Its not that bad of a schedule really. It would be nice if the first bye was the week of Sept 21 instead of the 14th but otherwise its not too bad.
Future Big 12 FB Opponents/Schedule Announced
- Thread starter BigJCy
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This is it. We will never be in a position to win a national title in football. A more realistic goal is winning the Big XII with the prize being getting to say we are a playoff team. With OU and Texas gone, there's a much more level playing field to allow us that opportunity.
And this is why I loathe the playoff. Our best possible outcome for a season will end with a loss. I hate that. FBS doesn't have the parity needed for a playoff system to make sense, and it won't anytime soon. To have every team playing for the same goal is asinine.
It absolutely shouldn't have been."Too bad, newbies..." should have been the response.
The only way leagues work in the long term is keeping everybody's interests in mind and keeping everybody on a level playing field. It's one boat moving forward and everybody has to be rowing in the same direction. Failing to do so is going to widen the huge gap that already exists between the P2 and everybody else.
I honestly don't think much has changed in terms of National Title. While some may disagree with me, the reality is we have never been and will never be in position to win the National Title in CFB. We may set that as a goal and wish and pray for it, but realistically you'd have to strike lightning in a bottle 5 times for things to line up for that, especially with transfer rules, being a developmental school, NIL, conference alignment, etc. Recognizing that doesn't mean being any less of a fan, though many portray it as such.
I fully agree that the new Big 12 is more competitive for us. There will be good years and bad years with the schedule, but there's nobody that we can't compete with and have a legit chance at a Big 12 Championship. Some schools have always and will always have advantages, but we've shown we can compete every few years when things align right.
Personally, I love the new Big 12 as I feel like for once we're all peers on semi equal footing. Some have advantages, some have disadvantages, but nobody is going to dominate or be a bottom feeder consistently.
We had a very, very young team and we were a couple plays from taking down #3 this year. Not saying that it is likely, but we could get in and win one or two. How exciting would that be? About a thousand times more exciting than 99% of the bowl exhibitions we've been in.
So I think, both yes and no. As far of a future as any of us can now predict, I agree - ISU will not ever compete for a national championship. Best possible case looks something like TCU's run last year (and I wouldn't consider that competing).
However, there's a part of me that is "never say never". Nebraska is a prime example. I would never have guessed that they'd ever go from what they were to having the longest streak of missing a bowl game in power conference football. What it would take is a long streak of things going ISU's way and more off the field than on. Cy-town would have to be a huge hit, mega-donors would have to show up. Winning tradition would have to be strongly established. Then we'd have to become something like what Oregon is now. And go from there. Is it a stretch? absolutely. Could it ever happen? Well, I'm not going to say never.
Regardless, it's all silly-talk for now. I'd much rather focus on next year and seeing what this team can do. That schedule does not look scary at all.
Any guess what time the schedule officially comes out? I thought it might have been noon, which it doesn't seem that way. Then I thought may 12:12, again, to no avail.
It is noteworthy CFB playoff, NC ratings have been trending down for about 5 years now.
From ‘99-2013 (BCS era), the NC game averaged 26.6M viewers. From 2014-18, with the introduction of the novelty of the Playoff, viewership for the NC game increased to an average of 28.5M viewers.
Then in 2018 we had our 3rd Clemson vs Bama NC game in the last 4 years =25.2M viewers. Clemson makes it again vs LSU in 2019 = 25.5M viewers. 2020 Covid year = 18.7M viewers. 2021 another recent repeat title game between Bama vs UGa = 22.5M viewers. Last years blowout = 17.2M viewers.
One note, those are Nielsen numbers, so I’m sure there are a growing number of users who are streaming. But they are not as profitable as cable viewership.
The trend has to be making ESPN/Fox nervous.
From ‘99-2013 (BCS era), the NC game averaged 26.6M viewers. From 2014-18, with the introduction of the novelty of the Playoff, viewership for the NC game increased to an average of 28.5M viewers.
Then in 2018 we had our 3rd Clemson vs Bama NC game in the last 4 years =25.2M viewers. Clemson makes it again vs LSU in 2019 = 25.5M viewers. 2020 Covid year = 18.7M viewers. 2021 another recent repeat title game between Bama vs UGa = 22.5M viewers. Last years blowout = 17.2M viewers.
One note, those are Nielsen numbers, so I’m sure there are a growing number of users who are streaming. But they are not as profitable as cable viewership.
The trend has to be making ESPN/Fox nervous.
I haven't done any analysis myself, but I'd be interested in how those numbers match the overall downward trend of Nielsen viewership numbers as a whole. They don't yet count a lot of the streaming stuff and the audience of streamers and CFB fans is more alike than some other demographics.
If you look at historical trends only using Nielsen ratings, you get a very skewed picture. The below represents it as well as any graph I've seen lately, though it has it's own problems and is for the UK...
With that said, another proxy for seeing the popularity of the sport is looking at attendance numbers. While obviously not truly representative of viewership, it gives an overall sense of the popularity of the sport. This is pretty dated...
Here is a great article that tries to demystify the headlines of viewership being down...
Don't Overexplain College Football Playoff TV Ratings Being at "An All-Time Low"
We have to be careful with text descriptions of business metrics -- this is true when it's numbers in the news or performance measures in our own
www.leanblog.org
Yep that’s a good point about streaming (and an interesting article). Networks don’t report on that, so I have no idea if overall viewership is up or down.I haven't done any analysis myself, but I'd be interested in how those numbers match the overall downward trend of Nielsen viewership numbers as a whole. They don't yet count a lot of the streaming stuff and the audience of streamers and CFB fans is more alike than some other demographics.
If you look at historical trends only using Nielsen ratings, you get a very skewed picture. The below represents it as well as any graph I've seen lately, though it has it's own problems and is for the UK...
View attachment 120705
With that said, another proxy for seeing the popularity of the sport is looking at attendance numbers. While obviously not truly representative of viewership, it gives an overall sense of the popularity of the sport. This is pretty dated...
View attachment 120706
Here is a great article that tries to demystify the headlines of viewership being down...
Don't Overexplain College Football Playoff TV Ratings Being at "An All-Time Low"
We have to be careful with text descriptions of business metrics -- this is true when it's numbers in the news or performance measures in our own
What I do know, is Nielsen ratings, particularly the 18-49 demo, is still how linear TV base their advertising rates (and where the bulk of revenue comes from). So if Nielsen ratings are going down, then advertising revenue will also be going down in the current model.
Also, there is a point of delineation between 2019 vs 2018, which is before Covid, where the downward trend starts. It gets steeper in 2020 likely due to Covid and acceleration of cord cutting. But, the sport’s popularity is definitely an impacting variable in my opinion. As you point out, attendance is a good proxy to measure that.
With CFP expansion and the removal of Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12, I'm hopeful for our chances to do great things and possibly win out during the regular season. But please hurry up, I'm now 70 and I may not have that much longer.
Hopefully sometime this month but who knows. Would think they would want to get it out here soon so schools can release it with their season ticket renewals.
I think that's the case for the entire conference. Every team will feel on the right year they'll have a shot at winning this conference but none will have a shot at a NC. After UT/OU left there isn't a team capable of bringing in the type of recruiting classes you need to annually. The Big 12 will have to get the NC's in basketball. Actually it has been quite a while since the Big 12 has won a football NC anyway even with OU and UT but when we did it was one of those teams.
Saw a tweet after the Texas loss the other night that in the 10-year history of the playoff, TCU is still the only BXII team to win a single playoff game
