[msqueri]

To reinforce the bullshittery of all this, Stanford has the third-highest viewership of the conference soon to be known as the former Pac12.

I thought this was all about eyeballs?  Well, then WTF?

Stanford is barely behind USC and Oregon in the 2013-2021 period.



I read somewhere that in the ACC, Stanford would be ahead of everyone except FSU, Clemson, and maybe Miami.


My gut feel is that Stanford really, really wanted to hold the Pac9 together and it wasn't until the last moment it was clear that wouldn't happen. I'm shocked they aren't Machiavellian enough to have had a quick backstabbing fallback like everyone else. 

Somewhere on the interwebs is an image of a new MTL research paper showing travel distance isn't so bad, with California stuck on a map of ACC teams but the Colorado River is the Ohio River. I saw it yesterday, but can't find it.  Mostly to point out that at the moment, Stanford's academic reputation isn't sterling.  One of the ACC sites did say "Stanford is a solid school."

I think all those viewership numbers tell us is that Stanford was a great team for most of that 2013-2021 period. There may be some teams with sufficient brand and fan base that people will watch them regardless but I don’t think we’re one of those teams. People will watch us when we’re in good games and won’t when we aren’t. Looking at anything in the last decade is cherry-picking, not the kind of analysis tv executives will or should be doing. What they should do is look at a program’s long-term, structural likelihood of playing good games. We are a bit above average from that vantage.

If one were to look at tv ratings, the salient comparisons to where we are now are the periods immediately following 1984, 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2007. (Well, some more salient than others due to shifts in the media landscape making it apples to oranges) One should look at the ratings Walt Harris and Jim Harbaugh mustered more than what David Shaw did. I bet this would be pretty middling, which is kind of our lot in the football life and, by the way, should absolutely have a seat at a major conference table.

[msqueri]

To reinforce the bullshittery of all this, Stanford has the third-highest viewership of the conference soon to be known as the former Pac12.

I thought this was all about eyeballs?  Well, then WTF?

Stanford is barely behind USC and Oregon in the 2013-2021 period.



I read somewhere that in the ACC, Stanford would be ahead of everyone except FSU, Clemson, and maybe Miami.


My gut feel is that Stanford really, really wanted to hold the Pac9 together and it wasn't until the last moment it was clear that wouldn't happen. I'm shocked they aren't Machiavellian enough to have had a quick backstabbing fallback like everyone else. 

Somewhere on the interwebs is an image of a new MTL research paper showing travel distance isn't so bad, with California stuck on a map of ACC teams but the Colorado River is the Ohio River. I saw it yesterday, but can't find it.  Mostly to point out that at the moment, Stanford's academic reputation isn't sterling.  One of the ACC sites did say "Stanford is a solid school."

I think all those viewership numbers tell us is that Stanford was a great team for most of that 2013-2021 period. There may be some teams with sufficient brand and fan base that people will watch them regardless but I don’t think we’re one of those teams. People will watch us when we’re in good games and won’t when we aren’t. Looking at anything in the last decade is cherry-picking, not the kind of analysis tv executives will or should be doing. What they should do is look at a program’s long-term, structural likelihood of playing good games. We are a bit above average from that vantage.

If one were to look at tv ratings, the salient comparisons to where we are now are the periods immediately following 1984, 1989, 1995, 2005, and 2007. (Well, some more salient than others due to shifts in the media landscape making it apples to oranges) One should look at the ratings Walt Harris and Jim Harbaugh mustered more than what David Shaw did. I bet this would be pretty middling, which is kind of our lot in the football life and, by the way, should absolutely have a seat at a major conference table.