You Want a Reason To Feel Good Cowboy Fans? Adam Lunt's Research Has It

STILLWATER – As of 2:23 p.m. on Monday, July 26, 2021 there is no conclusion that could be out of question. Like my co-worker at Triple Play Sports Radio, Jordan Woodruff said, “Everybody has a source or sources.” He is right, they do, but he agreed with me that some are better than others. My sources told me last Friday that Oklahoma State had reached out through a third party to the other Power Five conferences and had not received an invitation, but they also had been told that no doors were closed. That is a good thing. The ticket that you hope will eventually come giving Oklahoma State a landing spot in a Power Five conference will be based on two things.

1. How many viewers can you bring for football to a conference?
2. How good is your football program, how long have you sustained it, and are you committed to keeping it strong?

Interviewing Adam Lunt, an Oklahoma State graduate and huge football fan that used to have a podcast called “Tape Doesn’t Lie”, he hit the nail on the head with even more accuracy.

Related: OSU commits react to OU and Texas to the SEC

“That first category might be numbers one through eight,” Lunt said of the television viewers you bring to the table.

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Lunt found Iowa State at OSU had 2.81-million people watching.

Adam is a talent acquisition manager for a software company. Lunt realized that last week, so on a slow day on Friday (July 23) at work he crunched some numbers, not from a financial standpoint or for a marketing campaign. He crunched television viewers numbers from last football season and found Oklahoma State’s case to stay in the Power Five community and have a good landing spot.

Conferences are looking for schools that draw eyeballs to games, lots of them. That will bring more money in a football television rights package. More dollars as in bringing that school in will sweeten the pot for all the schools splitting up what would be a larger pie with larger pieces.

These numbers come from the 2020 season where more eyeballs were watching on television as game attendance was limited by COVID-19.

Oklahoma State Athletics

OSU President Dr. Kayse Shrum and Mike Gundy can be happy about these TV numbers.

Those numbers clearly favor Oklahoma State with Iowa State and West Virginia as the other solid options. West Virginia shows up well despite not having strong seasons as of late. Oklahoma State has a long history of winning seasons and bowl games. They have the 15-year streak of winning seasons under Mike Gundy. Add to that the fact that they are the second winningest program, behind Oklahoma, over the past decade in the Big 12 with 58 conference wins and they are No. 10 in the nation with 90 wins.

Oklahoma State officials need to be convincing that they have every intent to keep their football program strong and very entertaining.

Lunt also picked out this list too. The top 20 most watched football games from 2020 from the Big 12 and the Pac-10.

In the end the Big 12 had 43 games last season and they had 13 in the top 20 games with these two conferences. The Pac-12 started late and had just 30 games and seven in the top 20. Pretty good for a conference of flyover states with a lot less population. 

The numbers over all make Oklahoma State and Cowboys football very attractive in this environment of all of a sudden realignment.