Defending the West: Missouri

Missouri won’t be the lonely 12th member (that can only be ND or possibly Nebraska) but they are definitely a possibility for 14 members and I don’t see how they wouldn’t be included if it gets to 16.

But they’re totally jinxed

to RUTS’s great post

Kevin’s not gonna like that.

if you’re gonna include all the other areas of Missouri, then you would need to include the entire state of NJ in the “NYC market” talk as well.

from your list of MO cities that matter. Are you saying College Athletics is not good wholesome family entertainment?

Branson, Missouri, nestled in the lakeside beauty of the Ozark Mountains, is America’s affordable, wholesome family entertainment capital that emphasizes fun, comfort and the feeling of being right at home. Featuring an array of live theaters and attraction venues and active recreational pursuits, the community embodies essential American values such as patriotism, faith, courage and generosity of spirit in a warm inviting atmosphere that is truly genuine and heartfelt.

Dinner and a show and smashmouth Big Ten Football. Sounds genuine and heartfelt to me.

…..until you listed the names of towns that no one outside of Missouri would know. Kirksville?

Somehow I doubt the tv watching preferences of the fine people in Nowheresville Cape Girardeau is going to sway the Dark Lord Jim Delaney.

Anyway, I’m all in for the Nebraska add. Sign me up. Missouri? Meh. I hate both the KC & St Louis airports tremendously.

You make a good argument — I like Missouri as well.

And this is what make blogging so much fun…

I currently live much closer to NYC than St. Louis, and maybe that’s part of my bias, but I would still prefer we take a shot at NYC. Each additional at this point greatly changes the dynamic in the conference. Adding missouri means playing teams I actually want to see significantly less often, and I think the benefit—although safe—seems somewhat low.

A lot of what you’re saying could pan out, but I’m not convinced MIssouri will ever be anything but another Minnesota to Penn State and their fans. Not that I’d rather play Rutgers—I wouldn’t—but I think they present a bigger upside in terms of the revenue Penn State can bring in for the AD while Missouri provide a saver amount with a much, much lower top-end.

As someone pointed out, you could include NJ in the potential market if you add ND and Rutgers. NJ’s population is 8.7M, Missouri’s is 6.0M. I’m sure there is overlap between that 8.7M and the NYC market, but we’re still talking about multiple times the total population.

Two interesting questions though, that you might be able to answer:
-What percentage of MIssouri is currently made up of either Missouri or B10 alums? I’m curious how many of the population would be interested in the BTN vs. whatever happens to the rest of the old Big 8/Big 12 schools.
-What’s the cable company landscape like? Getting all of those cities is going to be a lot easier if their all on one carrier, but if you’ve got 8 different carriers in all of those cities, I bet it becomes very difficult to get the whole basket because of the demographic in each town. I can’t claim to know the NYC/NJ market, but I suspect it’s relatively consolidated.

Well done, and although the post is fading fast I’ll add a link to this at the end of the NYC post for searchers in the futures, of which I suspect there will be several.

Mizzou had an average home attendance of 64,120 in 2009, good enough for 28th in the country.

http://bit.ly/dsJ3zA

I don’t get the whole “MU has 50K fans” meme I keep seeing repeated. Maybe people are confusing us with the other black and gold school (CU, with a 54,000 seat stadium) or even – gasp – Kansas, with a capacity of 50,000. But I’ve been at Faurot Field with 71,000 to see Nebraska get gloriously thumped.

Very, very few people in NYC (or downstate NY) give a hoot about Rutgers or Syracuse. I would probably argue that there are more Penn State alums in NYC than RU or Cuse alums. I am quite sure there are more Big Ten alums in NYC than RU or Cuse alums (but maybe not RU and Cuse alums – try that in a venn diagram). Are they all rabid football fans, no, but enough to clamor for inclusion of the B10 network on the basic tier. Enough to guarantee a sellout of RU football for anybody except probably Purdue, Minnesota and maybe Iowa (I was heavily involved with the Big Apple Big Ten alumni group so this not a dig, I just have an idea of how big those schools NYC alumni bases are).

Second, there is no place known as “Flushing Point”. The Mets play in Flushing. The 7 train stop is known as (or at least used to be) Shea Stadium/Willets Point. It may be Citifield/Willets Point now, but they could have just dropped Willets Point.

I’m glad my post got you to post your thoughts. My contention is that there is not a home run addition available when you exclusively look at NYC and Missouri. Notre Dame is a home run, Texas is a home run. Missouri does offer quite a few more positives than people initially consider.

All I did was shake LJ Sr.’s hand. It completely disappeared in his.

is that over the past 10 years, Mizzou has certainly done as well as or better than Nebraska in football. Nebraska hasn’t beaten a top-20 team since 2003, and Mizzou was ranked No. 1 in the country to end the 2007 season (ending at No. 4 after losing the Big 12 championship and then hammering Arkansas). But they’re a football “slam dunk” and we’re not. It’s somewhat maddening.

Anyhow, my prediction on some other Big 10 sites has been simple: Nebraska gives the Big 10 a “name” school but loses money overall; Missouri adds TV households and a rising football program.

Anyhow, thanks for the post defending Mizzou. I hope we wind up in the Big 10, but if not thanks for realizing what we’ve got.