I understand that this is all about money. I’ve said that in many posts. However, what I have also said is that I think it’s a farce that Rutgers opens up the New York City TV market for them. Why? Because no one in New York City really cares about Rutgers.
You said that no one cares when they’re losing like most sports teams. That’s true in Pro sports, but not in college. For instance, look at Nebraska. The one team they did invite in. Last year they had a good season. The four out of five years before that they weren’t even ranked at the end of the year. They have not been a football powerhouse since the 90’s. Yet they pack in 80,000 + every Saturday and get great TV ratings still. Why, they have national championships and tradition. They’ve created a bond with generations of fans. Rutgers does not have that.
It’s because of this that I don’t see this opening up of New York City to the Big 10 network. Sure, they’ll get on the TV’s, but not in any more appreciable way than they do now. I don’t see them delivering New York city like I’ve read. Personally, I think it’s people speculating but we’ll see.
The deal with Rutgers is not about delivering ratings to the Big Ten. It's about delivering cable subscriber fees. The numbers are huge if they can get on the provider's basic packages and Rutgers helps them do that.
Bigger ratings will mean more advertising revenue for the providers and they'd be very welcome, but it's the subscriber fees that are the draw.
Besides, the Big Ten network will obviously feature far more than Rutgers. There are plenty of Ohio State, Penn State, etc fans in the NYC market to drive ratings.
Rutgers was in the college football wasteland for a long long time. I know, I've been watching them for 30 years, with season tickets for twenty. But they have been on a slow but steady climb up since about 1995. The difference in interest throughout NJ and even NYC is huge in that time, though still way behind where it could be. Billboards, coverage on the NYC sports networks and sports talk shows, merchandising etc. have all become significant, where it used to be zero.
NYC hasn't had a college football presence since Columbia beat Army in 1947! But that could be a couple BCS bowl games away.
NYC just doesn't seem to get that jazzed about college sports.