Season ticket sales are down once again for WVU football, though that might be a temporary description as there is hope to reach last season’s number by Sept. 5. It’s part of an interesting discussion today, though.

Television is an increasingly popular and preferred way to follow your favorite team. Costs are more manageable. The experience is more convenient. For so many reasons to so many people, TV outranks the stadium.

Yet TV is experiencing a dip, as well. ESPN is losing subscribers and being asked by Disney to manage its costs better. Fox Sports is laying off people in regional outfits. Fox Sports 1 altered its news operation and the structuring within. Writers, I’ve heard, are going to work with new limitations.

The biggest issue of them all? People are moving away from cable television. We’ve coined “cord-cutters” all of a sudden and people have flocked to streaming devices and services while finding new and acceptable if not high-quality ways to follow teams without relying on a cable subscription.

What’s that mean? Why are we here? Well, what happens if this keeps trending, trending, trending? What if networks keep losing subscribers and are forced to be more cautious and conservative with their expenses? Does that not affect the next roudn of television contracts between networks and major college conferences?

Indeed it does. “I know our partners are very concerned about it,” Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said. “It hasn’t had an immediate impact upon us, but it will in future negotiations.”

But then again, what we’re talking about is different than what we were discussing five or 10 years ago, so it stands to reason the worries are misplaced for now because the game will change by the time the Big 12’s deal, or any deal, comes up for bid in the future.

“I think there’s a larger question there, and that is, ‘Is cable TV the delivery system of predominance in the years ahead?’ ” Bowlsby said.

Probably not, and the swaths of cable-cutters serve as proof. It wasn’t long ago when big televisions were the rage. Now people want to watch games on their phones, tablets and laptops. Digital access is that popular and important now. There isn’t a more cherished sports commodity than an NFL game. Yahoo! will stream one for free online this season. Internet providers are hurrying to solve buffering issues in streaming technology but also working to market and monetize authentication services that let people link their cable provider over an Internet connection and watch a game remotely.

Kickoffs and tip times were once indisputable appointments, but the rise of DVRs have calmed people down and built a hunger for on-demand programming. The HBO Go and Showtime Anytime models have fans clamoring for previously recorded games to be available at their convenience — and a service like that with a subscription fee attached would pay a lot of bills at ESPN or Fox.

“There are probably two schools of thought,” Allen said. “Are they going to be conservative in order to keep their costs down, or are they going to be aggressive to keep the programming they need to hold on to the subscribers that they have? A lot of people believe it’s probably going to be the latter.”