Thursday, September 8, 2011

Mark Cuban Doesn't Understand College Football


Cubes. You won a championship. That was cool. I like that you are all about your organization and your players, but this last blog post... man you're way off.

Let's see what he has to say.

Here is some unsolicited advice to the Big 12.

Your job is to own an NBA team. ALL of your advice is unsolicited if it is not directed at 29 other people in the world.

With Texas A&M trying to leave the Big 12 (It doesn’t happen until the SEC accepts them) every remaining school is trying to decide in the immortal lyrics of The Clash “Should I Stay or Should I Go”. The quick answer? They should stay.


I'm hip! I'm cool! I'm down with it!

*Does Macarena*

1. More schools will NOT mean more TV money.

Considering how Cuban is only rich because he sold his free television internet service to Yahoo! for $6 billion, I'm just going to go ahead and assume his understanding of "TV money" is different than those of us here in reality.

The big college TV networks, Fox, ESPN, CBS pay for quality, not quantity. They need marquee matchups


This whole conference shuffle began because ESPN signed a $300 million contract for a team that finished 5-7 last season. Furthermore, every SEC fan watches EVERY SEC GAME. Mississippi State v. Kentucky? FUCK YES. Because outside of college football, Southeastern Americans have nothing to live for.

Adding Texas A&M to the SEC is not going to add a single dollar’s worth of value to the owner of the SEC TV contract, regardless of sport.

Yes it will, in potential dollars, because now the SEC has access to a major city. Something they have heretofore lacked, outside of Atlanta.

Maybe the SEC has an escalator in their contract that increases the total value of the TV contract

They do. If the SEC increases past 12 teams, they renegotiate. And now they have Houston's TV market and the past five national championships to drive up the price.

2. Fans will hate the scheduling impact

Possibly. Explain yourself.

You know how there is midnight madness in college basketball?

Yes, stupid NCAA rules prohibit them from practicing until the stroke of midnight, October 15th.

And late night and games scheduled at weird times for basketball?

All professional games are scheduled at 7:00 pm, local time. ZOMG! WHY IS THIS GAME STARTING AT 9?! Time zones, buddy. Those of us that don't fly on private jets to attend every game of our favorite team have learned to deal with them.

I’m guessing that the only way to get all those games through a single TV network partner is to start very, very early or to go very very late.


Or have regional broadcasts, like they already do. Cubes probably has no idea that when the Mavs are on Fox Sports, the Rockets are on Fox Sports in Houston and the Spurs are on Fox Sports in Central Texas.

3. Say Goodbye to Cupcake Football Games

THANK GOD!

Sure Utah State can take Auburn to the wire every now and then, but the reality is most BCS title aspiration (not all) schools have 3 or 4 cupcake games on their schedule.

Gotcha, so really good teams will have to play really well to go undefeated. Again, THANK GOD.

4. Goodbye Geographic Rivalry Games

Because Notre Dame/USC made sense.

All those natural rivalries of Texas A&M in and around the state of Texas will be impacted.

Possibly. Although A&M only has two actual rivals in the state. One is The University of Texas, and there's no way they stop playing each other. The other, by sheer technicality, would be TCU ("Gig 'Em" became a rally cry because "Frog gigging" is something hillbillies do for fun/when they are hungry. Hence, "Gig 'Em" essentially means "Kill the TCU Horned Frogs"). Oh, and before you say Texas Tech, they have no rival, because we all forgot about them.

And as far as new rivalries, it’s a long drive for fans from College Station to Alabama, Florida, South Carolina

*Looks at map*

College Station to Baton Rouge is 340 miles. Gainesville to Athens is 340 miles (yes I know they play in a neutral location, shut up).

I don’t care how good a game OU vs Oregon could hypothetically be...

Possible championship quality.

fans from both sides are going to second guess the economics of going to the games.

Cubes has clearly never met a Sooner. Their whole thing is road trips, straight down to their mascot.

IN CONCLUSION:
Things Cuban is good at:
-Cashing in on the dotcom boom
-Investing in tequila companies (note: fiction only)
-Getting role players from shitty teams in exchange for overrated players who don't fit into the Mavs

Things Cuban is bad at:
-Class
-Tact
-Haircuts
-Wearing cool clothes
-Understanding College Football

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