RE: CBS Sportsline/BCS Revenue Sharing/BIG EAST/B1G/Pac 12/Rose Bowl take...
1. Interested, and "willing to pay 9 figures interested" are two different things. Word is they may not be as interested, in large part because of being offended because the BE turned them down. It had a large influence on them convincing the ACC to take Syracuse and UConn (which late became Pitt) and not so coincidentally why they encouraged the Big XII to take West Virginia.
2. This is true that they would love to keep BE basketball in some form, but it all depends on how the Big East sells it. The problem with this is the best way to keep ESPN interested is to break up the packages, but that is also the easiest way to ensure there is no bidding war, which drives down the price, especially for football. Also, unlike years past, ESPN now owns ALL of the ACC basketball package, which is getting bigger with two new additions, , but also has purchased additional basketball content from the Pac 12, SEC, and Big XII, plus carries more NBA than it used to (double headers on most Wednesdays and Fridays). It is not "as necessary" as it once was. Combined with the shift in power from the Big East to the ACC, and how ACC games actually draw higher ratings on average than the Big East,* the newfound depth of Big XII basketball, and you never know what they will want. ESPN already has much more content that it can show on three stations.
3. First off, the $20 million thought is not silly at all: in fact, it was the number the Big East was thinking when they turned down the ESPN offer, and before they completed expansion. The deal they turned down for was $13 mil per year, and that was not in an open market, did not include TCU or any other teams. And the BE has generally only played 1 game per year against ND where they control the TV rights, sometimes less. Home games at ND mean nothing for their TV value. It is funny that you think that adding "6 more games against these indies" means nothing, yet they were the top three teams the Big East has tried to add for a decade. I guess they just wanted throw money away, huh?
Not to rehash, because the argument became mostly irrelevant once Syracuse and Pitt left, but expansion to 12, under the old alignment, was not necessarily the optimal number for making money for the Big East IMO, as ten probably was, when you add in the non-football markets to the mix and extra basketball games they bring, which still makes the BE more money than football. That was before Boise seemed like a serious option. That said, the BE would have made a bigger splash in Texas with TCU and SMU, together, than TCU and another Texas school (Houston) trying to fend for themselves within their markets (note this was also before A&M left and brought the SEC into Texas). Likewise UCF creating a corridor with USF would be more valuable than trying to take on a new market and gain traction (at this time, the other perceived options were ECU, Temple, Nova, Memphis, and someone I am forgetting). What I was saying is that the 12 team lineup mentioned above, which would have had the bonus of adding to BCS busting teams to a conference in most of the major markets in the country, that had the best basketball conference and had somewhat redeemed its football image, that happened to be the only BCS league on the open market, would have done very similar to what the PAC 12 just did and had multiple networks bidding on it and driven the price very high. But that is neither here nor there.
* To be fair, I am not a fan of that stat, since the Big East has many more non-marquee games on national TV and ESPNU than anyone else, which drags down the "average" ratings for all Big East games. No other league gets games matching it's 12th best team versus its 14thg ranked team on national TV, which by virtue is going to draw less than if all of your national TV games feature your best team or your second best team, and you don't count total viewers. But that is the stat that is often quoted.
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