@KUSTEVE, first, it appears you maybe right that Doogie is being a homer, but I also think ParisHawk appears to be right that someone has to play the role like Doogie appears to be playing for this game. The talking heads are apparently a team--a team trying to maximize eyeballs and clicks.
How might a team of talking heads try to build clicks and eyeballs?
I suspect they would start with a map of where the eyeballs and clicks are to be gotten. I suspect the talking heads would be picked for their expected abilities to get eyeballs and clicks from certain regions, plus not repell clicks from other regions assigned to other talking heads.
Next, Team Talking Heads (apologies to David Byrne) would look at each game and its teams and figure out how to promote that game to the bread and butter concentration of eyeballs and clicks that Team Talking Heads tries to appeal to; that would be a place called the Eastern Standard Time Zone.
The game has to do okay in EST, or there is little point in broadcasting the game. You make a CST game do okay in EST by linking it temporally to games in the EST (it leads into, or follows an EST game), and by telling its story within the framework of its significance to the major EST teams; e.g., out in the provinces, these are a couple of good teams that could eventually be the teams our EST teams have to smight for a ring. This is where all of the ACC and Big Ten talking heads come in on the dais. But, again, Team Talking Head might as well grab what it can out in the provinces, er, CST, and that's where Doogie comes in.
You would want Doogie to support at least one of the CST teams, but at the same time you would not want Doogie saying, "Look, these teams are way better than the teams back in EST," You would also not want Doogie building either CST team into a team that is likely the greatest team in college basketball; that would undermiine what you are trying to do in EST. Finally, you would want a guy in Doogie's role with the kind of looks and speech pattern that eyeballs in the EST zone would identify with. You would want Doogie's role to appeal to the EST guy's fantasy (or reality) of what it would be like to be exiled to the provinces for work. You would want Doogie to play the role of the EST guy that couldn't make it at a big time EST school and had to go out to the CST, to get to ball, and to get a gig afterwards. In short, you would want Doogie Godlove.
Team Talking Heads has impact guys and glue guys, just like Bill Self's basketball team does. Each guy has a role and each guy has to subordinate himself to the goal of Team Talking Heads: maximum eyeballs and clicks.
So, you say, but, but, but, jaybate, why doesn't CST glue guy Doogie heap the love on KU, when KU obviously has the bigger marquis player, likely better team, greater overall talent, and the better record? Why isn't he talking about how KU is at home and likely to clean Okie State's clock? Why is he scorning KU and loving on OSU?
Well, at one level, it is about Doogie Godlove being an Okie State grad and so we can on one level say he is being a homer for his old school.
But, remember, Doogie is on a team and just as Wigs, or Selden, could drop 30 most any game, but subordinate to the team so that they only do so selectively, Doogie has to subordinate to his team.
Doogie has to get EST eyeballs and clicks, plus get as many CST eyeballs as he can; that seems his mission.
What Doogie is apparently doing works on a lot of levels.
If you were an EST eyeball, which would you rather see? A game being promoted as a sure KU win, or a game with an upset in the making? Would you rather have all your EST hero talking heads in agreement, or would you rather have one of your EST hero talking heads, the black sheep brother, if you will, the one you loved and envied his chutzpah for going out in the provinces to ball, sticking it in the eye of CST Goliath (KU) and being loyal to his school? Answer: EST eyeballs would probably love what Doogie is doing?
But there is another dimension that Doogie appears to be playing to here. In the CST, what percentage of the eyeball pie chart is KU fans and what percentage is "non KU fans sick of being beaten by KU?" Answer: "Non KU fans sick of being beaten by KU" is the vast majority, so Doogie is positioned to attract the lion's share of CST eyeballs and clicks, too.
So: Team Talking Heads is covering it bases. You might say: Its nothing personal. Its business.
So: how in the future can KU counter this dynamic apparently underpinning Team Talking Head coverage that, at least, seems counter productive to Team Jayhawk in Doogie Godlove's case?
The Big 12 needs to expand into the EST with an EST division for WVU to play in; then Team Talking Heads EST players can promote the game more strongly from the KU is an EST time zone conference team angle.
Next, KU needs to continually emphasize two things:
1) red, white and blue uniforms; and
2) tradition.
Tradition and patriotism sell in the EST, because that is apparently how the EST eyeballs view themselves as being with in the American experience.
The early ownership of the Dallas Cowboys figured this out long ago. If you are outside the EST, become America's team.
The more KU ties itself to tradition and to embodying what America stands for, the more successful will be its marketing. And expanding the B12 into the EST will make it that much easier to market those concepts.
Doogie Godlove would have a great deal of difficulty getting eyeballs and clicks by siding with OSU, if KU were being marketed more explicitly as the embodiment of America's team. What American, regardless of time zone, wants to pick against America?
We are not dealing in realities, when it comes to Team Talking Heads and promoting games.
We are dealing in perceptions of signs circulating in sign markets.
Or so it seems to me, at present.
