Oh, ACC. I know the transition has been difficult for the last decade plus. To go from a basketball-centric conference to… well, slightly less of a basketball-centric conference.
Trust me. we get it. After the time spent in the Big East, we Pitt fans understand that there can be a slight incomprehension echoing in the conference offices about staying focused on football season.
Still, to release all the ACC college basketball schedules in the afternoon, the day before college football kicks off the season? Not a week ago or two weeks. Just some 30 hours before a game involving one of the teams from your own conference kicks off the season. That is some Big East level idiocy.
I’m not going to go any further. Here’s the PDF of the full ACC scheduling in basketball.
Here is just Pitt. PDF version.
More about this later when I take some time to look a little closer at things. In the meantime, college football season is only hours away.
The long article on Triblive.com says essentially…nothing.
Isn’t there a relative of Swofford’s making money from the current arrangement??
How are the Zags looking this year? ANY chance we can beat them? That would be a great win for perception.
BC is probably unlike every other school in the country. The hockey team outdraws in the football team (in terms of capacity) and the basketball team (#s and capacity).
Haha, indifferent might be the perfect word… they don’t even register.
Despite being the city’s namesake university, they aren’t even second or third fiddle in their own town. They aren’t even in the band.
Nobody cares about BC unless they went there. And given that their enrollment numbers are lower than Harvard, Northeastern, BU, and UMass….
and the fact that there are quite literally hundreds of prestigious small colleges and universities sprinkled around Boston and New England…
And the fact that the Pats, Sox, and Bruins all have fanatical, cult-like followings..
They have no chance. Even the alumni could care less.
Nobody is driving out to Chestnut Hill for anything unless they live there.
“Just within our footprint, the ACC will have the most television households and highest population of any conference nationally,” Swofford said. “It is also projected that by 2030, 55 percent of the U.S. population will lie within the Northeast and Southern states – prime ACC territory. The combination of our marketplace opportunities, along with the population numbers both current and projected, give the ACC enormous potential in both the near and distant future.”
Swofford said the conference is still exploring the viability of an ACC Channel when it comes to the broadcast and distribution of future ACC events.
If a city has 10M households but only 5% watching, is comparable to a 2M households with 25% watching.
For example, viewership of college FB in Columbus OH which I believe is now Ohio’s most populated city is much higher percentage wise than Pgh will ever see.
A couple weeks ago two events happened. The first was that Verizon announced a cable package that allows consumers to pick small groups channels. This was quickly followed by other cable companies announcing that they are exploring mini-packs of channels. The reason they are exploring these options are folks are slowly moving away from traditional cable packages and watching programming from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon or off of their Chromecast/Roku devices. A la carte TV is coming or cable providers will devolve to internet-only providers. Folks have too many internet programming options to justify paying for 250 channels of which you may watch 10 on a regular basis.
The second thing that happened was the Disney earnings call. Disney basically fired a shot across the bow of cable providers that said you either keep ESPN on all of your cable packages or we will go internet only. It isn’t much of a stretch for ESPN to do so as ESPN3 is basically there.
With the trend of consumers shedding channels vs. increasing channels I think that the addition of an ACC channel would be akin to starting a factory to make pay phones. To put it another way, my boss went to Texas and couldn’t wait to get the Longhorn Network. I asked him how that’s working out for him. His reply, “I’m sure girls diving is a fine sport but I really not interested in watching the dramatic 2013 meet against Tech at 2AM on a Tuesday.”
Sam Werner ? @SWernerPG
Just spoke with #Pitt coach Pat Narduzzi, who “guaranteed” LT Adam Bisnowaty will be good to go on Saturday.
After 30 years of mediocrity and incompetence, playing games in an off campus rent-a-stadium, in city/county with more State school alumni, in a Pro Sports town that also has world class cultural options…
After all that, Pitt still has not hit rock bottom. Averaging 45K crowds, and bumping into the 50s when even a remotely decent team with modest expectations takes the field… If that’s rock bottom. Well, they’re doing alright.
This town will support a winner, and show up to watch a winner. That’s the bottom line.
I don’t know what reasonable expectations should be for a good Pitt football team. A good team, challenging for Coastal titles… 55-60k, with sellouts for name opponents and high stakes games?
Release date of BB schedule is unimportant. Just very
very thankful we landed in a great conference!!!!!!
Typical avg more like 35-40k of actual fans in the seats. Build a 45k stadium expandable to 52k. Marquee games schedule at Heinz. We are a private school sharing the spotlight with a PRO team in town. Not like we’re the only football team within a 200 sq mile radius.
Here are the departures & incoming players:
If Pitt wins over 20 games let alone 25, Dixon is one superb coach….
BTW, Damon Wilson is a PG and by far the best of this lot coming in…..and I think we all know who’s going to get the bulk of minutes at PG this year.
At what point did the football negativity start to the affect basketball?
Are we going by tickets sold or butts in the seats? 50,000 butts in the seats is great. 50,000 tickets sold with 25,000 butts in the seats, not so much. I think we need report tickets sold.
Need to figure out how to get the butts in the seats and count them. That will measure the true success of the marketing department.
Not in bball mode….yet! Bill Self quoted today as saying Chieck Diello will qualify shortly. That is important since Damon Wilson went to the same school. Self also said that they waited for other players from the same high school to go through the process so that they could answer questions differently. Interesting take.
I’d like to think Conklin left him such a well oiled, disciplined, football smart D, that even House couldn’t F it up. But yeah, go figure. Held UCF, a team that was in a BCS bowl a couple years ago, to under 300 yds. 46 rushing.
Watching Minnesota TCU now. Larry Coker, who if anyone is a Seinfeld fan, looks like Stan the Caddy, is giving Rich Rod all he can handle.
So glad college football is back, so much better than the NFL. If it wasn’t for fantasy football, I’d pay even less attention than I do to the NFL…
Unless he’s MAGICALLY transformed himself since Spring… his PERCENT BODY FAT is still OFF THE CHARTS.
At this point, the name Grimm is much more likely to be mentioned in the same sentence as “Bust” than it is with “Starter.”
Last season was an anomaly mainly due to inadequate post defense and rebounding. The ACC record should be similar to the year before last’s 11-7 (i.e. between 10-8 and 12-6). And OOC we probably win about 11.
link to triblive.com
