Quote:ESPN Unveils College Baseball Schedule

By Will Kimmey
March 24, 2005
ESPN, SEC DON'T AGREE
<a href='http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/news/050324espn.html' target='_blank'>http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/news/...050324espn.html</a>

Southeastern Conference games are conspicuously absent from the ESPN schedule. The league wanted ESPN to pay for the rights to televise the games, while ESPN felt the national exposure carried enough worth on its own.

"I can tell you our institutions pretty much decided that with no rights fee we were not going to be part of the package," SEC assistant commissioner Charles Bloom said. "We talked in our meetings that to increase national exposure of college baseball is a positive, and we feel our games are attractive for TV, but our institutions felt that they wanted a rights fee for them coming into stadiums and broadcasting games."

The Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big West, Conference USA, Missouri Valley or Pacific-10 did not require a rights fee to show games from the home parks of its members. (Because SEC member Louisiana State plays at Tulane, that game falls under the discretion of CUSA.)

ESPN had to work around previous television arrangements between conferences and other national, regional and local distributors. For instance, the Florida-based Sunshine Network signed on to show a large number of games involving Florida, Florida State and Miami prior to ESPN showing interest.

The SEC expressed hope that a deal could be worked out in the future.

"We'll just see how it goes," Bloom said. "Will there be SEC games (on ESPN) next year? Hopefully, we can get these things ironed out."

The National Hockey League's loss is college baseball's gain, as ESPN will televise regular-season games for the first time since 1990 in part as replacement programming.

ESPN unveiled a 2005 college baseball schedule that includes 29 games beginning April 8, with 16 games on ESPN or ESPN2 and 13 on its newest channel, ESPNU. At least two more games were planned but had not been confirmed.

ESPNU also will show games from two NCAA regional sites, and will televise super-regional games that are not seen on ESPN or ESPN2.&nbsp; College Sports Television planned to show 16 games plus one NCAA regional after finding success in showing the Stanford regional in 2004.

ESPN put together an impressive schedule, with highlights including 2004 College World Series champion and current No. 1 team Cal State Fullerton against Tony Gwynn's San Diego State club, '04 CWS finalist Texas against Alex Gordon and Nebraska, and Louisiana State against preseason No. 1 Tulane.

The advent of ESPNU and the exposure it provides college baseball should feed the sport's growth. It gets an initial boost from the ESPN and ESPN2 games as the network seeks replacement programming for time slots vacated when the NHL canceled its season.

"It comes at a time of need for us right out of the blocks," said Burke Magnus, ESPNU's vice president and general manager.

Magnus ranks baseball just behind football and basketball on the ESPNU priority list, terming it an "emerging sport" that he thinks can follow a similar path to that of women's basketball. ESPN began showing the women's Final Four in 1996 and subsequently added regular-season and postseason games as time has passed. The 2004 final between Connecticut and Tennessee set a record as ESPN's most-watched basketball game ever--men's or women's, college or professional. It averaged about 3.8 million households and held the record for nearly a month before a Pacers-Pistons NBA playoff game.

"Five or six years ago, women's basketball was not a TV property at all," Magnus said. "Now, by the time of the tournament, it's a big deal.&nbsp; The philosophy we took in women's basketball was to put the championship game on the biggest possible stage, and it all flows back from that."

ESPN acquired the rights to televise the CWS in its entirety beginning in 2003, the same year it also showed super-regionals for the first time. ESPN's coverage of the CWS championship series drew an average of 1.3 million households in 2004, a 7.4-percent increase from 2003.

The in-season coverage should help those numbers increase, and that coverage will expand in 2006, when ESPN plans to begin showing college baseball in mid-March (and possibly earlier). It should have a more diverse selection of games as well, after this year's schedule wasn't settled until after the NHL's cancellation. Many leagues had previous agreements with local or regional cable networks before ESPN entered the marketplace.

ESPNU is available on DirecTV and Adelphia cable, and Magnus said he expects deals with more cable companies to happen in the spring.

Boy, talk about a conference with it's head stuck up it's a** - but's that's OK... the ACC loves to see their teams on TV. :D

Interestingly enough, Comcast Cable shows SEC baseball games all the time. It'll be nice to be able to see a few more ACC games now than just the ones FoxSports has been showing.

Why would we want to want the second rate southern conference play baseball, especially when they're too chicken to play their backyard teams. When was the last time you saw LSU get some balls and play Tulane?

Florida plays Miami and FSU although several years ago they used to play 3 at home and 3 away in the same year, but chickened out and cut the games to just 2 or 3 a year... :rolleyes:

Of course, those games can be seen on Sun Sports (formerly SunShine Network). :D

It's the SEC...what do you expect? I mean, really? :crying: