Last week, I picked up on the Big East announcing their national broadcast schedule. In connection to it, there was Mike DeCourcy’s comment about how this new schedule points to another reason as to why the new Big East was going to be doomed. Since I do believe that to be true, I linked accordingly.

Well I still believe the new Big East is doomed in about 5 years, but this imbalanced TV schedule is more about perception versus reality. It is actually an improvement. This was the announced TV schedule from 2004-05 (more games were added during the season, but that is also likely this year as well).

Last year there were 12 teams. Between ABC/ESPN/ESPN2 the BE was scheduled for 49 appearances. Four teams (UConn, Pitt, Syracuse and ND) accounted for 34 of those appearances. That means 1/3 (33.3%) of the teams in the BE accounted for 69.4% of the appearances.

This year with 16 teams, there are 6 teams (UConn, Louisville, Cinci, Syracuse, ‘Nova and ND) with games on ESPN/ESPN2, accounting for 50 of the 75 appearances. In other words, 37.5% of the teams in the BE will account for 66.7% of the appearances.

It may not be a huge difference but it still shows a greater distribution of appearances among more teams this coming season versus last season.

Even when you add in the CBS games to complete the picture, the distribution is still a little better this year versus last.

2004-05: 46 appearances out of 62 total = 74.2% of all appearances by 4 out of 12 teams
2005-06: 62 appearances out of 86 total = 72.1% of all appearances by 6 out of 16 teams

The number of total appearances also increased slightly. 12 teams, 62 BE appearances is roughly 5.17 appearances per team in 04-05. With 16 teams and 86 BE appearances, that is 5.38 appearances per team in 05-06.

I’m usually happy to rip the BE, but they actually did a good job for the conference in getting games on national broadcasts for this upcoming season.