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They dropped the national contract for this matchup claiming it was "not marquee enough" for national attention..
Well, fair enough, the east and west coast probably will be content on seeing the outcome on Sportcenter that night but my gripe is this...

Why is ESPN nationally televising Colorado vs. Fresno State in the Jim Thorpe Classic the next night?...
The Buffs won 3 games last year and finshed 4th in the Big 12 North and 9th overall in standings.....and Fresno State? This game has boring written all over it...at least in the BCA game KSU went to the post season and SMU has a loyal fan base to work with....Just thought I'd share a daily dose of hypocrisy with y'all...

Well said Bookcat! I agree totally.

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Go Mustangs!!
-MustangMom

Once again, it's all about the dollar. That's what drives TV (and radio), not the desire to present a good game or entertaining event or any other similarly idealistic corporate-speak that gets handed out by the talking heads in the networks' PR departments.

In the story someone linked yesterday from the K-State site that quoted Cavan as being all pessimistic, he said some things that sounded like he was whining, but when he questioned the logic of a Tulane/Cincinnati matchup instead of SMU/K-State was dead-on. The networks are driven by numbers of viewers (or actually by the interest of paying advertisers, who in turn base their decisions on viewer totals) and the idea that more people want to watch Cincinnati/Tulane -- especially viewers outside of Cincinnati and New Orleans -- is a joke. There is NO national appeal for that game. Hell, they're conference opponents and I bet there's no interest from the other cities that have C-USA teams.

K-State could play a sorority flag football team and draw more folks than that game. (Come to think of it, I might go watch that. But that's a different story...) The networks really dropped the ball here.