Regular season TV appearances for the 2014 season

BSU
4 CBSSN
3 ESPN
3 ESPN2
1 ABC / ESPN2
1 ESPNU

BYU
6 ESPN
1 ESPN2
1 ESPNU
1 FS1
1 BYUtv
1 CBSSN
1 PAC-12 Network

http://www.cougarboard.com/board/message.html?id=13364384

Taking the numbers of household each network is in and combining their number of appearances (I listed the ABC/ESPN2 split as the whole 116M for ABC) BYU was cumulatively made available to 973 million homes and BSU was made available to 970 million homes.

Considering over the previous 5 years before last season BYU was 44-21 and finished the season ranked in the AP top 25 only once; BSU was 57-9 and finished the season ranked in the AP top 25 4 times and had 1 BCS bowl win.

Extend that to the previous 10 years BYU was 87-40 with 4 seasons ranked in the AP; and BSU was 112-18 with 7 seasons ranked in the AP and 2 BCS bowl wins (not 4 of their final rankings were top 10 and 2 were top 5).

MWC and BSU still do not have a better TV contract overall. Considering BSU in 2013 under their contract and their extra payouts only came away with about $2.6m in TV revenue that pales in comparison to what BYU is getting. Yes they got on TV a good amount last year on decent channels (save the huge number on CBSSN - only available in 45m homes) but that was probably a max out year for them while BYU could have a huge year this year with their increased difficulty in schedule.

But if you want to see the respect that the MWC has shown to BYU in the past and wonder whether it would continue - look no further than the 2 MWC road games we play in November being slotted for CBSSN. One of which may be one of their teams contending for a division title and would be a nice one to get some eyes on but they'd rather go to CBSSN with it? Kind of like them putting BYU vs Utah on only the mtn...

So while technically BSU was on an ESPN network (not necessarily ESPN) as much as BYU was in the regular season last year it doesn't tell the whole story and shouldn't be a way to make the argument that BYU would be better off in the MWC...