Interesting article in this morning's Wheeling Intelligencer Newspaper on what WVU will get in annual payout from the B-XII.  Apparently WVU will only receive 50% of that payout in the 2012-13 year, 67% in the 2013-14 year, 84% in the 2014-15 year and 100% thereafter.  The payout from the league is $17,000,000.00 PER TEAM PER YEAR.  As Oliver Luck stated, even at 50% that is more than what the Big East is paying.  Would someone please enlighten me as to what  OUr beloved conference gives each school per year?

GO BOBCATS!

After rereading the article I believe it is only for TV revenue and does not include anything else.  To quote Oliver Luck, the A.D. at WVU:

"Clearly the television payout is much bigger than it is in the Big East."

And again, the $17,000,000.00 is per team, not for the entire league!

So, we need to spend, a guess, 12-14 million to get Peden to 40,000.  Then, fill it consistently.  Then, conference up to where we get an extra 12-14 million extra a year from the TV/football revenues.  The math probably works...save for how do we fill 40,000 in Peden consistently?

I actually think 17,500 (which seems like a legit count) is good for a Wednesday night. The 8 p.m. start and option of watching on TV makes it hard for someone in Columbus  to climb in the car and head for Athens knowing they won't be home before 1 a.m. I think we lose a lot of the crowd that is anywhere outside of Athens for any weekday game. Figure just over 20,000 students in Athens and a similar number of citizens, and 17,500 is downright impressive. We should talk about expanding the stadium when we can't fit everyone in the current one. We've turned fans away from Peden exactly zero times since its most recent expansion.

We are in a small TV market and that alone is enough to keep us out of the BCS. WVU's market isn't great, but they have the whole state behind them.

I'm not saying that we can fill 40,000 consistently.  Or even once.  It's just tough being in an area of low population and low income.  But if we could get to 40k, the dollars seem to work for getting to a bigger conference.

Let's get the W's running like last night and see.  If we build it...income and distance etc as barriers may suddenly melt.