Grading Slive on Expansion

With the SEC's addition of Missouri, I go back and forth on what I think of Slive's handiwork. My strong preference initially was for Virginia Tech to join as the league's 14th member. Geographically, I felt that made more sense. However, the Missouri addition does have merit in terms of football and men's basketball. More importantly, it made sense from a financial standpoint.

Slive has added the following TV markets (by national rank*):

#5 Dallas/Ft. Worth
#10 Houston
#21 St. Louis
#31 Kansas City
#37 San Antonio

Said differently...the SEC added 31 million more potential viewers in the states of Texas and Missouri...or almost 10 percent of the US population.

From a TV standpoint, it should be a win. The rumored move from eight conference games across 12 teams to 9 games across 14 teams means a 31% increase in quality SEC conference games for the league's TV partners.

The additional TV sets should mean a massive renegotiation for the SEC and it's TV friends. How much more?

The SEC's current TV deal pays the league $200 million per team. The Pac 12 deal pays $250 million per year to its members. It's not an apples to apples comparison as schools like UGA and UF have side deals for multimedia rights that pay millions per year above and beyond the TV deal. However, the Pac 12 deal is a good starting point for looking at financial opportunity for the SEC in expansion.

With the increase in game inventory and TV sets, it's not unreasonable to think the SEC can get to $300 million per year (a 29% spike in revenues).

With equal revenue sharing, the SEC's deal needs to at least jump from $200 million to $233.3 million just to break even given that we're going from splitting the pie 12 ways to 14 ways.

All of this distrupution wouldn't have made sense if all we were going to do was tread water financially. Slive needs to come back with something in the neighborhood of a 30% bump in TV revenue per school to have made this worth the effort.

So...how do we grade Slive? We'll have to see the new TV deal before we pass judgement.

PWD


TV Info Source: StationIndex.com

Fan's Guide to Missouri

A few quick thoughts about the University of Missouri:

• It is located in Columbia, making the SEC the only major conference with colleges located in the exactly named towns (without being in the same town).
• Columbia is similar to several other college towns in the SEC (Ttown, Athens, and Oxford), but has a grittier vibe to it.  The campus abuts the downtown area, which has plenty of bar/restaurant/head shop/clothing store type places around. 
• The quintessential hangout is Shakespeare's Pizza. It is located across the street from campus, approximately where the Espresso Royale Caffe is in Athens in relation to Georgia's campus.  
• The pizza is good, but nothing to move North over.
• Their football stadium is called Faurot Field.  It seats a shade over 71K, making it the 9th largest in the conference after the addition of A&M and Mizzou. It was the fourth largest in the Big 12, just behind A&M's Kyle Field.  It is called 'The Zou' by the Tiger fans.
• Thier basketball facility is called Mizzou Arena.  It seats 15K.  It'll be the 5th largest venue in the SEC.
• Their sworn enemy is Kansas.  Something to do with the Civil War. Unlike the folks at Texas, who threw their suckers in the dirt over Texas A&M leaving the Big 12, it is expected Missouri and Kansas will still play each other in football and basketball.
• Missouri is the oldest public institution of higher education west of the Mississippi.  That is a distinction I expect the University of North Carolina to find a way to horn in on.
• They have a strong music scene, unless you are from Athens or Austin.  Then it is just a cute music scene.

The easist way to get there is to fly to St. Louis, which is 110 miles east of Columbia. The drive from St. Louis to Columbia is easy, but not scenic, unless you are into interstate porn shops, housetrailer churches and cigarette outlets.  Then it is your bag.

TD