@justanotherfan
You’re right as far as you go, but you don’t go far enough.
The College Basketball Industry–the aspect of it dealing with OAD/TAD talent distributions–is about:
a.) getting eyeballs and clicks for games for advertisers;
b.) getting branding for endorsers in big shoe and apparel buying markets once the OAD jumps in 12 months;
c.) spiking betting volumes both now and in 12 months when the OAD jumps to an NBA team.
What the colleges and coaches divert off this revenue river is just a cost incurred in setting up a through c, which are were the real monies are.
But of course you know that, so I am itemizing these for others that may not be familiar with the college basketball industry, which regarding a through c, is a marketing continuum and not really as separate game at all --at least from a basketball industry perspective. The basketball industry deals with the colleges and college coaches early and the NBA and NBA management later. It is a through c that matter across the continuum.
Now, once board rats understand this business model and market regime underlying what is called college basketball and what is called NBA basketball, then the issue is how does one serve the marketing continuum to greatest net benefit.
Clearly you are right to say that there is some benefit to having the elite, 10 OAD/TAD college programs outside the big cities where the NBA franchise operate.
For one thing, you don’t want to brand an OAD too closely with a big city, if he is going into another big city, because you have a draft in the NBA that often makes unpredictable where the OAD will eventually play. You want him to enter the NBA as a hyped product ready to be put on any store shelf as a desirable marketing addition with minimal rebranding needed. A UK player is ready to go on the shelf in any EST NBA franchise without any rebranding to specialize him to that market. Boom! UK. We get that brand. They are gourmet draft choices we can get juiced about immediately.
Compare this with a KU player. KU? An EST fan says, oh, yeah, I’ve heard of them, they are a bunch of heartland hicks that had Naismith for a coach once. I don’t recall an of their players names. I’ve never even watched a game with them. No, I saw them play once two years ago. A KU player going into an EST NBA franchise is just short of drafting a guy out of New Zealand. Lots of branding work to do on the guy before you can get an EST fan juiced about him.
At the same time, you clearly want elite programs located in markets outside the major cities that pull major market viewers to the OAD during his year of branding and hyping in D1. So you want them at a place like Duke, UNC, that can pull the eastern seaboard viewers from Maine to Florida. And UK is great, because it gives you both the eastern seaboard, some of the south, and Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania viewer draw.
KU in contrast unless it were marketed as America’s team, just has no similar appeal for the college NBA marketing continuum. BoWash corridor folks just will not watch KU the way they will Duke, UNC, or UK. Neither will Great Lakes states.
KU’s only hope for marketing relevance is tailor itself to be marketed to Texas and that is a very difficult sell, that Texans will only work at enabling in order to keep the Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas oil and gas alliance intact for other reasons. Self is a very good fit as a coach for Kansas because as an Okie, he plays well to Oklahoma and Texas. Hire a guy with no accent into KU and the Oklahoma-Texas marketing angle drops dead asap. For this reason, it is going to be very tough for KU to hire an African American head coach next time, like Danny Manning, or a northern white coach. Self and Beaty are the future of all KU coaching hires in sports that have to play the marketing game. KSU will never achieve critical marketing mass with Snyder and Weber in Texas and Oklahoma. Not gonna happen. So: if African American and all colors of KU fans think it would be a good move to hire an African American coach to KU, one needs to be found with a high profile in Texas and a high Q rating with Texans. But I digress on coaching, which is a facet, but not THE facet of what we are discussing here.
So: the logical move is for Nike to turn UT austin ASAP into a 8-12 OAD/TAD stack program and leave KU at 3-4 OAD/TAD level and slowly marginalize KU. The college-pro marketing continuum just doesn’t need the Naismith/father of basketball angle for optimizing net benefits. KU always has to be alert to this and they always have to be investing massively in marketing monies to try to counteract this effect, or the program will be marginalized in just half a viewer generation.
As far as rooting for underdogs and casual fans, all that really matters in college basketball is to brand OAD/TADs to likely fans in major NBA cities and to those that bat at home and abroad on college basketball.
Those rooting for underdogs are a tiny segment of the eyeballs, clicks and bets that are the bread and butter of the basketball industry across the college-NBA continuum.
