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The Network of College Football Fans and Conferences

http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/the-geography-of-college-football-fans-and-realignment-chaos/

The landscape of college football is changing every year with the realignment of many teams throughout the country. The allocation of college football fans to television media markets operates like a network and the position of fans within the network helps television stations broadcast games specific to the most number of fans in the area. Thus the addition of a team to a certain conference increases the chances of that conference’s games being shown on TV in more places.  Teams with smaller fan bases also try to get into larger conferences to increase their fan base. The teams with the most fans in each conference have the most power within the network of their conference. This article shows us the geography of football fans conference by conference and uses this data to explain why certain conferences are expanding and how some may fall apart.

This article relates to our class discussions on power within a network. The Big 12 (south) conference can resemble a network with the schools within being the nodes. Texas is at the center of this network because it has the most fans and its closest connections are with Oklahoma and Texas A&M because of their fan bases. Texas A&M recently decided to leave the Big 12 in favor of the SEC (Southeastern Conference); this move was a big hit to the fan base of the Big 12 and excluded Texas A&M from connections with Texas. The survival of the conference is dependent on Texas and Oklahoma now. However, Texas (at this time) has decided to remain in the Big 12 and because of this decision many of the other schools in the Big 12 will stay too.

Many conferences are expanding not only for the fan base, but with the thought that the added school would bring more revenue to the conference. However, the payoffs are not always as great as they seem. If a small school joined a large conference, then the revenue generate might not be as high because there is not a large increase in fans watching. Also, if a team is geographically far from the rest of the schools in its conference then that would hurt revenues as well. Which is why Texas did not join the Pac 12 (the conference on the west coast), most fans in Texas want to watch Texas football, so airing a game between Washington and Oregon (two Pac 12 teams) will not bring in many viewers down in Texas.

The conference with the most stability going into the future is probably the Big Ten; the three most popular teams in football (Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State) are all in the Big Ten, so it does not look like any teams are leaving any time soon. The best strategy for the Big Ten at the moment is to stay put. Adding teams would not increase the fan base enough to generate considerable profit and any team that leaves will join a conference with less fans.

But in the world of college football anything can happen, we just have to keep watching.

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