Dingdingdingding

Hopefully that's per game?
Now you know why Temple was so eager to joining the dumpster fire of the Big East. 
2 Million > $100k

I despise week night games.  But, L.C. is likely accurate.

I don't like the November weekday night games.  Last year I had the experience of going to a Saturday afternoon game at Marshall shortly after a weekday night game at Peden.  The game in Athens was very cold, damp and the environment was just ugly (so was the game, but that's another story).  The game in Huntington was on one of those November Saturdays where the sun is shinning brightly and as the game wears on the temps go up and everyone feels relatively comfortable.  In short, it was a much better atmosphere and, even with the horrible year the Herd was having, the attendance was much better on that Saturday than the weekday attendance at the previous week's game in Athens.  If only C-USA had a contract wtih ESPN, instead of the CBS Cable Sports, they would have had a good TV audience, as well.  I suspect, though, that they get more in TV money than does Ohio and the MAC.  TUVideoGuy has a good point about the lackluster nature of the MAC contract.  On the other side of the argument, though, this year the MAC will be getting a good total payout because of NIU's appearance in the Orange Bowl.  I don't believe a C-USA team has ever made it to a BCS Bowl, and soon the BE will be in the same boat as the MAC and C-USA when it comes getting into a regular BCS Bowl or the new Gang of Five vs. BCS Bowl.

OHIO FOOBALL on national tv is good for the country.

I cannot help but think about something from a eulogy written for Dr. Jerry Buss by Bill Simmons this week. Here's the pertinent part:

"One time within the last couple of years, when the small-market owners were pushing hard for revenue sharing, Buss waited for everyone to make their case before weighing in. He mentioned how one owner had juggled multiple businesses over that time — making hundreds of millions beyond basketball — whereas Buss had thrown his life into running the Lakers. Now that owner wanted Buss to share his NBA profits with him? Buss maintained that he wasn’t against revenue sharing; if anything, he believed the idea made sense. But could they at least agree that, had the other owner devoted all of his time and resources to his team like Buss did, his franchise would be doing better? What if they struck a deal — all the full-time NBA owners shared their NBA profits, but only if the part-time NBA owners shared the profits from their other businesses with the full-time NBA owners?

The room fell silent. He had totally defanged the other owner — not to embarrass him, but to prove a point. If the league was gravitating toward revenue sharing, he just wanted to make sure it was for the right reasons, not because a handful of unsuccessful, part-time NBA owners were trying to game the system their way. And yes, Buss eventually agreed to revenue sharing. But he made everyone think about it, too."

Now, that makes me think in the MAC, we're the Lakers whereas Bowling Green, Eastern Michigan, maybe Buffalo are the teams and owners who are only part-time sports schools. It doesn't seem fair that OHIO can continue to grow and benefit the MAC and yet only see the same financial gains as EMU. The most fair system would be to have ESPN choose the games, but to only pay the schools that are put on the air. If BGSU, EMU, BSU want a cut of the pie, they need to get their team's performance up to grade. Otherwise, they'll be on the outside looking in.

As does this.

I think it makes less difference than you think. Attendance for the week night games at Peden was 16,789 and 19,122. There's not much to compare it to because Ohio didn't have any cold November games in Saturday, but the Buffalo game in early October had only 20,044.

Ball State's home game vs. Ohio had 10,097 on a Wednesday night. Sure that's pretty lame, but two weeks earlier, on a Saturday, in a huge game for them, they had 11,238 against NIU. So it wasn't really off from the norm.

NIU hosted Toledo on a week night and drew 17,813. The game before that, on a Saturday, NIU's attendance was 11,114. Of course, it being a huge game had a lot to do with why the week night game was way more than the weekend game.

Toledo got 18,211 for Ball State on a week night game. Again, no real good comparisons because Toledo played no cold November Saturday games but again, in early October, Toledo drew 19,247.

I really don't think the stadiums are much more empty than they usually are. The problem is they all are fairly empty on a regular basis.

"The game in Huntington was on one of those November Saturdays where the sun is shinning brightly and as the game wares on the temps go up and everyone feels relatively comfortable. "



   Hey, you oil tender swabbie, is that the word you had in mind??????  ((Grinning like a GI grammarian here.  Your spouse does red pen correct your writing, right??))

You probably had a face made for radio.

You have to consider what effect TV is having on recruiting. That seems to be the MAC's interest.