A conference would be really attractive to football teams if it could schedule dates and times before the season.
I don’t think any game time is that bad, as long as you can know it and plan for it. Different times probably appeal to different people, and all people could decide on what games they want to go to factoring in the game times.
Conferences have nothing to do with it and as long as they're taking hundreds of millions of dollars from the networks they'll continue to deal with flex schedules because that ensures that the networks can maximize ad revenue. This is what pisses me off about OU crying about kickoff times, they know exactly why those time slots are the way they are. They also knew that FOX didn't even have a 6:00 slot that week. They are insincere, dipshit rednecks.
I know how it is, but a conference with enough leverage like this new SEC could tell the TV partner applicants how it'll be, to the benefit of its conference members.
I'm just thinking out loud as to how any conference could do better for members on the time issue,, but also as to how making times as standard as most are in NFL would be doable if we were in a giant conference stretching across 3 time zones, where those rime zones could largely dictate the slots.
This new SEC doesn't have the leverage either, even if they added clumpson, Ohio state, notre dame, and usc. The second they take ESPN's money they lose that leverage. This is the same for every league in the world under a media contract. In England EPL fans and teams complain about Friday night matches they are contractually obligated to play and be flexed into.
Maybe the super sec will eventually, one day, be able to start their own network and keep all of their own ad revenue. But when that happens they'll start flexing schedules too when 2-5 UT are getting pumped by 8-0 Florida in primetime when 7-0 Missouri played the game of the year against 7-0 Georgia in a 2:30 time slot no one saw.
