re: After Year 1 of expansion, ratings down 15%............

Yeah, Notre Dame still has a huge national following

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And in any event, A&M and Mizzou weren't added for ratings bumps. They were added to allow the forthcoming SEC Network to capture the markets as home territory, allowing the SECN to achieve broad distribution w/ the higher carriage rate.

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I get that. I guess I just thought adding those markets would help the overall viewership even when their teams weren't the featured game, and I'd think the SEC was hoping that as well.

I mean, as an LSU fan, I'm almost always watching the CBS game weather we're in it or not, because the game usually effects my team. Most fans I know of LSU and other SEC teams do as well.

Just wondering if A&M and Missou fans maybe don't have that attachment yet?

And yeah obviously adding Texas and Missouri as home states will help the SECN, but the decision to expand was made years before the network was a reality.

My whole problem has never been with either program, it's going away from 12 teams to 14. If we could have brought them in and gotten rid of a couple of hangers on, I would have been all for it, although I know that was never very realistic.

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My guess is A&M is going to be on more this year, even with a weak schedule (Bama and LSU as the only obvious games). Manziel is ratings gold on a national level. Love him or hate him, he's the most exciting player to watch in college football in a long time due to his unconventional style of play and ability to put up crazy stats. After he is gone though A&M should pull its weight just fine and then some though, we have always done well in ratings even when we were down.

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Agree 100%. Interested to see how they do as a more featured part of the schedule, on the field and in the ratings.

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honest answer is Notre Dame's resurgence caused it along with Fox adding a 230 game every week

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Interesting point.

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So, what exactly was the benefit of expansion then?

I still don't see how whatever benefit we may gain outweighs the negative of leaving the 12 team model.

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how in the world do you have 7k posts here and not know it was never about TV ratings but instead getting the SECN into more cable/satellite households?

more state footprints = more households that have SECN on their cable packages = more money for the SEC

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Can anyone explain why this didn't happen??

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I'm sure it has already been covered, but I would largely attribute this to Auburn and Arkansas being shittastic last year.