[NU Sports] Pac 10 to invite 6 Big XII schools to join?

[Mike Nolan]

Good post, Tom, one hard to disagree with, especially as someone who 
lives in Nebraska by choice, though I was born in Illinois.

BTW, Nebraska games that aren't picked up by TV will all be on PPV again
this year, and according to sources at UNL they make a hefty profit 
from the PPV games.

I'm not sure enough of how the revenue splits out to say they make MORE
than they would from a regional ABC or Fox game, but some UNL folks have
certainly implied that they'd rather ABC/Fox did NOT pick up those games.

Nebraska coming to the Big Ten would bring quite a few BTN subscribers 
with it, even from areas of the country that it already covers.  And
that's probably the bottom line.  

Our local cable company does NOT offer BTN (but surely would if Nebraska 
was in the Big Ten), and I have so far been able to refuse the 
blandishments from the satellite folks.  
--
Mike Nolan

> 
> > Nebraska pop: 1,796,619
> > Nebraska has tradition and history 
> > in college football.  It has no future.
> 
> 
> I get what you are saying, and agree that there is certainly a question as to whether adding Nebraska would bring enough to the table in terms of TV (and other) dollars.
> 
> However, I see a few flaws in the analysis, admittedly speaking as a Nebraska native (albeit one with no desire to live there again). 
> 
> First, I don't buy the assertion that Nebraska "has no future" as a school with an ardent fan following (which I presume is what you meant). 
> 
> Nebraska football still appears to have a fairly large national following. Perhaps not to the degree it did 20-30 years ago, but I still think the size of its fan base nationwide is much larger than most comparable schools. If the Big Ten really is considering Nebraska, that nationwide following and reputation is probably a driving factor. You add Nebraska to the Big Ten and you're going to see a lot of requests for the BTN on cable systems in places outside Nebraska. 
> 
> Second, a huge percentage of those 1.8 million folks in Nebraska are serious Big Red fans. Chicago has, what, 9 million or more in the metro area? But only a tiny fraction of those folks are NU fans, at least based on attendance figures. Sometimes adding a big piece of a small pie is as good or better than adding a tiny piece of a large pie. 
> 
> Tom
> 
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