue than the fans/likely viewers of Schools Y or Z.
I apologize if that’s a little bit too on the nose, but I have read the WVU board enough times over the years to know that you folks like to indulge in fantasy talk and it always ends the same way – with Pitt finally being exposed as a fraud and banished to irrelevance and West Virginia finally gaining it’s rightful place among the nation’s elite – and that’s fine down in the holler, but not here in the real world.
Last edited:
Dr I'm a Cal State of Pa grad so I'm having a hard time deciphering what your point is.Are you trying to say Pitt is an elite college football program and Wvu is really not a Power 5 program that noone wants.Here's something in good plan English Dr.If Pitt and WVU were both playing an away game at 12 PM against an opponent of equal ranking who do you think would have more fans watching the game on tv?Just because an area has x amount of TV sets doesn't mean those TV sets are watching football.Times are a changing and it's a shame the Acc is late getting a piece of the pie.The golden goose is about done layin the golden eggs.Bwdik I'm a retired public school teacher.
Pitt is not elite. Neither is WVU. If records and rankings and opponents are equal, yes, Pitt garners more eyeballs. Clearly if one team is ranked substantially higher or has a significantly better record than the other, they'll get better tv ratings. But, with all things being equal, absolutely, this has born out in media evaluations of the value of their properties and this is why the B12 invited Pitt first, and is a reason, among several other reasons, that WVU was never in contention for the ACC.
Last edited:
It was more of the Big 10 thinking that PSU already brought the Pittsburgh market and Pitt didn't give them a new footprint. Delaney pretty much said that. And also they don't want anything to ever rival The Game in the Big 10, and Pitt-PSU could have potentially surpassed it. Iowa-Wisconsin has no chance of surpassing it but Pitt-PSU did.
So if not for those reasons above I think the Big 10 would have told Paterno to go pound salt if they really wanted Pitt in.
Ding.....ding.....ding...no more calls we have a winner. Maryland & Rutgers brought new T.V. markets (NYC & D.C.) to the Big Ten. It had very little to do with academics or athletic tradition.
The Big 10 would have just as much attention in NYC without Rutgers as with Rutgers.
It wasn't necessarily about attention or eyeballs for them, although I'm sure they took the long play view that it would be nice to develop NYC; it is (or was) about being able to force in-market rates for the BTN on cable companies. Even though they didn't get a high a rate in NYC metro as other more traditional B10 states, it was still higher than out-of-market rates.
Now cable companies are pushing back on the BTN, the value of those additions may end up being questionable down the road. In this environment and looking toward the future, it sure is nice to be bundled in and partnered with ESPN and Disney.
Speaking of, UMD doesn't seem to be reaping much reward with the conference switch as far as gate receipts, at least judging by the season ticket sales. It seems the novelty of new opponents that they have no history with has worn off.
Last edited:
Why didn’t you just attend WVU? They both have education majors, and you would have been accepted at WVU since you have a pulse.
Unlike most people on here I wasn't good enough to play DI so I went to Cal where I could play.Realistically Cal had a better education program at the time I went there.I'm just a DII athlete that's why I get no respect on here with all you Dl guys!You guys make fun of Wvu academics but they serve the purpose that they were set up to do for the people of Wva.They were never meant to be the Harvard on the Mon like Cal of Pa is.
Another interesting factor in expansion: Where alumni live.
https://frankthetank.me/2018/05/18/...en-graduates-live-and-conference-realignment/
Big 10-centric, but contains a link to the WSJ database. If you're a WSJ subscriber, may be able to tease out where Pitt (and WVU) alumni live:
https://www.wsj.com/graphics/where-graduates-move-after-college/
https://frankthetank.me/2018/05/18/...en-graduates-live-and-conference-realignment/
Big 10-centric, but contains a link to the WSJ database. If you're a WSJ subscriber, may be able to tease out where Pitt (and WVU) alumni live:
https://www.wsj.com/graphics/where-graduates-move-after-college/
Last edited:
Similar threads
Latest posts
-
-
-
My guess as to why this site is STILL in 'no mans land' at the moment- Latest: Zeldas Open Roof
-
