OK - now that people are depressed after reading JP and WWs body language and were somehow thinking they weren't going to say exactly what was needed to keep us out of GoR trouble, here's a positive manifesto on why ISU is in better shape than the typical fan and Twittiot realize.
In 2019 ISU was 21st in the country in attendance. That's despite being not exactly a vacation destination to make a long weekend, but also being one of two geographical outliers in the conference. So, there's no visiting team attendance padding (looking at you, Northwestern). In addition, ISU was certainly capacity constrained.
Also, as far as TV ratings go, I think comparing across conferences is tricky, since time slot, opponent, channel all play a role. Plus, viewership gets boosted by eyes from other teams within a conference, so being in a bigger conference with better overall TV viewership helps. Nevertheless, I pulled a few random TV ratings numbers from last year to do a quick comparison from here:
https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings/
Now, there seem to be a couple games missing, and for the reasons above you don't want to bet the farm on ratings, but here are a few schools I picked as comparisons to ISU. I also showed what happened if you subtract out conf. champ. games, bowls, and even big time opponents (or Iowa-Neb. since that was something of an outlier for each).
So by the two metrics that matter for ad revenue in the future, ISU stacks up far better than people think. Now, does ISU represent some sort of windfall for a conference picking them up? No. But a team like ISU that has demonstrated a fanbase that will watch games, seek out and pay for content that is likely to take conditions favorable to a conference that adds them can certainly make sense.
