I guess there is still the accounting.
Let’s talk about this $2.3 million.
That’s the final tab that West Virginia, Connecticut, Pitt and Rutgers paid — each — for legal representation in a suit against Miami, Boston College and the Atlantic Coast Conference. It was a largely failed suit, given that the parties were asking for far more than the pittance they received after two years of haggling.
Or did it fail? Well, perhaps that’s a matter of opinion. And it’s one worth delving into given that $2.3 million is no small change.
West Virginia officials revealed last week that their part of the costs for the suit were a staggering $2,299,658.20. For the sake of simplicity, we’ll throw in the other $341.80 and round it up to $2.3 million.
From a purely bottom-line point of view, yes, it was a miserable failure. The four schools settled out of court just over a year ago for a reported $4 million, or $1 million each. That still leaves a deficit of $1.3 million per school.
Well hopefully the other side also had similar costs. The article makes the argument, that it was still worth it based on the other part of the agreement — 9 guaranteed and stipulated games.
What you can’t put a price tag on is the Big East getting nine non-conference BCS games handed to it. Remember, the mantra of this rebuilding football conference is to schedule quality games and start winning some of them. Getting those games was a huge piece of the puzzle.
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Well, if you look at the $1.3 million simply as a one-time expenditure, no, it wasn’t worth it. And you’ll be hard pressed to find an accountant who can make it look like anything but wasted money, given that the actual payback in the form of revenue from those court-mandated Big East-ACC games won’t show up for years to come.
But while both sides will benefit fairly equally from those games from a financial standpoint, the Big East needed them a lot more than the ACC. The league’s very football future hinges on playing games like that and proving it can win them.
That the ACC was forced to provide them with the forum to do so is, like the credit card commercial, priceless.
In case you forgot the terms and the games: WVU has a home-and-home with FSU, Rutgers gets Virginia, UConn faces UNC and Pitt in addition to the home-and-home with NC St. gets a home game against Miami in 2010.
Over in the Big 11, they have made it official with regards to their new deal with ABC/ESPN and the start-up of their own channel.
The new channel — which will be created in partnership with Fox Cable Networks — is expected to launch in August 2007, Big Ten commissioner James E. Delany said.
“It will be a destination for all things Big Ten,” Delany said.
The league also announced it has reached a new 10-year agreement with ABC and ESPN for coverage of football, men’s and women’s basketball and volleyball.
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The Big Ten Channel will be available to satellite and cable distributors nationwide and will be available through the Internet, i-Pods, cell phones and other technologies, the league said. DirecTV will offer the channel on its Total Choice package, which currently reaches about 15.4 million households, according to the news release.
“The Big Ten Channel will provide our conference the ability to strengthen both its brand and its long-term destiny as one of the leading academic and athletic conferences in the nation,” Delany said.
The new cable channel will carry not only football and basketball, but also such sports as soccer, tennis, swimming and diving and wrestling — the so-called Olympic sports, the conference said.
The Big Ten channel will carry more than 35 football games, at least 135 basketball games, at least 55 women’s basketball games and 170 contests in such sports as tennis, wrestling, baseball, swimming and diving, and gymnastics.
With the Mountain West’s channel launching soon and now the Big 11 following suit, and lots more exploration of multiple media delivery outlets I am wondering about the Big East. What is the Big East doing with regards to its growth and exploiting of the strong media markets it likes to talk about occupying?
The Big East loves to pat itself on the back for its innovation as being one of the first to recognize the value of ESPN and cable TV exposure. The thing is, in the last 15 years all it has done has been to react.
Whether it’s conference expansion, being raided, oversized expansion, and a crap load of things with regards to media exposure the Big East hasn’t shown any urge or instinct to be proactive in what it is doing. Maybe part of that is the fact that its member schools rarely like proactive things.
It took Pitt until 2004 or so before it finally got around to producing a weekly propaganda sports show to highlight the school athletics. Hell, Lehigh even had one going before Pitt.
It’s a real concern to me that this conference seems to lack any foresight or desire to try and see what is coming. All it seems to do is react and get into a defensive stance.
This next TV deal is supposed to be for a lot of money, and that’s great. But does it consider the distribution of content in other ways? Does it take into account possible broadband video and audio distribution, podcasts and whatever else is next? Or did it all get left in a vague terms that would require a lawsuit later to resolve actual ownership, distribution, fee rights and such?
Does the Big East, the school presidents and ADs even care?
