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Tales of our pitching staff's demise appear to have been greatly exaggerated. :powert:

Germans!

Oh, that would be a reply to my post. Never mind.  :doh:

17Ks and 1 walk
Russell was fantastic

I just hate that we're in this tourney at least every other year, and it's only on PPV. These are usually the only meaningful OOC games we play until the postseason, and no one can watch them. :banghead:

All you have to do is sign up for FloBall or BallFlo or FloBaseBall, whatever it's called. It only costs $29.99 a month or $12.50 a month if you subscribe for a full year.

Whatever it is, I'm not buying it. Pun intended. I fear that the future of sports is pay per view, or pay per event.

The Iowa women's basketball game last night where Clark set the scoring record was on Peacock. I don't subscribe to Peacock and I don't intend to do so. And it's ridiculous that such an event was on Peacock. What if Hank Aaron's record breaking home run was on Peacock? Hell, cable didn't really exist back then. That game was on over the air TV. I think that sports TV is going to get even more expensive.

Clay Travis is constantly ranting about how the ESPN model that has fueled all the ridiculous salaries is about to break, or slowly fading, take your pick.

It goes like this...ever since it was founded in 1980, the only way to get ESPN was to subscribe to a cable provider.  And ESPN, since a large fraction(30-40%)  of viewers routinely watched ESPN has been able to always command the (by far) largest carry fee.  Those subscribers were a big enough fraction to kill a carrier and would all (or most) threaten to quit if ESPN was not included.  Thus ESPN (Disney now...which is why ABC bought ESPN and then Disney bought ABC, or a big part of the reason), has always had a lot of leverage.

With a lot of viewers unplugging, that has changed.  The streaming model (i.e., viewers paying directly for ESPN +) cannot bring in the same revenue stream, because in this case the large fraction works against ESPN.  Do they have a huge viewership?  Yes.  Was it ever a huge majority or even a simple majority of all cable users?  No.

In other words, ESPN has been getting a lot of revenue from people who don't even watch it.  Streaming cannot make up the revenue ESPN currently gets from the big carriers.

Thus, they are experimenting with PPV.

The thing is, I don't think its going to work.  I don't know anyone willing to pay for Peacock +, not even for the NFL playoff game they put on it, let alone the Caitlan game.

Travis has speculated that sports are in a bubble due to ESPN getting (essentially) way more revenue than they can command in a more open market (which is what sports is moving to as the large carriers slowly fade away), and that it might pop.  An early sign might be the huge rounds of layoffs ESPN has done over the last few years.

I guess we will see what happens, but in at least the short term, I would anticipate more and more PPV