Right, but I think that potentially supports my point. If Texas were good and fans had reasonable expectations to "be in the hunt" then they wouldn't want to miss even a scrub game. And a scrub game was always going on the LHN. iirc, every team had one Tier 3 game in those days.....I know we certainly did. Prior to the SECN, the crappiest game of our season was on a pay-per-view type thing called TigerVision. On years we were good, LSU fans paid the (?)$ for that game. If the team sucked, many of them wouldn't waste their money. So if that translates to the Texas fanbase, if Texas hadn't sucked out loud for several years, more of its fans would've been willing to up their DirecTV package to the one that includes LHN. Which includes not only an extra football game to watch, but also a bunch of programming where pundits talk a bunch about how great your favorite team is, which is something else fans of top teams would sign up for.....I think.
To utee's point elsewhere, that space is altered now and the Tier 3 stuff has probably passed its prime, even if no one knows it yet. The blathering on and on about our favorite teams is not a LHN or a SECN thing anymore. That's what YouTube and Spotify is for.
I don't know exactly how the financials worked though, so you may be right that LHN would've been a net loss no matter what. But as with team merchandise, ticket sales, you name it.....everything sells more when the team is winning.
