NCAAbbs

GreenSteve (on the C-USAbbs board) found this earlier this afternoon:

http://www.ajc.com/sports/content/sports...tract.html

As I commented on the same thread, Britton Banowsky needs to be talking to Raycom NOW. Even if there's nothing that could be announced or planned because of current contracts, he needs to let them know that C-USA is interested in doing buisness with them down the road.

Sliding C-USA into Raycom's Game of the Week package would provide more regional coverage than the slate of games CSS picks up.

College Football has officially sold its soul to the devil.

How much new facilities and etc can teams buy now? I can see it now, the latest recruitment tool by the SEC schools will be gold plated toilets for the athletes to poop in! "Boy, you want to play for UAB...they don't even have gold plated toilets to poop in much less our new brainwashing, um, psychology mental enhancement for football facility that was just built. Our new football pads are made of titanium to help protect your head and designed to be much lighter.

They might as well start paying the athletes like the NFL.

I just don't see how schools like TCU, UAB, UCF and etc. can manage to compete with the big schools. We could have sell outs everygame of the season and not come close to generating the revenue that these network contracts are generating.

It is really sad that football has come down to a money race.

To hell with 'em both.

I'd rather be sitting in the student section at LF in person anyway.

The SEC can thank the Big 10 for the cash. ESPN has stepped up to prevent another large conference from starting their own network.

That would still be about 1 billion dollars short for the Jefferson County Commission and their sewer fiasco.

The scary thing about this deal is the $4 million/year that Saban is paid is going to be the average salary for SEC coaches in a couple years. I wouldn't be surprised if he renegotiates his contract after 2010 or 2011 and is making upwards of $5 million/year.

I wouldn't be surprised if some of the Coordinators are making well over a million/year in a couple years.

This deal has many troubling aspects and I think a strong case can now be made as to how ESPN operates. It is obvious that ESPN only uses the smaller schools.

Exhibit A: ESPNU will now be the home of the 11:30 SEC games. When it was started we were told that ESPNU was going to be the home of the smaller schools that could not get their games on the main channels. So long Samford vs. Appalachian State and hello Ole Miss vs. Vandy.

Exhibit B: The use of C-USA in the formation of the PapaJohns.com Bowl only to be dumped so as to open up a slot for an SEC bottom feeder. So long 8-4 Southern Miss hello 6-6 Ole Miss.

There is only one way to stop this madness and that is to force ESPN off the standard cable tier of channels and on to the sports tier. In order to pay the SEC their Billions they force cable and satellite companies to pay ridiculously high subscriber fees. The vast majority of the television watching public could care less about sports on TV (I know this may come as a shock to those of us who enjoy sports coverage) and would drop the sports channels in a heartbeat if they knew they could lower their monthly cable bills by $5 to $8 a month. As long as ESPN can continue to hold the cable companies and their customers hostage then the madness will continue.

Call your congressman and demand a-la-cart cable pricing or get ready for your cable bill to go up so that you can help pay for the outrageous fees that ESPN is giving to the "Money Lords" of college sports.

A-la-carte cable is one of the few issues I agree with our current administration's FCC chairman on. Cable company muscling by ABC/ESPN is the reason your cable lineup may be clogged with Lifetime Movie Network and SoapNet. Of course, the issue gets even more complex when the cable channels getting muscled in are also owned [wholly or in part] by your cable operator, like in Comcast's case.

My idea: For $30 plus fees and local taxes, let me pick the ten cable channels I watch most. That's practically $3 per channel, way more than most channels get per subscriber currently. Throw in a C-SPAN or local cable channel at a discount. If I decide I want more, I'll gladly pay for it.

The SEC was seriously planning its own TV network. This was ESPN's way of preventing that. My understanding is that Fox Sports is on the verge of signing a similar deal with the Big 12, also because they are considering their own sports network. This deal by ESPN with the SEC will likely accelerate those discussions.

Even with the extra 20 million/year per school I guaran-DAMN-tee this won't reign in ticket price increases. Once the (money) train starts rollin' there's no stoppin' it. In the long term this will hurt college athletics. I don't want to hear another word about "student-athletes". They are simply cash cows on the ranch. At some point people will realize they can watch the game at HOME(which is what ESPN wants) and actually go to games of CUSA and other non-BCS schools.

Aaaaannnnd the rich get richer. What a surprise.

So does this mean that 1/2 the games on TV every weekend are going to be SEC? CBS and ESPN? And ABC, too?

According to the AJC article that was linked, the 11:30 game will be produced by ESPN Regional and broadcast on the channels that are currently broadcasting the Raycom game. That means the 11:30 game will not be on ESPNU, but on the same channels it is on now. The only thing changing will be the logo at the top corner of the screen. That also means that if CUSA wanted to partner with Raycom, they would have to find another station in every city to broadcast the game. Right now, channel 21 broadcasts it. I can guarantee you that they will go with ESPN and the SEC next year, so Raycom would have to convince someone else in town to pick up their game- which will be putting a CUSA game head to head with an SEC game. Good luck making that sales pitch.

Here is the quote from the AJC article regarding ESPNU and Raycom

Here comes the cable bill increase, so we can all pay for the SEC contract!