Posted on 12/10/2012 5:05:44 AM PST by 1rudeboy
Does it seem that almost every bowl game is on ESPN? That’s because almost every bowl game *is* on ESPN. There are 35 bowl games. 32 will be on an ESPN network whereas CBS, FOX, and ABC will have one each. Given that ABC and ESPN have the same parent company, Disney, Disney will have 33 of 35 games on one of its networks. For industrial organization fans, that’s a Herfindahl-Hirschmann Index of 8384 if ABC and ESPN are considered separate firms and 8906 if they are considered the same firm. An HHI of 10,000 is 100% monopolized. Dang.
HT Craig Depken
100% will be on my TVs. A lot of the smaller bowls have trouble selling all of their tickets and have even less opportunity to be seen on the big networks. Without the TV money, a lot of those smaller bowls could not even survive. ESPN has a monopoly on covering of sporting events and has the programming time to provide slots for those smaller bowls. Good for ESPN to provide coverage and somehow make money doing so!
And they shouldn't. Bowl games used to be a showcase for the best the NCAA had to offer. Now with the exception of the Top 3-4 games the rest are a study in mediocrity. But that fits today's mentality where everybody gets a trophy just for showing up!
I’m pretty sure that no matter how weak the competitors of any particular game are, the purpose of the games is to raise money for charity. That being the case, I say, the more the merrier!
They are also calling this the worst season ever for bowl games, with just 2 decent match ups in the entire circuit. Of the 2 bowl bound teams from my state, one is playing a team that gave up 70 points in their championship game and the other doesn’t even have a winning record.
The bowl ganes are a joke this year. And a bad one at that. I hope it’s abundantly clear to all football fans that the BCS is really just BS.
You can't be serial! We get to watch Northwest Illinois in a BSC game! Hurray for the directional schools! /s
I expect this will change in the future as CBS and NBC have launched cable sports networks (and FOX is about to)
What will make bowl season unbearable to watch for me will be the booyah’s on ESPN attempting to hype or otherwise generate interest in the more meaningless games.
Seriously.
If ESPN doesn’t show them, who will?
The networks only want the “premiere” bowls. While NBC, CBS, and Fox are developing national cable sports channels, they’re still really in the process of getting going, and can’t compete with ESPN on level terms yet.
The problem isn’t that ESPN is showing most of the bowl games, it’s that most of the bowl games are so niche in interest that ESPN is the only national player with the interest to show them.
Fox already has sports networks, though I guess they’re regional.
And nobody is going to watch them...heck, it’s even hard for me to get excited about Florida-Louisville in the Sugar Bowl.
Bowl games are the college football version of the NIT.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.