One thing to note about the TV rights explosion is that teams were still reticent about putting too many games on TV, because their business models still depended mostly on live attendance. This includes Oklahoma: Katz Sports (bought by Raycom in 1985) put together a Big Eight Game of the Week package for 1984, but Oklahoma refused to be a part of it. They acquiesced to televising one road game apiece for a couple of years. Meanwhile, Nebraska had a contract with their radio network that no more than 5 games would be televised, so they generally didn't take part in the package either after ABC and ESPN made their selections.
(Also, games in prime-time network TV is a relatively recent (as in mid-2000s) phenomenon. In the early days post-decision, ABC or CBS might show 1 prime time regular season game apiece per year. ESPN had a night game most weeks and there were a couple of years when TBS would show double- or triple-headers.)
1984 in particular was a complete mess of a year, with fly-by-night syndicators springing up and then folding mid-season without necessarily taking care of things like paying the schools or their on-air talent. #1 Nebraska played #8 UCLA in Week 4 and literally days before the game it was unknown if it could be televised as both the Pac-10 and CFA were claiming to have the rights to the game--a CBS legal injunction led to it being televised and things settled eventually into the current practice of the home team having the TV rights.
506sports has a wiki documenting the history of sports broadcasting, and I've been trying to fill in as much college football broadcasts from 1984 until the modern website started in the mid-2000s, covering syndicators, who had the rights to what conferences, local/regional telecasts, etc. https://archive.506sports.com/wiki/1984_College_Football_Season You can start here and read about some of the weird stuff that was happening in those early Wild West seasons.
I actually worked with the third Easterbrook brother for about a decade. His name is Neil and he’s an excellent SF Lit scholar and huge football fan (now retired from one of those).
One thing to note about the TV rights explosion is that teams were still reticent about putting too many games on TV, because their business models still depended mostly on live attendance. This includes Oklahoma: Katz Sports (bought by Raycom in 1985) put together a Big Eight Game of the Week package for 1984, but Oklahoma refused to be a part of it. They acquiesced to televising one road game apiece for a couple of years. Meanwhile, Nebraska had a contract with their radio network that no more than 5 games would be televised, so they generally didn't take part in the package either after ABC and ESPN made their selections.
(Also, games in prime-time network TV is a relatively recent (as in mid-2000s) phenomenon. In the early days post-decision, ABC or CBS might show 1 prime time regular season game apiece per year. ESPN had a night game most weeks and there were a couple of years when TBS would show double- or triple-headers.)
1984 in particular was a complete mess of a year, with fly-by-night syndicators springing up and then folding mid-season without necessarily taking care of things like paying the schools or their on-air talent. #1 Nebraska played #8 UCLA in Week 4 and literally days before the game it was unknown if it could be televised as both the Pac-10 and CFA were claiming to have the rights to the game--a CBS legal injunction led to it being televised and things settled eventually into the current practice of the home team having the TV rights.
506sports has a wiki documenting the history of sports broadcasting, and I've been trying to fill in as much college football broadcasts from 1984 until the modern website started in the mid-2000s, covering syndicators, who had the rights to what conferences, local/regional telecasts, etc. https://archive.506sports.com/wiki/1984_College_Football_Season You can start here and read about some of the weird stuff that was happening in those early Wild West seasons.
This Is the content that makes this subscription worth it and makes SZD special
Much appreciated, Riley.
This was excellent.
thanks a lot! wanted to do this show for a while, and well, this is march
I actually worked with the third Easterbrook brother for about a decade. His name is Neil and he’s an excellent SF Lit scholar and huge football fan (now retired from one of those).
small world we inhabit