ACC Gets New TV Deal With ESPN

I think a few things worked in our favor here.

1) Fox deciding to get aggressive.
2) TBS from the Sport Business Journal article is said to be looking to expand its regular season basketball coverage and taking down the ACC blocks them from IMO the best b-ball conference around.
3) ESPN losing the NCAA b-ball tourney left them with a lot of money to spend.

Amazingly I think this deal may have been as much about basketball as football. No doubt if it was football only – ESPN could have proactively gone to the SEC and said – hey – add FSU, GT, Clemson and Miami and we’ll sweeten the pot to not only pay them off – but to give the rest of the SEC teams some walking around money. That would have saved ESPN a boat load of money IMO. Which means it wasn’t about football only.

The whole “Miami in decline” argument is universally rejected. Fans outside of FL, and casual FSU/Miami fans are unaware, and will argue tooth and nail with the evidence, mostly by cutting and pasting recruiting rankings from rivals and scout.

is only in comparison to where the Big 3 have been. If Miami is a 8-11 win team that is ranked anywhere from 15-25 that is a win for the ACC in comparison to where they have been. With smart scheduling even if they are the 3rd choice for kids in the state the Canes could be a lot like Leach’s Texas Tech teams were in the B12.

ESPN IMO does a much better job with college football than Fox. Better broadcasters – better editorial viewpoint during the broadcast (Fox seems to always get side tracked by stupid stuff like mascots, etc).

And ESPN is much more of a shaper of public opinion nationally which I think gets reflected in the media polls, etc.

Without ESPN in the bidding war, the B12 and P10 may get what Fox wants them to have because the network is in the driver’s seat.

They are Wolfpack for life after all!

We’re sorry for all the things we said about you during football season.

Even though the programs are down, FSU and Miami are still big time draws. The Big East doesn’t have anyone to match up. You also get FSU-UF and UGA-Ga Tech when the ACC teams are at home. ACC and Big East bball are near equal in worth but ACC football is worth much more than BE football.

ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU and ESPN3 are always options.

unless ESPN is willing to pony up and give them more money. But if it is taking Billion dollar+ contracts for them to keep conferences I can’t see them willing to redo contracts. Without that neither the SEC or ACC are about to expand just to cut down on the amount of money each school gets. If the SEC did it then suddenly they aren’t making more than the ACC. If the ACC did it then they would be way behind the SEC.

And nobody wants partial members. That, more than anything else, is what is slowly killing the Big East. Not only would a 20 team conference be hard to control and schedule, but the basketball only schools would feel like 2nd class citizens and they would be. The difference in payouts they received would be gigantic because of their lack of football. But most importantly both the ACC and SEC conference commissioners have said they don’t want to expand.

If ESPN wants to grab the Big East for basketball – they’ll just make an offer. They don’t need it to be part of the ACC.

I’m sure part of our deal with ESPN is that we will not form or explore an ACC network. Or maybe that point is moot because ESPN owns our TV rights for football and basketball – so we can form a network – but its going to have to be baseball and tennis and golf that we air on it.

I also think if the deal as reported is accurate that NO team will defect to the SEC now. There’s not enough motivation.

it might have something to do with not having a Raycom affiliate in all areas?

Fox is in the business of mind numbing with comedy

The SEC gets more from ESPN than they do CBS, also. Why can’t we sell the rest of our games to Fox (or anyone) instead of letting Raycom purchase them from ESPN? What money does the ACC get from Raycom?

$12 million per year. That’s almost 3X what the teams were making under the old deal. SEC schools get roughly $17 million each from their TV deals. That’s $ 5 Million more per SEC school per year, but the ACC closed the gap in somewhat major fashion.

Using just the ESPN numbers we got a really competitive rate.

Diluting the SEC share with FSU and miami taking part would show there is little reason for FSU to jump to the SEC now, with all the extra baggage and loss of ACC academic synergies which would go along with that.

Right now they are split with 8 teams that play football and 8 that don’t, stopping either side from running the conference when it comes to voting issues. But if they were to add more football members then they would have the majority to tilt every vote in favor of the football playing members. Georgetown and company will never vote to expand like that reason. Some of the basketball only members feel they would be completely fine if all the football playing members left anyway.

As for where the per team payout sits, we are third now and I think we end up there when all is said and done. The P10 might have a chance to challenge, because they are needed for all day football, but their time slot also hurts them because most of their late games are too late for half of the country. The B12, even with Texas and OU, is full of small markets and even if ESPN lost them the time slots they fill could be replaced with teams from the B10, ACC and SEC.