[ChiefsCountry]

Originally Posted by Saul Good

I hate to tear everyone away from softball and basketball talk, but some college football history was made recently.


By Tim Griffin

SAN ANTONIO — The Big 12's struggles at finding a national TV audience were underscored with some troubling information last week.

Big 12 schools in the flyover states continually have exposure issues compared with other conferences closer to the population centers on the coasts.

Considering the Big 12 is the only conference without a league-run TV network (or even plans for one), you can see how it drags behind the other four major conferences in the broadcasting department.

That was evidenced when last week's featured game between No. 7 Baylor and Iowa State on Fox tied for the smallest overnight rating (0.9) of any game in the network's history for college football, according to SportsMediaWatch.com. It is presumed to be the lowest prime-time audience for any college game in history on a major network.

The rating generated by the Bears and Cyclones was the result of several factors. Baylor is an emerging program that is still building its following. Iowa State has produced its share of upsets over the years but still struggles to attract viewers.

Add the fact that Baylor jumped to a four-touchdown halftime lead en route to an eventual 49-28 rout and you have perhaps the major reason for the anemic viewership.

That matchup was swamped when considering the rest of the country. Notre Dame's victory over Syracuse on ABC attracted a 2.8 overnight rating. Missouri's upset of South Carolina on ESPN drew a 1.9. And the late Oregon State-USC game garnered a 1.8.

Saturday night is a graveyard for over-the-air television viewing, which is why we see so many games stacked on networks earlier in the day. Even if the numbers aren't strong, they still deliver the desired demographics that advertisers crave.

Fox's numbers were never that great Saturday, anyway.

But still, the Big 12's inability to drive an audience on Fox doesn't bode well for the conference. It marked the third consecutive week in which Big 12 games on Fox were drubbed by competing ABC games.

There will be more puzzling TV scheduling this week as the two best Big 12 games of the day — No. 4 Oklahoma at No. 25 TCU and Baylor at Texas — both will be played with 2:30 p.m. kickoffs. It will cannibalize the potential audience for both games, making viewers switch from one to the other or make a decision about which to primarily follow. The audience for both Big 12 games already will be hurt because of the highly anticipated Alabama-Mississippi and Stanford-Notre Dame games taking place at the same time on CBS and NBC, respectively.

It's a little surprising the Big 12 or its TV partners didn't choose to have one of those featured games Saturday night, rather than the Kansas State-Texas Tech game that will be played in the 6 p.m. window on ESPNU.

A bigger potential problem could be looming: Industry sources indicate Fox is extremely intrigued with the idea of luring the Big Ten for its first-tier rights for football and basketball when the conference's deal with ESPN expires in two years.

The Big Ten is packed with multiple teams in huge Midwest markets. It recently expanded into the New York market when Rutgers was added, not to mention the Washington-Baltimore market with Maryland. Fox already owns a 51 percent stake in the Big Ten Network (with the conference owning the other 49 percent), so they have worked well together in the past.

Most expect that attracting the Big Ten's major games will become Fox's major priority. If those games are added at the expense of the network's current major partners — the Big 12 and Pac-12 — it wouldn't be a shock.

The Big 12 already sits at a tenuous position in the television marketplace. The Big Ten gobbling more prime-time spots windows on Fox would only make it worse.

Big Ten wants a exclusive window similar to the SEC on CBS. FOX will probably pay what the Big Ten wants, the Big Ten is the last major sports tv deal on the market. It would be a nice boom for FOX and FS1.