The Boise metro area has a population of 635,450, estimated to pass 900,000 in 2011.

Not sure where you learned math Mars (perhaps you didn't), but the Boise metro area will not grow by 265,000 in three years, and your base of 635,450 is much higher than reality.

2000 Census Bureau Boise MSA population was 432,345.
2006 Census Bureau Boise MSA population estimate was 532,337.

To reach your 635,450 population figure would require a two year growth of slightly over 100,000 (from 2006-2008). That total is about the same as the total population growth of the six year period from 2000 - 2006.

Since the bottom dropped out of the housing market starting in 2006, your population growth figures for the past two years and your projection to 2011 are both unsupportable.

[/quote]Conosticator wrote:


"To reach your 635,450 population figure would require a two year growth of slightly over 100,000 (from 2006-2008). That total is about the same as the total population growth of the six year period from 2000 - 2006.

Since the bottom dropped out of the housing market starting in 2006, your population growth figures for the past two years and your projection to 2011 are both unsupportable." [/quote]



My gut instinct tells me Mars most likely did not just make up the number of "635,450" out of thin air. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say he got that figure from a reliable source - hence,,the figure would then be "supportable".

bluebrotha wrote:

Conosticator wrote:


"To reach your 635,450 population figure would require a two year growth of slightly over 100,000 (from 2006-2008). That total is about the same as the total population growth of the six year period from 2000 - 2006.

Since the bottom dropped out of the housing market starting in 2006, your population growth figures for the past two years and your projection to 2011 are both unsupportable." [/quote]

My gut instinct tells me Mars most likely did not just make up the number of "635,450" out of thin air. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say he got that figure from a reliable source - hence,,the figure would then be "supportable".[/quote]

So much for gut instinct if you think Mar's source must be more reliable than the U.S. Census Bureau data that I used.

Or perhaps since it is your "gut" making this decision, you'd prefer a USDA source... http://www.ams.usda.gov/statesummaries/ID/MSA/MSA.pdf/BoiseCity.pdf

Or perhaps you might note that using Mars data, his projected Boise MSA population of 900,000 in 2012 and a projected total Idaho population of 1.75 million means that the Boise MSA would have to double in population in a period of 11 years and that the rest of the state would show no growth at all.

Or perhaps you'd prefer the local real estate center estimate... http://recenter.tamu.edu/data/popm/pm1080.htm

Or perhaps you'd just like to continue using Mar's wikipedia source.

Since we are trying to determine whether the Boise media market is sufficient to justify admission to the MWC, I decided to help things along by "adjusting" Mars' wikipedia source upward by a mil... Talk about incredible population growth. Maybe I'll give them another mil tomorrow...

Ain't it fun when we use wikipedia as the source for our "facts"?

Hope you didn't try that with your profs at BYU.

TCU and SDSU are in huge markets, but I would expect that BSU FB carries a greater market share (not by %, but in pure numbers) than either team in their respective markets (and, perhaps combined). It doesn't matter how big a market is if a team doesn't have any fans. With this logic we should add St. Joe's because they're in the country's top market.

I would think that total viewership would be more important for potential revenue than merely the size of a metro area.

Conosticator wrote:

Ain't it fun when we use wikipedia as the source for our "facts"?

Hope you didn't try that with your profs at BYU.

I doubt they'd have noticed. They're too busy writing bad textbooks "to save students money at the bookstore," that, hmm... the students can't sell back, all the while making an extra buck off those same students on the side.

Conosticator wrote:

So much for gut instinct if you think Mar's source must be more reliable than the U.S. Census Bureau data that I used.

Still straining at the motes and ignoring the beams eh Con? I don't see where you countered their record over the past 7 years. In terms of market-power, Boise State has been the most desirable non-BCS school in the nation over that period of time. They can't compete with BYU when we are winning (though they're still miles past anyone else), but they haven't had any Crowtons in their recent history either... or just about ever.

Seriously, even their women's basketball team being way better than ours this season and being a consistently very good team matters more to conference expansion then whether Boise has 500 or 600K residents right now (while Provo/Orem has only 200K residents and the MWC already has a University in Salt Lake City). Almost all of their team is from California because they are so easily recognizable all across the west. Their BCS Bowl win over Big XII Champ Oklahoma is the type of thing the Mountain West Conference needs more of within it's brand.