It's not semantics RJ and your comment about him spending a 100% of his time on athletics is patently absurd. No I didn't say or actually believe such nonsense. When a leader of an organization doesn't communicate his position on an important topic, the void will be filled with things he doesn't believe. Now, you tell me and everyone else....what is his position on Tech football and the sport in general, since both are undergoing a generational change. What, you can't? Exactly
Cabrera has been photographed at games. He was at last season’s GT-UGA game and was described as being livid about the sea of red in the local paper. He’s blogged and tweeted about GT sports and related items.
He has toured the state talking to students and alumni.
When there is good news about our sports — as there has been in our Women’s sports lately — he’s talked about it. There was also some background chatter that he’s taken notice of the huge outstanding debt our AA has and has people thinking of ways to solve it. I see him being engaged in that part of our environment.
He might even answer your questions about it if you ask him.
However, he’s probably more interested in bigger trends. Schools like GT are doing well. Many colleges and universities aren’t. State funding support for public universities has been diminishing over time—they’re more and more responsible for being self-funding. As much as their are big changes occurring for sports, the seas for colleges and universities are turbulent, too. Colleges and universities may be splitting into “winners” and “losers” as much as NCAA football teams are.
Like the CEO of a public company, his stakeholders judge him by how the Institute overall is doing, and how much he keeps his eyes on the tiller of the overall institution.
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As for the trends for college football, right now it’s trending into tiers. FOX and ESPN and other content providers find it harder and harder to get a large share of eyeballs. They’re bidding for the most lucrative products right now. The demographics for pro and college football has a lot of older fans with money, but I think the demographics are graying. The ratings aren’t going up in the way that they used to. The middle market is getting split among more teams.
TL;DR: ESPN and FOX are paying more for fewer, higher viewership teams. Ratings aren’t really going up, and in a lot of ways seem to be eroding, attendance is suffering, and my kids wonder why we have televisions. I’m not sure the upcoming generations will care nearly as much about football as we have.
When something can’t continue, it eventually doesn’t. Either the viewership is going to have to increase or the payouts are going to decrease. There’s a shakeout going on right now, but it’s also possible that there’s an economic bubble for sports programming (and content programming of all sorts).
Some of us are debating about the ACC surviving until 2036. Is ESPN still around in 14 years, though?