Feels like we've been told TV viewers rule all but I guess there is an exception when it comes to WSU ... not sure a marketing slogan has ever fit better with my school than the one they have this year.
the fine print tells me that survey is partly
garbage-in-garbage-out because of this:
"
No games against BIG Ten, SEC, USC, UCLA, OU, Texas; no conference championship or bowls"
why exactly are they excluding those games? I'm assuming because they'd claim those games would skew the results because more viewers would tune in to watch BIG/SEC teams than the subject teams. So, in that survey in which Oregon scored so well, it excluded Oregon's games against Tennessee, Michigan State (twice), Nebraska (twice), Auburn, Ohio State, & Georgia. OK
but the thing is, if they are excluding games in which there would clearly be an uneven skew in viewership, why would teams like Cal and Arizona get credit for all the eyeballs when they played Oregon. Conversely, why would Oregon get debited when they played teams like that?
I'd be pretty certain that the linear TV networks who are driving realignments have their own internal algorithms to derive viewing power of D1 programs. I know that in all these surveys and data sets, Oregon always outperforms every D1 program except the elites of the BIG and SEC, and that includes USC. Meaning, surveys like these are relatively useless for the Networks. They have their own calculations
Oregon has been scheduling games against the big boys for a while. And they often end up in the L column (
a 49-3 shellacking by Georgia last season tops the list). Now, I used to have a lot more connections to the thinking of Oregon's athletic department and coaches thru the Mike Bellotti days. Even some in the Chip Kelly days. But now I only know one guy who is '
in-the-know', marginally. Mostly big donors.
Anyway I asked him a couple of years ago why Oregon was scheduling these very difficult games, seemingly every year, on the road, against teams like LSU, Michigan State, Nebraska, Auburn, Ohio State, Georgia. His reply was simple "Branding". Having big games early in the season gets tons of media attention and draws millions of eyeballs. I know you don't credit branding as a factor, but it clear that Oregon has been laser-focused on branding for 20 years. Eugene-Springfield has a metro population of 382,000. Spokane, for instance, has a metro population of 593,000. By market size, the UofO would not qualify for a power conference
obviously, winning contributes to branding. Having Chip Kelly's blur offense and lightning tempo, while winning, and wearing fancy uniforms, contributed a lot to branding. Oregon has won 8 Pac-12 championships in football since 2000. They played in 4 Rose Bowls and won 3; three Fiesta Bowls and won 2. In the same period, OSU/WSU combined for one Pac-12 championships, 1 Rose Bowl, and 1 Fiesta Bowl. They were 1-1 in the bowls and the last appearance, like the last championship, was 22 years ago
I know you don't want to credit winning and branding as factors, but it's obvious they were the reason Oregon made it to the Big-10 while OSU/WSU are filing lawsuits
