Time for a deal to be cut between ESPN and .mtn

Tue Nov 30, 2010 9:10 am

If you work for the .mtn, you are poop your pants right now. With the loss of the Utard & Fort Worth market and all their advertising dollars (although gaining Reno, Fresno, & Boise) there may be only one "vehicle" to hitch a ride with to survive.

Tue Nov 30, 2010 10:18 am

Tue Nov 30, 2010 10:29 am

Agreed! We need an ESPN deal.

Tue Nov 30, 2010 10:52 am

We also need to keep the mtn. though. The whole reason we got away from ESPN is because we didn't want to be playing on Tuesday, Thursday, or Friday. Keep the mtn. with ESPN backing and have a marquee matchup or two on the ESPN family of networks every week (on Saturday).

Tue Nov 30, 2010 11:03 am

Agreed, I probably should have noted that in my post.. They need a joint partnership.

Tue Nov 30, 2010 2:53 pm

It's amazing that...as college football fans today, we need to think about advertising as such an integral part of the sport (notice I said sport, not game).

I was old enough to remember the 70's and I can't recall ever having (or overhearing) a conversation about the topics we discuss today (ad revenue, market shares, etc...). This isn't some soppy 'I miss the old days' observation, just the reality of sports today. I suppose all the sports have evolved along a similar time line and this isn't unique to college football. It seems we, as fans, are evolving as well.?.?.

In all honesty, I don't think going back to ESPN, hat in hand, is going to be beneficial for us. I think a partnership between ESPN and the .mtn is about as likely as peace in our time. I wish we were in a stronger bargaining position but (as much as I hate to admit it) losing those three programs really hurt our chances. Maybe when the .mtn begins turning a profit, we can start flexing our muscle but as it stands, I think we are smart to play our cards close to our chests and stick with what we got. It might be a tactical mistake but makes more sense in the strategic long term. God knows what the landscape is going to look like in two or three years?

I'm afraid we are going to have to do what we did when the MWC was formed and continue to build all our programs up, win our OOC and Bowl games, and continue to exhibit the maverick spirit with which this conference was formed.

JMHO

Tue Nov 30, 2010 6:00 pm

I don't care if we play on Tuesday or Thursday night. I'm usually not doing anything anyway. Just another excuse to drink, which is fine with me. This way I could stay home on Saturday and not miss any other games.

Tue Nov 30, 2010 6:03 pm

Cornpoke wrote:I don't care if we play on Tuesday or Thursday night. I'm usually not doing anything anyway. Just another excuse to drink, which is fine with me. This way I could stay home on Saturday and not miss any other games.

You need an excuse???

Tue Nov 30, 2010 6:45 pm

Cornpoke wrote:I don't care if we play on Tuesday or Thursday night. I'm usually not doing anything anyway. Just another excuse to drink, which is fine with me. This way I could stay home on Saturday and not miss any other games.

I understand what you are saying Cornpoke, but for people living more than an hour away from Laramie it makes it very hard to get to the games on weekdays. That will hurt our attendance and it is not great even with all our games on Saturdays. This was one of the main reasons for leaving espn. Espn was scheduling basketball games on Monday nights at 10pm which makes it just about impossible for people out of town to attend (it also is when the east coast is asleep and hurts our recruiting exposure). My thinking is that espn puts their thumb on us and trys to hold us down. Espn & the bcs are in bed together.

Tue Nov 30, 2010 10:44 pm

I f-word loved going to big monday games

Wed Dec 01, 2010 6:04 am

I hated espn. We always played in the middle of the week. And we never played until 9:00 or 10 at night. It was stupid. It really knocked our attendance down in both football and basketball. I remember a thursday night game against UNLV, back when we had Josh Davis, Bailey and Amadi. A good caliber team. The attendance for that game was 8,000 +. In reality If that games was played on a saturday, we easily could of had 13 to 15,000 for it. So we lost money in attendance only to break even with a showing on ESPN. I think if we make a deal or mesh, we should do it with FOX.

Wed Dec 01, 2010 9:00 am

Any deal ESPN would deign to give the MWC would be what the WAC currently has: $1.5 million or something ridiculous, and Monday through Friday gametimes, last game of the night.

See how well that's worked for the WAC?

Wed Dec 01, 2010 9:11 am

Lost Poke wrote:Any deal ESPN would deign to give the MWC would be what the WAC currently has: $1.5 million or something ridiculous, and Monday through Friday gametimes, last game of the night.

See how well that's worked for the WAC?

The thing that you people (generalizing I know) aren't realizing:

If you are the only NCAA football game on ESPN (Tue / Wed / Thur / Fri) nights...guess what most people are going to be watching (at home, in a restaurant, in a bar, etc., etc)? Chris Peterson said it himself, the exposure (although on off nights that are not necessarily popular with local fans) was a very valuable piece in getting his team "exposed" to the college football world, and creating the current Boise State brand.

That sure as hell wouldn't hurt little 'ol low budget poop assed UW.

Wed Dec 01, 2010 9:30 am

Would we still get to watch the Pokes every week with ESPN? I enjoy watching the cowboys every week on the MTN. Yeah, the broadcast sucks, but at least I get to watch them every week. An ideal situation would be the Mtn broadcasting most of the games with ESPN cherry picking a few for thursday nights. Imagine if people would have seen Wyoming beat down CSU on a Thursday night. It won't happen, but that could work. The Mtn suffers, but it is suffering already. Who knows guys. The MWC would have had it all if the damn schools would have stayed the course!

Fri Dec 03, 2010 3:05 pm

This is something that Utah and TCU do not realize. Being part of the MWC they got every game televised every week. It was either on VS CBSSports or the Mtn network.

Something Utah and TCU will find out that the first year in a larger conference they will get pretty decent televised games but the end result will be as time passes on the only way they will be the televised game is if they are in the top 2-3 in the conference.

Just look at any AQ conference tell me without the game being on Mtn and without the team playing a top 25 team when their last nationally televised game was? People don't like the Mtn contract because it's not on all those networks yet. Unfortunately that takes time but I think the Mtn network is great of course it's available in Arizona and comes in the sports package with NFL/NBA TV along with VS, CBSSports and Mtn.

Before the Mtn do you recall how many televised Football and Basketball games there were? For the fact of that matter all the other sports mens and womens that are on the Mtn.

We have it a lot better then most people realize I remember when watching the Cowboys on TV 1-2 times a year was standard. I personally don't miss those days I have been able to watch the Cowboys on TV every Football game and just about every MWC Basketball game since 06. In those 4 years I have sene more televised Wyo sports then over the entire time I have been a fan combined.

Fri Dec 03, 2010 8:00 pm

McPeachy wrote: The thing that you people (generalizing I know) aren't realizing:

If you are the only NCAA football game on ESPN (Tue / Wed / Thur / Fri) nights...guess what most people are going to be watching (at home, in a restaurant, in a bar, etc., etc)? Chris Peterson said it himself, the exposure (although on off nights that are not necessarily popular with local fans) was a very valuable piece in getting his team "exposed" to the college football world, and creating the current Boise State brand.

That sure as hell wouldn't hurt little 'ol low budget s##tty assed UW.

Exposure works great for Boise St. What about the other 8 teams in the conference? How many times do you get to see to see them on TV? I agree we need to work with ESPN to maybe sell some top games each year to them, but don't be mistaken, their "exposure" isn't worth that much to smaller programs.

We should be worrying about building our own team and fanbase before we worry about exposure. You need something to expose first. Boise St. has that, we don't. Who cares if you're the only game on Wed. night when there are 13K people in the stands, something I'd expect we'd see at a UW home game?

Sun Dec 05, 2010 9:18 am

WYO1016 wrote:We also need to keep the mtn. though. The whole reason we got away from ESPN is because we didn't want to be playing on Tuesday, Thursday, or Friday. Keep the mtn. with ESPN backing and have a marquee matchup or two on the ESPN family of networks every week (on Saturday).

So you think that ESPN would dump the ACC or Big 10 to give any team in the MWC a Saturday slot? They don't even do that for Boise, their darling. You need to rethink what you believe is possible. There are only so many slots on Saturday, and they won't give one to us. Last negotiations, they wouldn't even offer us Thursdays (a slot the MWC built), it was the Tuesday Friday variety that Boise plays on now.

Mon Dec 06, 2010 4:17 pm

Brew_Poke wrote:
WYO1016 wrote:We also need to keep the mtn. though. The whole reason we got away from ESPN is because we didn't want to be playing on Tuesday, Thursday, or Friday. Keep the mtn. with ESPN backing and have a marquee matchup or two on the ESPN family of networks every week (on Saturday).
So you think that ESPN would dump the ACC or Big 10 to give any team in the MWC a Saturday slot? They don't even do that for Boise, their darling. You need to rethink what you believe is possible. There are only so many slots on Saturday, and they won't give one to us. Last negotiations, they wouldn't even offer us Thursdays (a slot the MWC built), it was the Tuesday Friday variety that Boise plays on now.

There's no way they dump one of the bigger conferences for us, but they have more than one network. ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPN Classic, ESPNEWS, any one of these should be able to carry an MWC game on Saturdays.