The argument of a school not adding a new market or overlapping an existing market is pure nonsense. By that logic the B1G could have just taken USC and Stanford instead of USC and UCLA. That is the same bogus excuse the PAC made for not adding BYU 12 years ago. Look how that turned out.

Overlapping markets only relates to conference TV networks and cable subscriptions. That is pittens my friend.

TV value is driven by eyeballs. Period. Having a market doesn’t guarantee ALL of those eyeballs and assuming it does lacks common sense.

Bob Thompson has said in interview after interview that conferences care about compelling matchups that get ratings and eyeballs. The market is a NATIONAL audience and the more high profile a matchup the more a network can charge for ad space. The more quality matchups between competitive and relevant schools the more value a conference’s TV deal is. Plain and simple. The Big 12 didn’t add TCU for the DFW market. It already had it. The Frogs were added because it was a competitive program that offered compelling matchups. Same with WV. Utah is a great program that is competitive. That inherently gives it value. To say otherwise is not being objective and is pure homerism.