Thoughts on the BYU, Cash and Religion

Its been said by many, if not everyone, over the last week or so that the recent changes in the conferences are motivated by one thing: CASH! Really? Then can someone explain why a BCS conference doesn't immediately invite BYU? BYU brings the bulk of the TV cash to the MWC, yet the conference splits the revenue evenly. The BYU fan base is one of the most unique in the country because of it's religious affiliation. It's like a mini Notre Dame. BYU fans don't just fill up MWC stadiums, we fill up every stadium we go to. And TV? I keep hearing how the conferences want to secure TV markets, and SLC is one that looks attractive. Are you kidding me? With BYU you don't just own the SLC market, you would own every LDS home in the country (except for Utah fans who were born and still live in SLC and don't understand how great it is to be a BYU fan outside of Utah).



There is no question that BYU's religious affiliation is what keeps us from getting an invite. Sure, journalists and other conferences respect BYU, but they just can't seem to accept us or the loads of cash we would bring to their conference. And if you don't think this is because of our religion then you probably still think Mitt Romney has a chance to be President.



Well...Fine. BYU will continue on its path. The BYU fan base isn't going away. Good things are going to happen even though we will remain in the MWC. But I do think there needs to be one change that we can control. And I'm serious about this - it needs to happen now:



Tom Holmoe needs to call Craig Thompson and tell him that BYU will be doing the same thing Texas just did - agree to sharing the conference TV revenues but also launching our own TV network. No questions, no excuses. BYU has played this game of sharing TV revenue with the likes of UNLV, San Diego St. Colorado St. Wyoming, New Mexico and many others long enough. Our TV revenue each year amounts to about 1.5m, the same as everyone else in the conference. The only way Utah can up this amount is to become the whipping boy of the PAC 10 (maybe not on the football field immediately, but if you think Utah and Colorado will have any say in the decisions of the PAC 10 then you don't know the culture of the California schools). BYU can make BCS type money with their own TV agreement. I agree we need to stay in a conference and win conference titles. But as long as we are in a second tier MWC and we OWN the conference as far as CASH, then MUST begin to keep the money we earn. In fact, I have no doubt that we would bring in more than Utah ever will in the PAC 10. And if/when the Big 12 does come calling, our bargaining power will be much greater when they see how much cash we bring in from our national fan base. It's time to stop acting like a girl waiting by the phone and begin to act like we have something of value. Texas just stuck it to the other Big 12 teams, there is no reason why we can't control our own future within the MWC.

I've always wondered why BYU doesn't "throw their weight around" more often. In the old Wac, and even in the new MWC, BYU is the big dog. And when Utah leaves...we'll be the even-bigger-dog. I agree with you - BYU needs their own network. I just don't know how that would fit into the current Mtn contract, which would probably prohibit that in any way, shape, or form, and the only way out of that contract is probably to leave the conference.



But when that contract is up...I agree with you. BYU should demand the right to create their own TV network...and maybe reserve the right to negotiate a private contract with ESPN for a game or two a year. We all know that ESPN loves BYU, and would look forward to televising a few home games each year.



If (when) :utard: leaves, its time to start asserting our dominance, like we should have been all along.



Oh, and BYU also needs to make absolutely certain that Boise is on the OPPOSITE side of the home/away schedule as TCU!

33311710 wrote:
I've always wondered why BYU doesn't "throw their weight around" more often. In the old Wac, and even in the new MWC, BYU is the big dog. And when Utah leaves...we'll be the even-bigger-dog. I agree with you - BYU needs their own network. I just don't know how that would fit into the current Mtn contract, which would probably prohibit that in any way, shape, or form, and the only way out of that contract is probably to leave the conference.



But when that contract is up...I agree with you. BYU should demand the right to create their own TV network...and maybe reserve the right to negotiate a private contract with ESPN for a game or two a year. We all know that ESPN loves BYU, and would look forward to televising a few home games each year.



If (when) :utard: leaves, its time to start asserting our dominance, like we should have been all along.



Oh, and BYU also needs to make absolutely certain that Boise is on the OPPOSITE side of the home/away schedule as TCU!

Ummm.... BYU already HAS its own network, a network that showed a lot more game before this current contract. I sometimes wonder if BYU is as powerful as we think it is...

Yes, BYU does have its own network which is all the more reason why this can be done NOW, but they aren't allowed to broadcast any live games on it because of its agreement with the MWC. they currently can't make money off of their own network. And you're right again that BYU USE to show games on the Blue and White network, but they didn't really try to make money, they were just trying to meet the demand of BYU fans around the country. And the demand just keeps getting greater all the time. All I'm saying is now is time for BYU to use its BYUTV network to broadcast live games and to begin making money. And if that means their games are double broadcast on The Mountain and BYUTV, so be it. The revenue BYU will make from it's BYUTV broadcast will be far greater then their current share of The Mountain. It's simple, but BYU has decided to be a team player over the years and not exploit its fan base at the expense of the other MWC teams. Thanks to Texas the rules have now changed.

Allcoug, I know you think this is a Mormon thing, but I really just think it's a money thing. 33317...I can't remember your sign in name, I have to wonder what you're wondering: Maybe BYU isn't as powerful as we think it is. I mean, I know we basically calculate our fan base relative to how many members of the church there are in our country but is that really that accurate? I mean, out of say, what...five million members, six million members maybe, in the whole country, how many do you think are BYU fans? I just don't know. I mean it SEEMS logical to me that BYU is by far the most popular and powerful school in our conference but is that really so? Some utard was on a thread yesterday saying that BYU is number 46 in merchandise sales and Utah is number 47 in the country and is expected to overtake us in merchandise sales this year. If that's true is that any indicator of our real position here? I think it could be.



As for Mitt Romney's religion being the reason he didn't become president and probably won't become president, I think you're off-base there. I don't think Romney losing was about religion although it was painted that way by the media and it was the way it seemed to me they wanted it to look. But politics is ALL about money. Policy determines the flow of money. Romney's dad, George had told him and all his kids to not even think about running for public office until they were wealthy enough to fund their own campaign, otherwise special interest groups would fund it and they would be played by them like puppets, seeing as how they would become their employers. This is politics today. The winner owes somebody something. The winner is essentially owned by somebody somewhere. The reason I didn't like Romney's chances before and even though they would appear to be better now but I still doubt that is because that dude is too rich on his own to be bought off. But the dudes buying up candidates make him look like a pauper. You think it a coincidence that joke of human being, John Mccain swooped in and won Florida by the swing vote of non-registered, illegal independent votes? (they were supposed to have been registered republicans for at least thirty days before the primary but were allowed to vote anyway. There's the difference.)



So yeah, I don't think the BYU issue is a Mormon one. I think they Mormon thing puts a bad taste in the mouth of Pac 10 liberals, yeah, but if we were half as big and revenue-bringing as we seem to think we are, I think they could stomach the diversity just fine. You KNOW they'd take Notre Dame if they came knocking.



I really do have to wonder if we haven't inflated our influence in our own minds because I really do see no other reason for all this expansion mumbo jumbo. It really is all about the money.

And just to show how much it's about money to every one of us individually...



Imagine that this year Utah DOES go to the Pac.

(I don't think they will get the invite but for argument's sake.)



And we go on in 2011-2012 to go undefeated and actually WIN the national championship game. How is going to feel when Utah wins 4 or 5 games TOTAL in the Pac and we win the National Championship and then some Ute troll hops on here and says, "Nice one cougs. You beat up on weak Mountain West teams and got invited to the National Championship game and got lucky and won. We still made more money than you."



GRRRRRRR....that would make me so mad. :angry:

If some of you may recall, BYU played Michigan State in hoops a couple years ago in SLC at the ESA. It was a home game, but since was on a neutral site, it did not fall under the MTN TV deal. So BYU broadcast it on BYU-TV and avoided the MTN. Not sure how the viewer rating was, or how much they made off of it, but this has been done before. Under the current TV deal, all home games played on venues at BYU the MTN Network gets the first crack at it, then CBS Sports and Versus. BYU can make more $$$ on it sown, but it needs to throw that weight around for sure. I also think that BYU is positioning itself to do just that in the near future. Look at the new broadcast center the university is building right next to the Marriott Center. BYU is working towards this option right now, but is stuck in this deal until it expires. Hopefully after that, BYU throw its weight around in the MWC, if required. Those other schools would get near nothing without BYU.

KBYU is a non-profit so it can't make any money. They would need to create a new entity to do it. The MTN should use KBYU to televise more events. KBYU uses their cameras and the MTN picks up the feed.

Scott, KBYU isn't what we're talking about here. BYU has more than just KBYU, they already have a nationally televised station, BYUTV. It's very good quality too. Those on here just think we should expand the use of that I think.

Everybody here realizes that BYUTV is basically public television right? They don't sell advertisement time. They don't make any money. They give the channel away to whoever wants it so that general conference can be broadcast all acrossed the country.



Now, I could see BYU maybe doing a contract on the side with Versus, where they get all the BYU home games, and then the conference puts the other games on one of their 3 networks, with the two OOC road games being picked up by ESPN.



The really sad thing in this whole thing is that instead of being outvoted 7 to 2 on issues brought up by the conference, BYU will now be outvoted 8 to 1. BYU and Utah, while rivals on the field/court/pitch/everywhere else were great allies in the inter-conference wars.



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Whether BYU-TV is public or not is not the issue. The issue is that BYU already has its own network and delivery capacity to broadcast its game. Selling ad spots during BYU games would be easy after that. BYU can do something that few other universities in the nation can, and that needs to be used to our advantage.



Obviously, BYU would lose some revenue from not allowing beer commercials, which tend to dominate sports coverage, but I suspect beer vendors would not really want to advertise to BYU fans anyway. But the other potential is there. BYU can do it.

First of all, BYU doesn't make any of their revenue or expenses public, so I wouldn't believe the numbers you quoted. Maybe a third party merchandiser has publicized those numbers for themselves, but they sure don't include what BYU sells directly. And the Mormon thing, if you spend anytime outside the state of Utah you will realize that in general most everyone really respects the Mormon culture. But once you get past the niceties you realize that the general perception is that we are are very strange culture and have weird beliefs. I have lived in the south and in California for significant periods of time, and that's just the fact. There is no way on God's green earth that we would EVER get an invite from the PAC 10. An the Big 12 will only come calling when they realize the money we can bring to their conference is just too much to pass up.



And I don't agree that I am over inflating the TV value of BYU. We currently get 1.5 million from the MWC. That makes the total value of the MWC TV agreement with the current nine teams roughly 13.5m, not including what the conference keeps for itself. There is no doubt that the significant majority of the contract agreement is a result of BYU being a part of the MWC. If BYU had its own revenue stream on BYUTV I would bet they could easily get 8 to 10m for themselves. That's not a stretch and my guess is that it would only increase over time. But we haven't done it because we have believed that we were in a team effort to make the MWC a BCS contender. That's not going to happen. We can't control getting an invite to the Big 12 (which we would jump at) but we can control the TV revenue. And like it or not, that has become the main driver for college football today. The last couple of weeks has proved this to be the case.

BYU would not get 8 to 10 million from BYUTV. That's just a pipe dream.



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stuckinbig10country wrote:
BYU would not get 8 to 10 million from BYUTV. That's just a pipe dream.



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If you were able to broadcast a few football games and several hoops games a year, it is possible. Especially if both programs are winning. Maybe not $8M, but I would think $4M is possible, and that is a huge improvement.

BYU would not get 8 to 10 million from BYUTV. That's just a pipe dream.

Kind of like "There is no way Texas can get nearly 25m from the Big 12 TV contract and there own network"



I realize the numbers are a guess, but there is no question that BYU could double, triple even quadruple the 1.5m they currently get from The Mountain. It's no pipe dream and BYU knows it. And if Utah leaves it will be easier for BYU to take advantage of TV revenue streams.

This whole BYU needs to have it's own network absolutely won't work. I know BYU TV is out there but remember this is a station that needs to be picked up by cable and satellite providers which needs to get a cut in order for them to carry BYU TV. We can't even get the MTN on any significant numbers of tv's with an entire conference how can only having BYU make that a better deal for the cable and satellite providers?



I know there are 5-6 million mormons in N America but as pointed out earlier all of those, believe it or not, may not be BYU sports fans. In addition to that it has to have a financial benefit to the cable companies and in reality if every mormon household did tune in for each game that would represent about 0.02% of the entire US population, a very unimpressive tv share and not quite the numbers to warrant putting them on their schedule.



This is also the main reason BYU could never go independent and survive financially.

No one expects every Mormon home to tune into a BYU football game. But we need to put the numbers in perspective. Notre Dame, the king of the college football TV contract gets about 3.7 million viewers per game:

NBC garnered a 16 percent increase in its average viewership for its Notre Dame coverage, pulling in 3.7 million viewers up from 3.2 million per game in 2008.

It's not unreasonable to believe that if BYU only got a fraction of this amount we would see a significant increase in revenue. Again, you can't forget that the Mountain is currently paying out 13.5 million to all the teams in the conference. And if you don't think BYU accounts for a half of this, even without a quality TV station, then our head is in the sand. No doubt the administration at BYU knows this and without Utah to offend they just might make some moves.

blue42 wrote:
This whole BYU needs to have it's own network absolutely won't work. I know BYU TV is out there but remember this is a station that needs to be picked up by cable and satellite providers which needs to get a cut in order for them to carry BYU TV. We can't even get the MTN on any significant numbers of tv's with an entire conference how can only having BYU make that a better deal for the cable and satellite providers?

BYU-TV is already on both Direct TV and Dish Network, and also carried locally by many cable providers in Utah, Nevada, Arizona and in SoCal. This is not even an issue. And it is expanding its reach. Look here:



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYU_Television

Also, don't forget that TV isn't just, you know, TV. The ability to control revenue for Internet streaming would be another market for BYU fans throughout the world. This is a huge potential for the unique nature of BYU's fan base.

I think that a deal for all home games with versus is a better option than BYU-TV. Versus wants to make a big splash in college sports (all sports really), they are losing all the Pac-10 and Big XII games they were picking up. It seems like something they would want.



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