(05-05-2016 06:31 AM)allthatyoucantleavebehind Wrote:  I also don't see why a B12N conference can't happen for the other 11 teams in the future B12? Three Texas schools plus OU/OkSt would certainly get enough eyeballs in Texas...and the smaller states (Kansas and Oklahoma particularly) would sign on. The PROBLEM with the B12N (minus UT) is that it'd be the laughing stock of conference networks...and that's saying something since the ACC is STILL waiting on theirs and the P12N is pathetic. That said, it could get those 11 schools more money than what they are currently getting and that would be worth it...if you're willing to swallow some pride.

Oklahoma brings in 7M from tier 3 content. The SEC network is paying about 7.5M per school. The PAC is paying out 1-2M per team for the PAC12 network. The remaining 8 non-UT BigXii members are bringing in between 3-6M apiece for their independent tier 3 contracts.

The BigXii network would have to pay out closer to the SEC network than the PAC just to meet the status quo. That seems highly improbably based on the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Iowa.

(05-05-2016 07:46 AM)MWC Tex Wrote:  

(05-04-2016 10:45 PM)Wilkie01 Wrote:  The real question is does Kansas and Oklahoma have the balls to leave the Big 12?

My guess is Yes.

IMO the Big 12 in on life support, it’s only a matter of when it implodes not if. The programs who have options will start exploring them.

Oklahoma gets tired of the BS and bowing down to Texas and the Longhorn network and grabs OK State in a package deal to the SEC to top that conference off at 16.

The BIG offers a high profile conference, academic peers, lots of money and a soft landing spot for Texas. Kansas tags along and the BIG tops off at 16.

That leaves TCU, Texas Tech, WVU, Kansas State, Baylor and Iowa State scrambling for new homes or looking for new tenants. History repeating itself with the old Big East?

This is the time for the B12 schools to rise up against Texas. This conference isn't just Texas and OU anymore. Texas (and OU) could leave and you would still have strong foundation with the emergence of Baylor & TCU.

EAST: ISU,WVU, UC, UCF, USF, Memphis
WEST: TCU, Baylor, OSU, KSU, KU, TT

(05-04-2016 10:22 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(05-04-2016 09:47 PM)bearforce Wrote:  Not sure how ESPN or UT can enforce the don't appear on any other conference network if it's a road game where the home team holds the rights if the game is tier 3.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

adcorbett's claim is pure fiction. I don't know why I bothered to skim the contract, but I did. There doesn't appear to be any clause anything approaching what he claims. They won't try to enforce something that doesn't exist in the contract.

"Pure fiction." my ass. What would you call this?

Texas Contract With ESPN

Quote:Exclusion from Conference Network: The contract essentially excludes Texas from any Big 12 Network that might be created. Personally, I don’t see that network ever coming to fruition. Regardless, any ill will over this should be directed at the conference, not at Texas or ESPN. The conference could have prevented teams from forming their own network. It’s one of the reasons floated around for why Texas didn’t go to the Pac-12. Why didn’t the Big 12 prevent the Longhorn Network? Because Texas would have left.

This was written after the LHN contract was signed, but before ESPN and Fox redid their Big 12 contracts to split the tiers. Now who knows if any of this has changed since then, but there is no way in hell it is "pure fiction."

My memory is pretty good (most of the time), and I distinctly remember it coming up, that the language did not allow them to be on any other conference network, because we wondered then how they planned to enforce that, but that it would be an obstacle against Fox, presuming they were a Big 12 Network partner, from selecting Texas road games in the same vein as ESPN does with Texas home games, specifically to move to the Big 12 Network, as way to try and build it up. But however it works out, it certainly came from actual reported data, not "pure fiction." Might be a good idea to not be so homerish and getting so offended so easily.

edit: here is the additional info, as it comes from right here in our very archives. . There were some who had different interpretations of what it mean, but it certainly was not pure fiction

ESPN/UT Contract Hoopla

The except in question


Again the interpretations may not be 100% accurate, as it is from armchair lawyers and bloggers, but I did not make that up, and it is not "pure fiction."

(05-05-2016 08:48 AM)SteveUCF19 Wrote:  This is the time for the B12 schools to rise up against Texas. This conference isn't just Texas and OU anymore. Texas (and OU) could leave and you would still have strong foundation with the emergence of Baylor & TCU.

EAST: ISU,WVU, UC, UCF, USF, Memphis
WEST: TCU, Baylor, OSU, KSU, KU, TT

Agree this could happen.

What the timing of the tentative B1G/Fox deal suggests to me is that what the biggest players in the college football market are coming to realize is that all this competitive bidding is sub-optimizing for all of them.

I don't think that either ESPN or Fox has the stomach for an exclusive lock on all the games of any conference. Even if they negotiate exclusive rights, they wind up parceling out some of those rights to other outlets anyway. I could see ESPN and Fox essentially teaming up with both the SEC and B1G after their deals sync up in six years. Mutually skim the parts of those conferences they really want, and then let others fight over the crumbs - not just the crumbs from the B1G/SEC table but all the other conferences as well, including the other three P5's.

That also suggests to me some sort of agreement for dividing the most attractive brands not currently in one of those two leagues and controlling (and limiting) the future expansion process. If they mutually agree they should both stop at 16 members, then there are four national brands you want to rationally parcel out between the two. They probably already have a pretty good idea who those four brands would be.

My money is on Oklahoma, Texas and Florida State as good bets to be in the final four. The last spot is wide open IMO.

(05-05-2016 09:52 AM)ken d Wrote:  What the timing of the tentative B1G/Fox deal suggests to me is that what the biggest players in the college football market are coming to realize is that all this competitive bidding is sub-optimizing for all of them.

I don't think that either ESPN or Fox has the stomach for an exclusive lock on all the games of any conference. Even if they negotiate exclusive rights, they wind up parceling out some of those rights to other outlets anyway. I could see ESPN and Fox essentially teaming up with both the SEC and B1G after their deals sync up in six years. Mutually skim the parts of those conferences they really want, and then let others fight over the crumbs - not just the crumbs from the B1G/SEC table but all the other conferences as well, including the other three P5's..

Something tells me the Big Ten structured their deals to prevent such a thing from happening. I couldn't tell you how, but I think they made it a point to ensure ESPN and Fox could not team up (maybe a provision against sublicensing) and be able to pay them less, since they would not be competing against each other.

I'm sure ESPN would love for texas to go solo to the ACC with ND football joining, than convert the LHN into the ACC network. I guess they could shift 2 acc school's into the SEC and that would open up 2 more spots in the ACC for maybe baylor/tcu and WVU. The other option is to send texas to the pac 12 with 3 texas partners and take a piece of the pac 12 network. In that case, give the big 10 OU and KU so fox is somewhat happy.

As a fan of an ACC school, that would obviously be a good thing to help solidify some OOC schedules. But much like with Oklahoma, at the end of the day, I just don't see how moving conferences really benefits Texas, unless it was a move of pure spite.

(05-05-2016 09:49 AM)Wilkie01 Wrote:  

(05-05-2016 08:48 AM)SteveUCF19 Wrote:  This is the time for the B12 schools to rise up against Texas. This conference isn't just Texas and OU anymore. Texas (and OU) could leave and you would still have strong foundation with the emergence of Baylor & TCU.

EAST: ISU,WVU, UC, UCF, USF, Memphis
WEST: TCU, Baylor, OSU, KSU, KU, TT

Agree this could happen.

How much TV cash would this new conference command?

(05-05-2016 09:25 AM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(05-04-2016 10:22 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(05-04-2016 09:47 PM)bearforce Wrote:  Not sure how ESPN or UT can enforce the don't appear on any other conference network if it's a road game where the home team holds the rights if the game is tier 3.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

adcorbett's claim is pure fiction. I don't know why I bothered to skim the contract, but I did. There doesn't appear to be any clause anything approaching what he claims. They won't try to enforce something that doesn't exist in the contract.

"Pure fiction." my ass. What would you call this?

Texas Contract With ESPN

Quote:Exclusion from Conference Network: The contract essentially excludes Texas from any Big 12 Network that might be created. Personally, I don’t see that network ever coming to fruition. Regardless, any ill will over this should be directed at the conference, not at Texas or ESPN. The conference could have prevented teams from forming their own network. It’s one of the reasons floated around for why Texas didn’t go to the Pac-12. Why didn’t the Big 12 prevent the Longhorn Network? Because Texas would have left.

This was written after the LHN contract was signed, but before ESPN and Fox redid their Big 12 contracts to split the tiers. Now who knows if any of this has changed since then,but there is no way in hell it is "pure fiction." It came from somewhere, and this is a start. There are probably more details about it elsewhere, that has the specific language as opposed to a synopsis, but googling "LHN" and "conference network", even with other keywords, tends to get you mostly recent results about expansion, and would take too much time considering the point is rather moot.

My memory is pretty good (most of the time), and I distinctly remember it coming up, that the language did not allow them to be on any other conference network, because we wondered then how they planned to enforce that, but that it would be an obstacle against Fox, presuming they were a Big 12 Network partner, from selecting Texas road games in the same vein as ESPN does with Texas home games, specifically to move to the Big 12 Network, as way to try and build it up. But however it works out, it certainly came from actual reported data, not "pure fiction." Might be a good idea to not be so homerish and getting so offended so easily.

edit: here is more info on it. There was an entire thread on this board debating this. There were some who had different interpretations of what it mean, but it certainly was not pure fiction

ESPN/UT Contract Hoopla

The except in question


I think it is fair to debate how to interpret this, but pure fiction would not be one of them. IT is funny to read back and see myself on the thread, claiming the same thing (Don't know how they would enforce such a thing), but the source article (http://www.themidnightyell.com/) is the one who made the claim. Again the information may not be utterly correct, because it was armchair lawyers and bloggers interpreting it, but I did not make that up.

The LHN contract with ESPN is pretty simple, IMO, that even your average Joe can get some reasonable feel for how it works.

1) ESPN can't prevent Texas from moving to a different conference.

2) If Texas left to a different conference, the LHN will go with, but it can be merged with another network.

3) either party can terminate the contract and there are no liability payments.

IMO, it is crappy contract. Easy to break, easy to get out of, and not expensive to break from a liability perspective.

(05-05-2016 09:52 AM)ken d Wrote:  What the timing of the tentative B1G/Fox deal suggests to me is that what the biggest players in the college football market are coming to realize is that all this competitive bidding is sub-optimizing for all of them.

Absolutely it is, and not just in college sports. The networks let the NFL rob them blind. Their NFL deals are big money losers for each of them, but they do it out of a paranoid fear that the next NFL deal will leave them without a piece. The new NBA TV deal, which reportedly caused some agita among the Disney corporate suits, is a result of ESPN and Turner wildly overpaying, and setting themselves up to lose a lot of money, just to keep Fox from getting NBA rights.

Sooner or later the light bulb will go on over the TV executives' heads, and they'll figure out that exclusivity is too high a price to pay. Especially for ESPN and other cable/satellite channels that have been losing 3% of their subscribers each year and will be very lucky if they lose only 3% each year going forward.

ESPN, especially, has to be careful not to make the same mistakes as the big airlines that spent themselves into bankruptcy (sometimes more than once) because their execs were driven to offer the most flights to the most cities in the most countries, when they should have been concentrating on flights that make money.

So the LHN is easy to break, how about the Big 12 GOR? My guess for most likely landing spots for texas is

1) pac 12
2) ACC

i put very little odds on texas joining the big 10 or SEC.

(05-05-2016 10:44 AM)Nebraskafan Wrote:  The LHN contract with ESPN is pretty simple, IMO, that even your average Joe can get some reasonable feel for how it works.

1) ESPN can't prevent Texas from moving to a different conference.

2) If Texas left to a different conference, the LHN will go with, but it can be merged with another network.

3) either party can terminate the contract and there are no liability payments.

IMO, it is crappy contract. Easy to break, easy to get out of, and not expensive to break from a liability perspective.

I think it "could" be merged into another conference, but Texas seems to (public) have zero interest in that. Which is odd because while the number of Texas fans I personally know is limited, I don't know anyone who seems to like LHN, fans or coaches. Seems like the administration is the only one obscenely happy with it.

(05-05-2016 10:50 AM)bluesox Wrote:  So the LHN is easy to break, how about the Big 12 GOR? My guess for most likely landing spots for texas is

1) pac 12
2) ACC

i put very little odds on texas joining the big 10 or SEC.

Compared to the GOR, yes, easy to break. The termination doesn't contain any huge obstacles.

(05-05-2016 10:48 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(05-05-2016 09:52 AM)ken d Wrote:  What the timing of the tentative B1G/Fox deal suggests to me is that what the biggest players in the college football market are coming to realize is that all this competitive bidding is sub-optimizing for all of them.

Absolutely it is, and not just in college sports. The networks let the NFL rob them blind. Their NFL deals are big money losers for each of them, but they do it out of a paranoid fear that the next NFL deal will leave them without a piece.

IIRC that was almost ALL ESPN's fault. They triggered the early renegotiation of the MNF package, years ahead of the expiration, and giving the NFL a big raise many years early, for seeming no reason other than to have the contract on their books when they negotiated their next round of carriage fees. This then pushed the NFL to squeeze the other networks to renegotiate early, and pay more money right now, for the rights they had already paid for, again seemingly for no reason. Then just because they are the NFL, after the NFL took the extra money, they then took a few games away from the Sunday afternoon networks, and created and then extended the Thursday Night football package, with games those networks had already just paid for. They then placed them year long on NFL Network, so the NFL could fleece cable companies for more in carriage fees.

Then just to show they truly give no *****, they then resold the very same games FOX and CBS already paid for, but were taken back, back to CBS and now to CBS and NBC, so they can have the privilege of broadcasting the same games they have now paid for twice, up against a simulcast of the game on NFL Network, whcih they keep on there only to justify the new carriage fees they negotiated, while CBS and now NBC only paid for them to keep from cannibalizing their own Thursday shows.

Yeah you are right. The NFL did fleece them.

(05-04-2016 10:45 PM)Wilkie01 Wrote:  The real question is does Kansas and Oklahoma have the balls to leave the Big 12?

They could. The challenge with Kansas and Oklahoma is small state populations relative to other schools. The benefit with Kansas and Oklahoma is national brands. They don't get much bigger than Kansas basketball and Oklahoma athletics.

(05-05-2016 10:59 AM)Nebraskafan Wrote:  

(05-05-2016 10:50 AM)bluesox Wrote:  So the LHN is easy to break, how about the Big 12 GOR? My guess for most likely landing spots for texas is

1) pac 12
2) ACC

i put very little odds on texas joining the big 10 or SEC.

Compared to the GOR, yes, easy to break. The termination doesn't contain any huge obstacles.

For sure the GOR would not be "easy" to break, but I think teams being allowed to retain their third tier rights puts a snag in the way the conference would attempt to punish a team that left. They would either have to put said teams' games in valuable Big 12 time slots, that would then be promoting the other conference - while still paying them, which is an absolute requirement to keep the GOR intact, despite the amendment to the Big 12 by laws, which was placed their specifically because they knew the GOR itself doesn't allow it - or they could choose to attempt to go the media blackout route, and not put the games on TV. Of course since teams' retain their third tier rights, that means the rights then revert back to the school, who could then do what they wanted with them.

That is why I don't think the GOR is a big deal to teams with power, Texas or Oklahoma, where other conferences might deal with the short term headache of the GOR that would eventually be negotiated out, but is very restrictive to the next level of teams, who do not provide the value to make it worth the hassle.

(05-05-2016 10:40 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(05-05-2016 09:49 AM)Wilkie01 Wrote:  

(05-05-2016 08:48 AM)SteveUCF19 Wrote:  This is the time for the B12 schools to rise up against Texas. This conference isn't just Texas and OU anymore. Texas (and OU) could leave and you would still have strong foundation with the emergence of Baylor & TCU.

EAST: ISU,WVU, UC, UCF, USF, Memphis
WEST: TCU, Baylor, OSU, KSU, KU, TT

Agree this could happen.

How much TV cash would this new conference command?

See the thread about the new CUSA deal for clues as to how much such a league could command. (Hint: it's a lot less than they are getting now.) My guess would be that they would get much closer to AAC money than ACC money.

(05-05-2016 09:25 AM)adcorbett Wrote:  

(05-04-2016 10:22 PM)bullet Wrote:  

(05-04-2016 09:47 PM)bearforce Wrote:  Not sure how ESPN or UT can enforce the don't appear on any other conference network if it's a road game where the home team holds the rights if the game is tier 3.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

adcorbett's claim is pure fiction. I don't know why I bothered to skim the contract, but I did. There doesn't appear to be any clause anything approaching what he claims. They won't try to enforce something that doesn't exist in the contract.

"Pure fiction." my ass. What would you call this?

Texas Contract With ESPN

Quote:Exclusion from Conference Network: The contract essentially excludes Texas from any Big 12 Network that might be created. Personally, I don’t see that network ever coming to fruition. Regardless, any ill will over this should be directed at the conference, not at Texas or ESPN. The conference could have prevented teams from forming their own network. It’s one of the reasons floated around for why Texas didn’t go to the Pac-12. Why didn’t the Big 12 prevent the Longhorn Network? Because Texas would have left.

This was written after the LHN contract was signed, but before ESPN and Fox redid their Big 12 contracts to split the tiers. Now who knows if any of this has changed since then, but there is no way in hell it is "pure fiction."

My memory is pretty good (most of the time), and I distinctly remember it coming up, that the language did not allow them to be on any other conference network, because we wondered then how they planned to enforce that, but that it would be an obstacle against Fox, presuming they were a Big 12 Network partner, from selecting Texas road games in the same vein as ESPN does with Texas home games, specifically to move to the Big 12 Network, as way to try and build it up. But however it works out, it certainly came from actual reported data, not "pure fiction." Might be a good idea to not be so homerish and getting so offended so easily.

edit: here is the additional info, as it comes from right here in our very archives. . There were some who had different interpretations of what it mean, but it certainly was not pure fiction

ESPN/UT Contract Hoopla

The except in question


Again the interpretations may not be 100% accurate, as it is from armchair lawyers and bloggers, but I did not make that up, and it is not "pure fiction."

Alright, really, really bad reading comprehension. They are talking about the content IMG controls which is UT home content as is stated in the clauses surrounding this one. And IMG can't take the content they sold to ESPN and sell it again somewhere else is all this says.