When Ohio State announced they were scheduling TCU they added a statement that,
“As we move forward, from 2018 and out, our goal is BCS only. We are looking at top ranked teams, 1-50 teams.”
That is good news for fans going to the games as one of the reason’s I stopped buying season tickets about ten years ago is that the bad games far outweighed the good games. When I started buying tickets in 1990 the face value was $18. Back then the season was 11 games so you could expect about 6 home games a year. 4 of those were Big Ten games which usually meant we had at least one game to look towards and one of the ‘preseason’ home games. I remember writing the first check for season tickets as they cost me $128 for a 6 game 1992 season.
Ironically that was the first season that Ohio State ever played a team from the MAC. It had been since the 1930s that Ohio State had scheduled decidedly inferior opposition (Drake in 1935 is probably the best example). Every season you could count on 4 Big Ten games and 1-2 non-conference games against teams with a state name (and no direction preceding it).
Fast forward to the mid 2000s and tickets had jumped to over $60 and the last check I wrote was for 8 games and with special charges and processing fees it was over $500. Those were cheap compared to what my company paid. Buckeye club tickets were cost $2,000 to join and then you had the opportunity to buy 2 season tickets at $500 each. When you did the math it was ridiculous and I started watching the games at home. I could easily afford the tickets but that wasn’t the issue. In 1995 I wanted to see 1 game – Texas. I spent $400 on 2 tickets and took my dad to see the game and still saved money. The rest I watched from the comfort of my home.
Many people are coming to the same realization. Ohio Stadium had trouble selling out its preseason tickets this year for the first time since the woeful teams of the late 80s. Even then people didn’t show up to the games because the teams were so bad. Ohio State isn’t the only team to do this and in fact, the last few weeks have only had a couple of top twenty teams facing one another. It seems it seems to me that some ADs (Gene Smith in particular) have decided it is in their best interest to improve the competition to increase the demand for tickets.
The other thing that is happening is that television has been paying a ton of money for broadcasting rights but games like Ohio State – UAB isn’t turning on dials. Ohio State isn’t alone as last weekend, the Buckeye game with Michigan State game was the premier game of the weekend and was the only real place possible for Gameday to travel. With the influx of many Division 1AA (FCS) teams into Division 1A the quality is getting more and more diluted.
The process started in the early 80s when teams like Oklahoma sued the NCAA to be able to determine their own television rights. Before then there was usually only 2-3 games on each Saturday and now every year has increased the number of games and spread to different nights. While once it was in teams best interest to play the best to get on television that flipped in the 80s and ended when the BCS started. Now it seems to be going the other way which is a good thing.
The offset of this is two fold.
First is the likelihood that Ohio State will have more losses but my suspicion is it won’t matter as all they will need to do is win the Big Ten to get into the 4 team championship.
The other issue is that the days of 4 preseason home games is going away and we’d only have 2. This will reduce season ticket prices as the days of 8 home games like this year would be over. That would reduce income as we’d only get $1 million from most away teams and make about $5 million from home dates. That means a loss of $8 million per year but if it safeguards to the milliions of Buckeye club and season ticket prices then it would be worth it. You can expect that there will also be ticket price increases so that face is closer to $100 if quality improves.
One last thing this made me think about is this might be a hint that the B1G is headed for a 9 game conference schedule by 2018. The league wants more marketable games and OSU-UAB doesn’t fit that bill. Either way it sounds good for Ohio State fans as we will be getting better games to watch in the near future.
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