06-21-2017, 05:55 AM
(06-20-2017, 03:55 PM)Farm93 link Wrote:News flash:Â Citizens living in the SEC footprint care a lot more about college football than citizens living in the Pac-12 footprint.
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FWIW2 - The Pac-12 Olympic sports seem to have improved a lot thanks to the Pac-12 nets. My guess is the TV coverage for Olympic sports creates a competitive advantage for recruiting in those sports.
Overall, that seems pretty clear.
There is no exact way to measure this, but one proxy is simple attendance. The official NCAA figures for 2016 are now available.
http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/football_r...e/2016.pdf
The top Pac 12 team is $C (as always). But they are down at #22. Ahead of them are 7 Big Ten teams and 9 SEC teams.
By conference, average attendance per game, the numbers come in at :
#1 SECÂ Â Â Â 77,507
#2 Big Ten 66,151
#3 Big 12Â Â 57,531
#4 Pac 12Â Â 50,073
#5 ACCÂ Â Â Â 49,734
It's pretty clear that the main reason that the Pac 12 television (and anything else) brings in less money than the SEC and the Big Ten is simply that it is less popular.
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It is not clear to me that Pac 12 Olympic sports have improved performances since the launch of the Pac 12 networks. The Pac 12 has always dominated these sports, particularly with the Big 3 schools, and that seems to be continuing.
There probably hasn't been enough time for the Pac 12 network to have a big effect on recruiting. At any rate, most recruiting is highly local (outside of Stanford anyway), giving the Pac 12 some cushion on compeititve balance versus the money situation. Though that isn't completely true. Look at the top softball teams - they are all dominated by California kids.