Big East Will Not Sign With ESPN

[ojaipony]

http://espn.go.com/college-football/sto ... ng-sources

good.

[ponyboy]

good, although we may eventually end up signing

[RE Tycoon]

Along with a competitive dollar figure, unless ESPN offers the league a guaranteed weekly Saturday game on either the mothership ESPN (not 2 or 360) or on ABC, I would go elsewhere.

Same goes for Fox and NBC. If we sign with either of them, we should make them guarantee a marquee weekly Saturday game on their networks in addition to the other BEAST games on their cable versions. Having placement on on the network channels is the only way a good team in this league will generate excitement on the national landscape, plus it lends credibility in the eyes of the casual fan.

I wonder if NBC's interest has cooled at all with ND jumping ship, especially in regards to bball. I still think this is the league's likely destination, and they definitely need the BEAST programming the most.

We and the league really need to get at least $15 million per full member to maintain any sense of credibility as a relevant/1st tier league. Access to the 7th bowl is also immensely critical.

[skurtn]

The revenue numbers being floated around for the Big 12 yearly TV contracts [in this article], for the most part, seem interesting if you take into account their expenses stated in the Fun with Numbers thread.

TV contract revenue: $20 million
Overall revenue: $150.3 million
Expenses per game: approx 7.5 to 8.8 million
Games played: 12-14 (depending on bowl eligibility)

Their TV contract basically pays for 2 games.

[StallionsModelT]

15M is a pipedream.

If Aresco and co. can garner 10M for full members on the open market its been a smashing success.

Realistically we will probably end up with 6-8M for full members and 3-4M for football-only.


Still a quantum leap forward for a program/athletic department like SMU.

[RE Tycoon]

I agree it's unlikely, but if the league doesn't get $15 million, it's pretty much over and we are basically CUSA 3.0.

[ponyinNC]

I think $15MM is a bit high, but obviously would be great. McMurphy (ESPN reporter) really lowballing the figures, saying between 4-8MM (what a joke). I've really stayed on top of this throughout and if I had to guess the figure, I'd say between $11-13MM for all-sports members, using a combo of Fox and NBC for football, ESPN/CBS for basketball.

Everyone uses the $17MM ACC figure, but that contract is so backloaded that they don't reach that figure until 2021 I believe. Best thing for the BE would be to spread everything out across different networks. A la carte, if you will.

[SMU2007]

still better than the alternative, which is staying in regular C-USA with less money.

[StallionsModelT]

Yes it will be C-USA 3.0 but that is still WAY better than what will be left over in the actual CUSA.

You have to be realistic about this. Who will NBC be bidding against? There won't be a massive push by ABC/ESPN, Fox, or CBS to add more programming when those networks have already locked up BCS conferences in their respective TV deals. NBC will be the destination but we won't be getting 12-17M like we might have thought last year. There simply won't be any real, viable competition.


Its still a significant step up both in quality of competition, exposure, and money for SMU.

[StallionsModelT]

BTW, I can't wait to see that new CUSA TV deal when those negotiations come up. LOL.

Rice
Tulsa
UNT
UTSA
UTEP
Tulane
So Miss
UAB
FAU
Charlotte
Old Dominion
Marshall
East Carolina


sheesh.

[SMU2007]

feel for southern miss and tulsa fans. their teams have had pretty good success recently, yet they are getting sucked into the abyss.

[ponyinNC]

feel for southern miss and tulsa fans. their teams have had pretty good success recently, yet they are getting sucked into the abyss.

What's crazy is that if the Big East had to expand again in the case of another raid, they'd likely take the newer schools like ODU and Charlotte over USM or Tulsa. If you look at the BE's model, it is usually schools in urban areas with large media markets (Boise notwithstanding). ODU/Charlotte fits that bill way better than USM/Tulsa.

[StallionsModelT]

Don't feel too bad for them. Both programs could see their situations improve in the next couple of years. If there is a raid on the Big East (Louisville, Rutgers, Cincinnati, UConn) you can be rest assured that the Big East will either A) quickly grab Tulsa, So Miss, and ECU or B) scatter to the four winds. I've always thought that should the bottom drop out of the Big East that we would see a "best of the rest" type of conference spring out of its remains. I could see something like this:

East

Temple, Navy, ECU, UCF, USF, So Miss

West

SMU, Houston, La Tech, Tulsa, Memphis, Boise State

[StallionsModelT]

I doubt they would pass over programs that have cracked the Top 25 in recent years like Tulsa and So Miss for Old Dominion or Charlotte. Those programs are not in a place where they have had even marginal success. But who knows anymore.

[StallionsModelT]

I do find it hilarious that UNT is doing cartwheels over being invited to CUSA next year. I guess its a step up in competition and exposure over the Sun Belt, but in all honesty it isn't much of a step up. You could argue that the Sun Belt has been a stronger conference top to bottom this season than CUSA. Also, they are kidding themselves if they think there will be any sort of attendance spike from moving up to CUSA. As we know at SMU, the following schools bring about 75 fans to games here in DFW:

Marshall
ECU
Rice
Tulane
UAB
So Miss

They might get a little bump from Tulsa and UTEP. Everyone else will do nothing to help their attendance.