calumnus said:
BearSD said:
calumnus said:
oski003 said:
calumnus said:
oski003 said:
calumnus said:
HearstMining said:
mbBear said:
calumnus said:
mbBear said:
southseasbear said:
mbBear said:
MrGPAC said:
BearSD said:
SonomanA1 said:
.
.
I thought the real scoop was that FOX said to the B1G schools, "We're not throwing more money into the pot for Cal and Stanford, so if you really want them, existing schools will have to take smaller shares in order for them to get paid". Under those circumstances, no university president was going to demand Cal and Stanford be included. Of course, I have no reliable source for this, just the usual internet drivel.
The Bay Area is a bigger market than Seattle and Portland. UCLA and USC preferred Cal and Stanford. The B1G presidents preferred Cal and Stanford.
Fox Sports was the only player whose opinion mattered. They said, "No money for Cal and Stanford." The Big Ten presidents obediently went along with that because they were not willing to give up any of their own TV money.
You think it's crazy that Fox put up money for Oregon and Washington but not Cal and Stanford? C'mon. It was the correct dollars-and-cents decision. The TV networks have 20-plus years of TV ratings data to show that Oregon and Washington football deliver larger audiences. Including this season, Oregon has finished ranked in the final top 25 in 16 of the last 24 seasons, which has made them a national TV draw. UO and UW draw larger TV audiences nationally, and larger TV audiences in their home markets.
By the way: The Seattle and Portland metros combined have about the same population as the Bay Area.
Fox's Silverman said "no money for Cal and Stanford" AFTER Cal tried to block his deal to have his alma mater (UCLA) on the network (the B1G) he developed and after UW and Oregon already executed the deals they had negotiated months earlier to become the 3Rd and 4th schools.
So yes, there was no money for us to be the 5th and 6th schools especially after we tried to get the Governor of California to block his deal, badmouthed it as being "bad for the student athletes, especially women" then demanded Calimony, then when the B1G kept dropping hints they were interested in us in the media, we did nothing and instead fully backed Kliavkoff and his attempt to bring Apple into the game. We royally pissed Silverman off. Royally. "Zero" was FU.
It was never reported or even rumored that Fox had any interest in adding Cal or Stanford to the Big Ten. Not in 2022, not in 2023, and not now. A Big Ten president (I think Michigan's) said something like, "Institutionally, they belong with us," and even he didn't say that there was enough football value to justify it. No Big Ten president ever said that they wanted Cal and Stanford enough to give us money out of their own pockets.
Among other things, you're jumbling the timeline of events. You were saying only one comment ago in this thread that Fox should have chosen Cal and Stanford INSTEAD OF Oregon and Washington. Now you're making a brand-new claim that Fox would have added
six new teams to its conference (something no power conference has ever done all at once) instead of two or four, but for some imagined slight that, for all we know, no one at Fox even cared about. That's just grasping to conjure up something new to blame on Carol Christ. (Was she "sitting on the sidelines" or was she single-handedly making the Big Ten decide to not add Cal when they definitely would have done so otherwise? Don't try to argue it both ways.)
And by making the "5th and 6th" argument, you're now conceding that Cal and Stanford didn't have the football value to justify being ahead of Oregon and Washington on the Big Ten's list, not to mention that even UO and UW are only getting half-shares of Big Ten revenue.
