Mountain West Conference Weekend

I’m pretty drunk right now and these girls are not doing it for me at all, I mean come on it’s Fort Worth, that’s pretty much Dallas

I know that MWC Weekend is a terrible name for a post, but I’ll have to think of something better later.  Frankly I’m not even sure how much longer we will be doing this as soon as Utah moves to the PAC-12 next season we will probably focus on that.  But for now get ready for a rant and this is not going to be the usual mid major rant either, because I don’t think that’s what the problem is.

In the AP pole this week as many of you may know Utah lost a place and dropped form 10 to 11, they stayed at 10 in the other two poles, so it’s mostly just the idiot AP writers.  But still, this is ridiculous, and I don’t think it’s just because they are a MWC team.  I know that’s what everyone on ESPN says, they give them some bullshit lip service along with TCU and Boise and then dismiss them anyway.  It’s always the same, they shouldn’t be punished but they should be passed up.

I’m sorry is not playing grounds for moving up 3 spots but crushing a Big 12 team by 40 points gets you knocked down a notch.  I guess that’s not nearly as impressive as beating a third rate Big 10 team by 3 scores which gets you the number 1 spot.  And here is where I think it’s not just because Utah is in the MWC, because it’s so obvious that Oregon should be #1 and not Ohio St., oh I’m sorry The Ohio State.

Everyone knows that Utah is going to the PAC-12 next year, but look how current PAC-10 schools get treated.  For one thing they play a much better schedule, the PAC-10 is probably the best conference 1-10 in the country this year.  Way better than the Big 10.  and even probably better than the vaunted SEC.  So Ohio St. beats Illinois and gets to be #1 and LSU, who should have lost 3 games beats a middle of the road Florida team and goes ahead of Utah?  It’s the entire west coast, Oregon is getting screwed just as much as Utah.  If you’re not USC, no one cares about the PAC-10, it’s just lip service that they are even a BCS conference.

I’m not even sure how to define the bias in voting, it’s not really an east coast bias, because the Big East and ACC are crap and while they always start high up in the polls even that fiction cannot be maintained for an entire season.  It’s the Big 10 that is grossly over rated, the Big 12 has its upper teams that are probably deserving and pull up the lower schools and of course the SEC always gets the benefit of the doubt, but I think they’ve earned that over the past 30 years.

I wish I could come in here with a solution, but there isn’t one.  Schools are rated on their history, plain and simple.  College football is conservative in the truest sense of the word and I don’t know if the young Turks will ever break through, if new money will ever be old money.  A playoff would improve things, but as long as there are polls nothing will fix it, there will always be teams getting over and under rated and that’s probably why I like the NFL.

Independence and Economics at BYU

Don’t ever Search for cougar and money on Google                           

I think that at this point the discussion of BYU leaving the MWC is nothing but a matter of economics spurned on by their closest rival Utah bolting to the PAC-10.  It has been reported that the PAC-10 will be paying Utah around $15 million a year after they become full members of the conference.  BYU received $1.3 million per year from their current deal with MWC conference due to their incredibly lucrative tv deal on The Mountain.

If any of you have not seen The Mountain it is about one step above public access and probably not any better than BYU’s own station BYU TV, which is integral to this project even being possible for the Cougars.  I don’t think without the fact that not only does BYU run it’s own station, but also has a fully equipped HD broadcast studio on campus that this would be even possible.

To me the process would work much like the Big 10 or Big 12 network deals.  BYU gets cable companies to carry their station, which can be broadcast in HD to as many areas that have a high number of Mormon or if they exist non-Mormon Cougar fans.  This would carry the bulk of their sports programming and bring in ad revenue along with whatever they could get the cable companies to pay them, probably 10 cents per subscriber at the top end, if anything.  This would of course force BYU TV to change their listing with the FCC from a religious non revenue earning station to a commercial station.

The second move would be to work their own deal with ESPN and other national carriers on showing specific match ups in Football and Basketball and receiving revenue from that.  With the on site capabilities it may prove more likely that national stations would want to broadcast from BYU, saving the cost of brining their own equipment and uplink systems.

There is little doubt that BYU could not get over $2 million in contracts through these methods.  The real problem then is does this allow the football program to grow?  Can they get the matchups they need to be ranked high enough to have a chance at a BCS or even national championship?  Since it’s obvious that they won’t get special considerations like Notre Dame.  Also, is there a way for them to squeeze the MWC for a bigger cut of the revenue form other sports and just leave in football, or make independent TV deals, throw their weight around like Texas, since they are the big player in the MWC now.

I love nothing more than conferences being shaken up and the BCS being affected, I am hoping things get worse before they get better in college football.

Bench Cast Episode 4

So here we are with episode 4 of the Bench Cast, we have a large cast today with Uji, Ron, Fran and myself.  We talk about the Haslem weed bust, the new Jazz uniforms, BYU going independent, the joy around the blogfrica about Mariotti going to jail and a little on Favre.  http://dnpcd.podbean.com/

Remember to subscribe from there or from iTunes where you can leave us a review, which is super helpful, just click the link or search for bench cast.  Also, follow me on twitter, it’s a complete waste of your time and will probably get you fired, but why not, http://twitter.com/AceMahogany

We should be back with another podcast on Wednesday, so it will actually be up on Thursday is my guess, it will be the NFC preview and then Saturday we will do an AFC preview to get you all geared up for the season.  Until then stay tuned for our regular posts on the site.