Brian McCormick at The Business of College Football points us to this sad story highlighting one very significant fact about the Mountain West Conference: it isn’t much of a draw for the rest of the country.
… CBS C has pretty much finalized its fall football schedule, and there are 43 games on it. Which, of course, means that there’s the potential for 86 teams to appear on the cable/satellite network.
Of those 86 spots, 12 will be filled by MWC teams. That’s 14 percent. And that isn’t a lot.
The Mountain West is not, of course, the only college football entity that has a contract with CBS C. The channel also has ties to Conference USA, Army and Navy. (The two service academies do not belong to a football conference.)
So, how does the MWC stack up against Army/Navy and C-USA on CBS C?
Between them, Army and Navy will be seen more often than the nine teams in the MWC. [Emphasis added.] Navy will make seven appearances and Army will make six — 13 games/15 percent of the total.
So, again, it’s one thing to say that Utah deserves a shot at a BCS title when it runs the table. It’s something else entirely when a conference that can’t outdraw the service academies as a TV attraction argues that it deserves the same kind of money year in and year out that the Pac-10 gets.
Get The Picture 
Thank you for that last comment so very much. Would you mind emailing it to Orrin Hatch while you’re at it? Maybe one day logic will enter his brain via osmosis? He’s a politician though so I guess logic doesn’t work with those guys. But hey, a guy can dream, right?
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Auditdawg, I think this would be more of a motivator to Orrin Hatch than a detractor. As a product of the Rocky Mountain region who eventually (found my senses) made my way down to Georgia, it always makes me sad to see the lack of respect given to the teams of the Mountain West Conference, even though the product they put on the field is quite good, year in and year out.
This just proves Hatch’s bigger point: What exactly does the MWC have to do to get their fair share? It obviously isn’t consistently winning football games, taking on all comers, or investing money in recruiting and facilities…because they have done all those things, and still somehow take a backseat to Conference USA? I understand giving some exposure to the service academies, but let’s not forget that Air Force, the strongest on-field performer of all the service academies for the past two decades, is a member of the Mountain West, and has been aligned with most of the member schools since they were all in the WAC.
The most important part of the story, not quoted by Senator Blutarsky, is that Conference USA has THIRTY televised games to the MWC’s twelve. What exactly are we rewarding here? It certainly isn’t performance.
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I’m not sure I’d use the word “reward”. Presumably CBS is broadcasting more CUSA games because it’s convinced that’s better for its ratings.
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The service academies have people interested in their games scattered around the country – hell, around the globe – and it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that CBS has a contract to beam those games into armed forces stations. Plus, the academies fill their schedule with (sometimes) real teams like Notre Dame. Okay, maybe not real teams but at least well known and widely followed teams. The MWC may play better football but it’s all about ratings…
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Don’t forget that one of the service academies (Air Force) is a proud member of the MWC.
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My bet is that they are putting on more of the service academy games so that people in the armed forces can watch the games and having something besides roadside bombs to think about for a couple of hours.
Besides…I lived in Utah for a couple of years. They have local channels that show all their games (home and away) out there. Let’s face it…that pretty much covers everyone that cares about those games.
Also, after having lived out west, Utah and Texas for several years, no one (that isn’t an alum) out there cares about the UGA games any more than you care about Utah games. Until I got with some other alumni to join up and watch games, it was a bitch to get people to turn of the TCU game to put the UGA game on.
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Who does the Big East have a contract with? Truth be told, I’d rather watch Utah-BYU then South Fla-Cincinnati any day. I wouldn’t argue for the MWC getting a huge cut of that money, but I’m not sure I see that the Big East — a conference that does have access to those dollars — should rightfully lay claim to that either. I’d be interested to see how much TV coverage the Big East gets, and what kind of shares they bring in.
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