The SEC’s New Coke?

Fabulous point from Michael Elkon about the SEC sticking with an eight-game conference schedule after expansion:

… part of the SEC’s success as a TV property is its ability to sell a tribal, feral atmosphere. There is so little that feels authentic or intense about American pro sports, especially in the regular season, so the SEC fills a market niche in that ESPN and CBS can show packed, loud stadia on a weekly basis. One necessary element for that brand is the element that the teams and their fans do not like one another. It is not that hard to convince someone in Seattle or Milwaukee to watch some of Auburn-Georgia when the teams have been playing since 1892 and that history comes through on the screen based on the way that the fans react. When a good number of fans know that they will be sitting at the same Thanksgiving table in a couple weeks with fans of the other program, they tend to care a little more and that comes across on the tube.

This is what Slive and Company risk losing with every game against a wretched Sun Belt team occupying the slot a ninth conference opponent could and should be taking.  They can slap that SEC label on the new product and insist it’s just as good as before, if not better.  But that doesn’t mean we have to buy it.

And if we find our enthusiasm waning, don’t be so sure they’ll know how to fix the situation.  These guys aren’t exactly in Coke’s class when it comes to marketing.  On the other hand, if there’s one thing you can say about the American sports fan, it’s that he/she is both resilient and forgiving.  So maybe it will all work out despite their best intentions.

The thing is, why risk it in the first place?

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UPDATE:  Putting it more baldly, once your fans have seen StubHub, how do you keep ’em on the season ticket?

I wonder about whether the college football ticket market is a bit of a bubble waiting to pop.  One of the driving forces here is that teams want to keep the right to schedule as many home games against lesser opposition as they can possibly shovel onto the slate.  A nine-game conference schedule would solve the scheduling issue created by SEC expansion, but that would leave one less spot for the New Mexico States and Furmans of the world.  I seriously wonder about Georgia fans who would normally pay thousands of dollars for season tickets looking at their athletic director and saying “you sacrificed the Auburn game, which is often the best game on the home schedule, in order to preserve a glorified scrimmage.  Screw you, I’ll buy tickets to the games that I really want to attend on Stubhub.”  Demand for season tickets looks solid right now, but it would not surprise me in the least to see it soften in the next 5-10 years if the SEC maintains its current course.

You know, Jay Jacobs’ bullshit about having the schedule to compete for a national title is great, but what do you have left if you don’t wind up in the title hunt?  Losing a century-old rivalry to maintain the privilege of playing Directional A&M hardly seems like much of a consolation prize.

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UPDATE #2:  Tyler Dawgden doesn’t think Slive and the schools are much concerned about StubHub.

… What we see as throwing the baby out with the bathwater, Slive and the ADs see as simply cleaning the wash tub out to hold more money. In the end, if the money is right, the stadium is merely a prop for the show happening on the field. The NFL learned that a long time ago (think the 70’s when nearly half of all games were blacked out in home markets, but the national product was sold and broadcast to great success). No one really cares that the Steelers/Bengals game is sold out, at least outside of Southern Ohio/Western Pennsylvania, we just want to see Hines Ward and AJ Green play catch, or Ben Roethlisberger prisonshowered sacked.

And to answer Elkon’s question, I don’t know what it’ll mean to ticket sales over the long term, but it probably won’t matter either way.

Maybe so, but there’s a difference between the SEC and the NFL, at least at present:  the NFL doesn’t have any competitors for its product.  That’s not the case for Mike Slive.  If the SEC transforms itself into a version of the Sun Belt with bigger stadiums, better athletes and higher paid coaches, does the cachet that translates into those TV mega-deals stick, or do consumers of the college football entertainment product look to other conferences for their jollies?  That seems like a dumb choice for the people running the SEC to make, but it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.

Of course, if this is simply part of the evolution of D-1 football as a whole into an NFL-style operation, albeit with younger (and cheaper) players and different logos, Tyler is probably spot on with this.  I’ll be long gone, though, before that ever comes to complete fruition.