Wag the Pigskin

In the movie Wag the Dog the White House hires a movie director to cook up a fake war to distract the electorate from a presidential sex scandal. Staying away from any direct references to the Clinton presidency, this tactic of distracting people from the real problem is as old as mankind. Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany may not have the problem of a sex scandal but starting off the year with his embarrassing rant about the SEC and now the possibility that the BTN is going to fall short of expectations now is the perfectly suspious time to distract the Big Ten and college football public by talking vaguely about expansion.

What is the purpose of bring up the subject in a public forum? Does Mr. Delany need to let the rest of the college football world that his office might be calling? NO! Does Mr. Delany need the media to communicate this to the AD’s within the Big Ten? NO! Has muffled the questions about the success of the BTN? YES!

Given that Mr. Delany is still under the delusion that his ATM called the BTN will be success, the objective here is to look for the most TV sets not a championship game (ask the SEC, Big 12, and ACC about how that has been a positive for their teams) and that leads anyone with even basic understand of U.S. demographics to the New York City metro area and the 7,366,950 television sets. The Big Apple is not an easy market to crack, ask the NFL Channel or even the YES. Given the competition from no less that nine pro teams in the market a Mid-West college football game might be a difficult sell. And the sledding won’t be much easier elsewhere as the Big Ten is a strong regional brand but not an overwhelming force on the national stage.

Mr. Delany might want to take an old piece of advice, “The quieter you are, the smarter you sound.”

Keeping up with the war of words on the BTN, Comcast,Big Ten continue cold war Had a great quote from Mr. Siverman,"… I never anticipated having the larger deals done in July. But I did expect to be having some productive conversations on how to make it work as opposed to cable operators staking out such a drastic tier-or-nothing stance." Which means take our very reasonable idea of basic cable or nothing.

Mr. Silverman see the advice above for Mr. Delany.