If anyone from the alliance expanded though, ISU and KU sit right on that dotted line and make the most academic sense if anybody cares about that anymore. All the other red dots to the right are either SEC schools not leaving or religious schools not getting an invite. ISU would fit in fine academically as there are a number of other blue dots right next to them.
Big 12 Expansion (new thread)
- Thread starter Gilbyone
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If anyone from the alliance expanded though, ISU and KU sit right on that dotted line and make the most academic sense if anybody cares about that anymore. All the other red dots to the right are either SEC schools not leaving or religious schools not getting an invite. ISU would fit in fine academically as there are a number of other blue dots right next to them.
ISU's academics would "qualify" for B1G (and PAC and ACC), but not be "impressive" or "elite".
Bit of a rant, but I don't love the academic rankings as they are done, esp the USNWR ones. It's far far far too heavily weighted on dumb things like how many applicants you deny. A school like ISU that has published minimums for acceptance -- well hardly anyone who can't make those will apply so the denial rate is really low, by design.
Another problem is opinions of academic bigwigs. Those opinions are relevant, but the Altimore report shows you how incestuous the Alliance schools are with personnel, so guess what? That's a super self-serving opinion circle.
Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast has a great series of episodes on how much USNWR school rankings suck. They rely heavily on college administrators clicking dozens of rating bubbles for dozens of schools they have never been to or interacted with. Just ethereal prestige feelings.
Also, they were known for getting partial qualifiers from the coasts, especially for skill position players.
Athletic Director Joe Parker joins to talk about the recent flirtation with the AAC and much more
RamNation Radio · Episodeopen.spotify.com
Colorado State Podcast had their AD on to talk AAC flirtation, MWC potential state of Texas expansion, and why Big 12 didn't pick them.
Big 12 spoiler: primarily used 2 factors that have been mentioned before... Football success beyond a single coach. Do you actually have tv eyeballs, not just are you in a big market.
But but but....TV eyeballs don't matter now!!
TV Markets don't matter. TV Eyeballs absolutely matter.
They may sound similar, but are different. The later is one of the most important metrics the Big 12 used. The former is the metric the B1G used back when they took Rutgers/Maryland. For the record, markets still matter but people looking at the cable cutting trend are convinced they won't matter eventually. What they may be missing about markets is that SD St being in a massive market has greater potential (higher ceiling in sports talk) than Fresno St.
Here is the Size of Fan Base vs Avg TV Viewers from the slide deck.
Very interesting and very relevant if you ask me. The "problem" with this is the time span. If you took the same data and only looked at 2017-2020 I have a suspicion that would be much more favorable for Iowa State. EDIT: this also doesn't account for the bias in timeslot and network for viewership, let alone opponent.
It would be absolutely fascinating to see this chart as a timelapse and see how these things change over time. For example, Alabama would be floating to the right, and Nebraska would be floating to the left.
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For anyone like me who couldn’t find us, we’re the red circle at about 0.75 on the X axis, surrounded by Maryland, Purdue, Syracuse, Colorado, BYU, and Northwestern. To be middle of the Big 12 pack (and mediocre but still P5 worthy overall) for 2014-2019 is good IMO. 2020 and 2021 replacing 2014 and 2015 in such an analysis would help a lot.
Athletic Director Joe Parker joins to talk about the recent flirtation with the AAC and much more
RamNation Radio · Episode
Colorado State Podcast had their AD on to talk AAC flirtation, MWC potential state of Texas expansion, and why Big 12 didn't pick them.
Big 12 spoiler: primarily used 2 factors that have been mentioned before... Football success beyond a single coach. Do you actually have tv eyeballs, not just are you in a big market.
Listened to the first half. Interesting stuff.
Would ISU pass the test if the shoe was on the other foot? Have we had enough football success beyond one coach to be included?
I thought about that as well.
The difference is Iowa State has had a seat at the table this whole time. Colorado State would be making a much bigger jump.
Some of this really mirrors JP speak too
Be the best version of what we can be
Remarkable institution
Great community
Fans need to be involved
Football focus
These two seem to be cut from the same cloth
Wouldn't surprise me if CSU was modeling their AD after ISU - we've done everything we could as an institution and fan base we just needed the right coach.
Answer to that is no.
The slides do football success over the last 5 years... I believe the Big 12 is doing it right by looking over a longer period of time. Boise's success is widely more impressive than Houston/UCF because they've been doing what they do a long time.
It appears to me the Big 12 is also considering how high of a ceiling do these schools have? I believe Cinci, Houston, and UCF all have a higher ceiling than Boise because of where they are located. How many recruits now choose them over out-of-state schools now that they are Power5? Boise gets recruits because they dominate competition, but I don't think they'll dominate the Big 12 and could potentially float to the bottom of our conference if invited. Not saying they would, just saying they potential doesn't seem as high. Cinci and UCF mostly hurt other conferences by being elevated. My only worry with the Houston add, is how much does that hurt TCU/Baylor/OKSt/Tech?
And that’s the question that if 60-70 percent of the schools in the PAC/ACC/B10 asked themselves is that the answer to the question would be no- they wouldn’t add value to move the needle at this point to where their entire conference would benefit.
Great point. It is comical to hear bottom dwellers in stable conferences act all superior.
Looking at the TV data slide. In the crazy hypothetical where SEC wanted to add OSU, Mich, PSU, ND, Clem, FSU, USC... were they then going to vote out Van, UK, MIZ, SC MSSt, ARK, Miss, Tenn? I mean, why carry any of the dead weight?
Trust me somebody (ESPN & SEC) is working on it. A few of the slides showed the negative cash flow of pretty much every school outside the P5, including UC, UCF &UH, and I believe asked the question how long can this go on?
Not to mention lots of dirty tricks in recruiting applicants that have not actual shot at getting in to drive down acceptance rate.
I recently saw somewhere that 2014-2019 our viewership was around 8-10 million, but in 2020, the viewership was 20+ million. I think this was due to playing in the Big XII championship game and the Fiesta Bowl. The viewership of those 2 games alone were 2.99 million for the OU game and 6.68 million for the Fiesta Bowl. Let's not fool ourselves, if we don't make it to the championship game and a NY6 bowl, we will be closer to the 10 million than the 20 million.
The ND ISU bowl game(2019) had 4.17 million and the Wash State ISU bowl game(2018) had 5.55 million. Almost half our viewership numbers were from the bowl games to get closer to that 10 million number.
The Iowa ISU game was 3.89 million so that will help some this year to maybe get closer to 15 million if we don't make it to the Big 12 Championship.