Clay Travis, a man of such depth that his bio on his personal website begins…
Clay Travis is the only former student manager in the history of college athletics to marry an NFL cheerleader. He managed to pull this off despite an irrational affinity for the television shows Dawson’s Creek and My Super Sweet 16.
Thinks that the financial situation of Notre Dame and its football program will eventually force ND to go and join a conference. (Link if you really want to bother.)
In all the talk about whether Notre Dame should stay independent, few of the points of discussion ever focus on the financial ramifications of their decision. I think that’s because most fans incorrectly assume that Notre Dame has already maximized their financial standing. That line of thinking is a vestige of the 1990 NBC contract that was truly monumental in scope. But since that time, cable television has proliferated to such a degree that 24 or so hours of programming over the course of a Notre Dame football season just isn’t that big of a deal. Not when you compare it with hundreds of hours of conference programming for networks, such as ESPN, with many platforms of distribution and hours and hours of content to fill. This isn’t just an opinion, the ratings reflect that college football fans are voting for conference affiliation with their eyeballs, they watch the average Big Ten and SEC game on ABC/ESPN and CBS, as noted above, much more often.
What does all of this mean? Notre Dame’s television revenue is going to continue to fall relative to the Big Ten and the SEC. If Vanderbilt and Northwestern aren’t already ahead of the Irish, which I think the numbers prove they definitely are, another couple of years of increasing television money will erase all doubts. This will continue all the way up through 2015 when Notre Dame’s newest extension with NBC runs out. By that time, the financial ramifications of Notre Dame’s independence will have become more apparent to everyone. The Big Ten Network will be thriving, throwing off cash to the 11 member institutions. ESPN, the Big Ten, and the SEC will be smoking big cigars as the ratings gold pours in from their deals.
And, mark my words, Touchdown Jesus will stick out his palm. Yep, at long last the Fighting Irish will be begging for a piece of the Big Ten pie.
Pokes and prods at Touchdown Jesus by a Vanderbilt grad aside, the actual content of his article isn’t all that interesting. Any ND fan who’s paid attention actually knows what’s going on with the BCS deals, the NBC deal, etc… And any ND fan who thinks beyond the depth of an episode of Dawson’s Creek for a moment might pick up on a key number in Travis’ opinion piece: 59.8 million bucks, the total revenue generated by ND Football in 2008.
There are things not considered by Travis while he sort of flippantly glosses over that number, most notably: size of the institutions on his linked list of revenue generation by football programs. Hey, here’s a list (with a bit of number variation) of top football revenue generation programs, plus a column I like to call “total enrollment.” (Source) Which of these teams is not like the others?
1. Texas - $72.95 million - 49,697 students
2. Georgia - $67.05 million - 33,959 students
3. Florida - $66.1 million - 50,912 students
4. Ohio State - $65.16 million - 51,818 students
5. Notre Dame - $59.77 million - 11,603 students
6. Auburn - $59.67 million - 23,547 students
7. Michigan - $57.46 million - 40,025 students
8. Alabama - $57.37 million - 23,838 students
9. Penn State - $53.76 million - 42,914 students
10. LSU - $52.68 million - 31,934 students
For those of you named Clay Travis, here’s the point of that list with the 3rd column added: Notre Dame is about one half the size of the next smallest school on that list of top-10 revenue generating football programs. And Notre Dame also still appears in the top 20 of total endowments. But the point isn’t, “hey! Look how wealthy ND is,” Travis. The point is ND is unique because they can be unique. They are unique because they choose to be unique. The university’s mission demands it. Oh sure, we’ll allow that there are fathomable circumstances that could force the university into seeking to join a conference in the future, but those circumstances wouldn’t be as simple as what Clay Travis presented in his opinion piece. I wont hold my breath waiting for Travis to investigate those possible circumstances with any depth.
Update: It’s been pointed out that I - as often is the case - left the reader with the job of inferring my point rather than actually spelling it out, so here it is. At ND’s size, with ND’s brand power (which isn’t going to just disappear, no matter what those like Clay Travis may wish), and with ND’s mission, the fact that it sits among lists like top-10 in football revenue generation and top-20 in endowment size means that it need not navigate the waters of college football the same way the institutions like Texas, rife with “satellite campuses”, must. In fact, the very act of thinking and acting like “everyone else,” cough-Kevin-White-cough jeopardizes that which makes ND unique. Working in a realm without the restraints and trappings that nearly every other competitor must work with actually gives ND a major competitive advantage - an advantage that must be nurtured. Travis, within his opinion piece, declared winners and losers in a race that will continue in perpetuity. It was foolish, it was hostile, and it can only be explained as an attempt to generate ad revenue for his bosses with a cheap parlor trick. Travis predicates the entire piece on the notion that ND will “feel” threatened and worried over the fact that NU and Vanderbilt will, for a shot time anyway, make more money from TV deals than ND. It’s an entirely baseless notion that he props up with the tired, “everyone else would be worried if it were them” argument.
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