From reading the site over the past year, I've come to learn that TN loves itself some statistics. This post has no bar graphs, but it does try to "quantify" some of the issues we've been talking about in our discussions of conference realignment.

I've tried to add as much quantitative data as I can, but much of what I've done is: 1) summarize the findings of serious scholars who have done quantitative research on the relationship between athletics and academics, and who have published their work in peer-reviewed journals and university presses; 2) synthesize what I know as a working academic with published accounts from reliable media sources; 3) offer some conjecture about what these findings might mean to FSU's situation in this current moment.

I also wanted to clarify some terrible misinformation I've been reading on these boards about the financial, institutional, and social structure of the university system. I do not claim that any of the following statements are definitive, but I do hope that this information will help clarify some of the issues and provoke further discussion.

One final note -- I recognize that, because I reference scholarly articles in the links, that some people may not be able to access them. I tried to find as many reputable, free sources as I could.

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In light of Bud's excellent discussion about fan travel yesterday, I wanted to add some numbers to the discussion. Some points to be discussed/challenged/investigated/confirmed/refuted are:

A) If FSU moved to the Big 12, it would be more expensive for the average fan (non-student) to travel to away games

2) It would be more expensive/difficult for students to travel to away games

D) The most expensive destinations would likely not be in FSU's division, so fans would only have to travel there for away games about twice in a decade

Lubbock) The most ideal situation for anyone depends on where they live and how much money they have

Manhattan) The hypothetical future Big 12 should include [insert ACC/Big East team(s) here] so fans can travel to closer/cheaper away games

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Florida State's departure from the ACC could send a number of ACC teams looking for new leagues. Sitting as they do on prime east coast TV real estate, most of the Seminoles' current conference mates would certainly attract attention.

Among the options current ACC schools could explore are these:

Syracuse – ~B12 / ~B1G
Pittsburgh – B12 / B1G
Maryland – B12 / ~SEC / ~B1G
Virginia – B12 / SEC / B1G
Virginia Tech – B12 / SEC
North Carolina – B12 / SEC / B1G
NC State – ~ B12 / SEC
Clemson – B12 / ~SEC
Georgia Tech – B12 / ~SEC / ~B1G
Miami – ~B12

The financial results could be interesting. Any teams Florida State takes with it to the Big 12, such as Clemson or Georgia Tech, would improve their lot as the Seminoles do. But as many as 6 current ACC programs could end up richer.

The reason? The B1G and SEC pay out more in TV revenues than the Big 12. If suddenly a race is on to grab up ACC teams, expect the SEC to add two. The B1G could take as many as four.

If Florida State begins the game of musical chairs, who will be smiling most at the end ? Will it be Maryland, Pittsburgh, Virginia or North Carolina in the B1G? Or Virginia Tech and NC State in the SEC?

How interesting it would be if the winner of the realignment race turned out to be the Turtle.

I've been a long-time reader of Tomahawk Nation (among other SB Nation sites) but decided it was finally time to make things official and get an account. I've taken quite an interest in the ACC/ESPN negotiations and the potential for conference realignment so I thought I'd do some analysis to try to determine whether FSU and/or Clemson have legitimate reasons to consider a change from the status quo. I also saw an argument on Carolina March yesterday that got a little heated regarding FSU's position in the league (many Carolina fans feel that FSU fans are overvaluing their team's importance), and noticed that neither side really had any analytical basis for their argument. Therefore, I figured it might be a fun topic to explore.

My goal is to use data to assess the relative value of the various ACC teams and to determine whether FSU and/or Clemson are really ‘subsidizing' the Tobacco Road teams as many fans claim. The underlying assumption is that ESPN makes money from advertisers based on total viewership, so the teams with the greatest number of viewers should be valued at a higher level than the teams that don't bring in the same digital footprint.

I'd like to first touch on the process that I used and also be upfront about inherent shortcomings with the data. I'm certainly open to criticism and/or feedback, so if any of you guys have constructive advice to share please feel free. Also, if anyone wants to check the data or use it for other analysis please let me know. With that disclaimer, here is the process that I used:

• The goal is to determine the total number of fans who viewed each team's regular season Men's Football and Men's Basketball games in the 2011 season. By comparing total viewership across these sports, it should be possible to determine a team's relative value since advertisers ultimately pay for eyeballs, and fan demographics for ACC teams should be relatively constant (i.e. a NC State fan is not more valuable than a Maryland fan to an advertiser).

Other sports were excluded because nearly all of the value from TV contracts is derived from football and basketball. Online programming was excluded simply because I couldn't find enough data to properly assess its valuation... I assume it is generally consistent with the trends in the TV data, though. I also don't think this should materially impact the rankings since ESPN likely relegates the least valuable programming to web-only content. 2011 data was used because it was most readily available (note: this is a shortcoming in the analysis and one that could be corrected if anyone wants to volunteer 3-4 hours of time to help build a bigger dataset)

• Step One: Determine total viewership for each program's football team (2011 regular season) by using Nielson ratings and audience data to determine viewership for different types of games. Note that I performed a detailed breakdown to find the average viewership for national and regional games broadcast on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, and regional affiliates. I also broke down games by their start time (i.e. Noon, Afternoon, Night, or Weeknight) so that estimated viewership numbers reflect a fairly detailed prediction.

Look at games played by each team during the season and the various channels/time-slots for each of the games. Estimate the likely TV audience for games where data is not available based on a regression developed based on similar games throughout the year. Again, this is an inherent problem with the available data... I have to use season-long averages since I don't have all of the team-specific figures. I think it's the best guess I can develop with the data that is available. . Sum all of the viewership information and compare across teams

• Step Two: Determine total viewership for each program's basketball team (2011-12 regular season) by again using Nielson ratings to estimate average ACC viewership for ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, and regional games. Look at games played by each team during the season and the various channels/time-slots for each of the games. Estimate likely TV audience for games, summarize, and compare

• Step Three: Assign a multiplier to Football Viewership in order to reflect its higher valuation by corporate sponsors. This can certainly be a point of debate, but I chose to use a 67/33% split based on information I found in a presentation that Nielson provided in 2011: http://www.slideshare.net/ceobroadband/state-of-the-media-2011-year-in-sports-11339432

To those who are asking ‘Why would a network pay more for football rights than basketball rights?' here are a few reasons:

• Football games are longer (i.e. more time for commercials)
• The audience is generally broader for college football games (i.e. men, women, students, alums, etc)
• The regular season matters more in football so fan engagement is higher (the vast majority of value from NCAA basketball is realized in March and most of these rights are not owned by ESPN or its affiliates)

By applying some basic math, this assumption yields the following valuation for each viewer of an ACC regular season game for football and basketball

Hopefully that process and the caveats about the data are clear, but I'm happy to answer any questions in the comments section below. I'm also new to posting so the use of bullet points may have made this confusing.

OK - now to the fun stuff. So, is FSU really the most valuable team in the ACC? According to the way that I'm considering a team's value, the answer is a pretty clear ‘Yes'. Here's a quick summary chart along with some key takeaways. I'll also provide additional data later in the post to clarify some of the points.

Some interesting observations:

• Duke is roughly equal to the median level in the ACC for two reasons: (1) exceptionally poor football viewership; (2) majority of basketball's value is realized in post-season play which is not included in this analysis
• Boston College is very poorly represented because data is pulled from the 2011 season; BC football and basketball were both very bad last year
• Florida State's league impact on television in 2011 was likely greater than the combined impact of Maryland, Wake Forest, and BC across basketball and football
• The impact of FSU and Clemson is almost equal to the combined impact of the five lowest ranked teams in the ACC (BC, Wake, Maryland, UVA, NCSt)
• Despite message board rumors, it doesn't look like NC State would be a very attractive pick up in the short term for the SEC as it doesn't command a whole lot of viewership relative to its ACC peers; the same could be said for GT.
• If the ACC pursued revenue sharing as part of its revised deal with ESPN, it could be argued that based on teams' viewership values the TV rights could be fairly divided as follows ($ millions per year):

Using viewership as a metric for valuation, it seems plausible that FSU, Clemson, UNC, Miami, and VT are all underpaid relative to their positive impacts on the league. FSU may have a legitimate gripe with the distribution, particularly given the fact that Wake and BC were basically free riders last year. I'm sure this is where people will start asking questions about how I came up with the numbers, so here's a summary of some of the key outputs that you'll probably want to see:

FSU fans should be happy to note that the football team has the highest number of viewers (due largely to the massive 9m+ viewer draw of the Oklahoma game), and that the basketball team also placed third (thanks to upsets of Duke and Carolina on ESPN during the regular season). Again, keep in mind that this excludes post-season play for both sports. This translates into a #1 overall ranking for FSU in terms of projected value, and an indexed value of 1.88 (meaning 1.88 times greater than the median ACC team - you can think of that as being Duke or GT in 2011).

Here is some football-specific data for ACC teams:

Since ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 are the most valuable networks, it should be pretty evident that the boys in Bristol think that FSU, Clemson, Miami, and VT are the conference's cash cows (at least for Football). For example, UVA only attracted 3 high-profile network games despite its strong season, and those were against the conference's premier teams (@ FSU, @ Miami, @ VT).

You may recall earlier in the post that I mentioned that I used some fairly advanced metrics to determine likely viewership figures for ACC football games. I don't want to overblow the process and make it sound like hardcore econometrics, but I used some basic regressions to estimate viewership numbers based on a game's timeslot and network. Here are some screen shots of the data. I'm happy to provide you with the actual data in Excel format, if you'd like:

And here's a screen shot of a small part of the full NCAA football dataset for 2011:

Similarly, here is the data that I used to assess each team's ACC basketball viewership:

No surprise here - UNC and Duke dominate the ACC's ESPN basketball programming. In fact, the rest of the ACC really only gets on the mother channel when they're playing one of the two teams located along 15-501. For example, Maryland was on ESPN five times last year (@ Illinois, vs. Duke, vs. UNC, @ Duke, @ UNC). The same holds true for most of the other teams in the ACC. I was personally surprised to see that Virginia Tech had such a strong basketball following.

So, what do you guys think? Is FSU really almost twice as valuable as Duke? Are Clemson and FSU worth almost as much as the bottom half of the ACC combined? Am I making errors in how I'm evaluating the relative rankings?

More broadly, should football really be that much more valuable to advertisers than basketball? Did anyone realize that BC was such a dumpster fire last year? I thought they were supposed to bring the North East market to the ACC.... Guess not. Does that have any larger implications for the market footprint/eyeballs theory of Big 12, ACC, or SEC expansion?

Like I said, if you have any ideas on how I can adjust the data I'd be happy to hear them.

FSU President Eric Barron's recent comments regarding the potential move of FSU from the ACC to the Big12 were an embarrassment to himself and to FSU.

I'd like to call it a rookie mistake. I'd like to give Barron a mulligan on this, but my concern is that he's made several critical mistakes here that have me wondering about whether the job is just too big for him or whether he has the right temperament to be FSU's President.

More after the jump.

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So it looks like there is an insurrection at Florida State brewing that might lead FSU to the Big 12 (or to poisoning the well in the ACC). Over the weekend I looked on and participated as the discussion took on an angry tone from various corners.

While this has been brewing for some time, the sparks that lit the powderkeg this weekend were some unfortunately uninformed statements made by the head of FSU's Board of Trustees. He no doubt expressed some important and valid thoughts, but the incorrect accusations he made really fed into FSU fans' angst and stirred up a hornets' nest. FSU fans right now are an angry mob wielding pitchforks and torches. There's going to be a lot of pressure that results thanks to comments that were poorly measured.

For FSU fans, every little frustration they have had about life in the ACC suddenly rose to the surface in the last week as they tried to justify leaving the ACC. On top of it, many FSU fans spent a fair amount of time trying to spin the Big 12 into something much better than it is in order to justify a potential move. You see, this whole thing is about money. It really is that simple. But, for fans, it can't be just about money. Psychologically they can't just leave it at, "Hey, the ACC has been good for us for the most part over the last 20 years and is probably a better fit in a lot of ways, and the Big 12 is hardly perfect, but ultimately we might get $5-10 million per year more in TV money, so..." So, naturally, it was open season on the ACC.

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Good evening all,

So I am moving to Tallahassee this fall and was wondering if there was any place to look for a good apartment. I was wondering if anyone on here has an idea of which landlords suck to work with, which neighborhoods are the best, where parking is particularly bad, and also if there are any cool restaurants/bars to check out. My first thought was the area south and west of Doak since it would be easy to go to games but I don't know if that is one of the "bad neighborhoods" I was warned about. Also on that note, I don't know what qualifies as bad for everyone but as long as my neighbors aren't cooking meth or shooting at each other I am good.

Is the new, lousy ACC contract as good news for the SEC as everyone seems to be saying? On most fronts it appears yes, as it both keeps it's Southern peers down the ladder financially, but also presumably opens the door to a Virginia Tech or NC State (or FSU or Clemson) move.

But does it possibly foreshadow negative consequences for the SEC's renegotiations?

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I hope you enjoy this conference realignment parody.

This fanpost is based on the recent discussions on conference realignment made public in the press.

Of all the options, staying in the ACC seems like the worst one right now based on what the other conferences are financially receiving from their affiliations. Unless something changes in the deal, which is not likely at this point, it might be time for a serious consideration of joining the Big 12.

It's been widely assumed FSU will be blocked by the SEC due to UF, and them having a pack with UGA, USCe, and even KY - they would all vote together to block FSU, GT, Clemson, and Louisville as expansion talks happen.

Well, that was during the last expansion talks (A&M and Mizzou got the invites). The difference was the SEC was sitting at 12 and there was a possibility of a major shift happening and conferences going to 16 - ie, enough open slots for FSU, Clemson, GT, and Louisville theoretically being able to get an invite. The big difference is now there's only two spots left before the SEC hits 16.

Now, why would the SEC be interested in FSU? We don't add a new market.

However...

The SEC got a big advantage by getting their foot into TX by adding A&M. They gained a big market and got a direct connection to a major football state. If the Big 12 adds FSU, they'd lose that advantage entirely. The Big 12 would gain access to the SEC's largest market. UT, OU, and others would have an "in" into FL.

So, while FSU may not add a "new" market, adding FSU would certainly lock up, and protect, the SEC's most establish (most valuable), major market (TX is a larger market, but it's brand new to the SEC) while still also having TX.

FSU would add TV value to the SEC in the 3 major sports given the ratings FSU receives. It still makes good business sense for the SEC to be interested in FSU.

What about the "pack" against FSU?

Well, this time around, with FSU to the Big 12 being a real possibility, it may not exist anymore. Think about it, there's only two slots left. If one is used for FSU and the other to reach out to a new market (for example, VT - I know the rumors about them being tied to UVA, it's just an example) then the pack means nothing to UGA, USCe, and KY because their rivals aren't possibilities. However, it may not be worth it to them to still block FSU and allow the Big 12 into FL.

I'm not saying there are any FSU to SEC rumors or anything.

I'm just trying to think logically about the possibility the SEC becomes interested in inviting FSU as well - especially after the public displeasure from our BOT with the ACC and being open to looking around.

Either way, SEC or Big 12, I think we're much better off.