Post by elp525 on May 18, 2010 4:21:03 GMT -5
May 17, 2010
By Dave Hickman
Staff writer
MORGANTOWN - The next time someone tries to float the argument that West Virginia should be considered a prime target for anyone's conference expansion plans because of its successful athletic programs, well, now there's another point of fact that blows that argument out of the water.
Not that there needed to be another, mind you.
It's like athletic director Ed Pastilong was saying last week. Power programs have nothing to do with this.
"Look at the Director's Cup standings. We were 12th in the country through the winter sports,'' Pastilong said, referring to the all-sports rankings of all Division I schools. "If you're going to go out looking for teams to make you stronger, there aren't many schools with our resume.''
And the latest piece of evidence to illustrate how meaningless success really is? How about the ACC's brand spanking new television contract?
According to the Sports Business Journal, it's worth $1.86 billion over the next 12 years to televise ACC football and basketball games.
It's roughly twice what the ACC was getting in its current contract that expires at the end of the coming school year.
It will pay each of the 12 ACC members in the neighborhood of $13 million per year. That's more than twice the current sum of just under $6 million.
Oh, and here's the kicker. It's more than the ACC was asking. The league was hoping to get something that averaged around $120 million per year, or $10 million per school. But when Fox joined the bidding, ESPN ponied up a reported $155 million per year.
And this for a conference football package that features a league with exactly one BCS bowl victory in the last 10 years and a league championship game that more often than not since its inception has been an abject box office failure.
Now before the ACC faithful begin defending the league (or, I'm sure, marching out comparisons to the Big East), just stop. That's not the point. Maybe your schools play a terrific brand of football. Maybe it's even SEC quality in hibernation while Miami and Florida State get their collective acts together. I don't know. I don't care.
The point is that given the state of the current economy and the unquestionable state of ACC football as something less (at least so far) than the juggernaut that was expected after its own expansion, who could have imagined doubling its annual television rights fees? Shoot, not even the ACC, which was openly hoping for less than what it received.
Sure, basketball played a
part, especially Duke-North Carolina. But there's got to be more to it than two games a year. And granted, ACC basketball as a whole is a valuable television commodity. But in a business driven by football, it still doesn't explain the enormity of the contract.
What probably does explain it are two things. First, there's ESPN with all that air time to fill and all that money to spend after losing out to CBS and Turner in its bid to grab the NCAA basketball tournament. Throw in competition from Fox and you have a bidding war.
The second reason, though, seems just as compelling. And here's where we get back to strength of athletic programs meaning very little in the big picture. It's all about markets and footprints and all those other terms the TV and conference people throw out there these days.
The ACC, by measures known only to those who, well, measure such things, has a television footprint in 25 percent of the households in America. To those who argue that West Virginia or any other school would be logical or beneficial to the ACC (or any other league) need to dismiss any discussion of how strong the football or basketball programs are or how the school would be a geographical fit.
It's not about that. If the ACC can double its television money without expansion and with, as its calling card, what seems to most only a lukewarm football product, then what possible reason is there to go adding a school that adds nothing to that television footprint?
To paraphrase James Carville, it's the television, stupid. All of those other things (particularly successful athletic programs and fan bases) might be compelling arguments in a perfect world, but not in this one.
The logical next question, of course, is how the new ACC contract will affect other leagues. The first reaction by fans of the Big East or West Virginia will be one of outrage as to why the league can't do the same.
Well, there's one really good reason at the top, which is that the ACC's current contract expires after next season and the Big East's not until 2013. Next up in the pecking order are the Big 12 and the Pac 10, whose television agreements expire in 2012. Those two have talked about partnering in talks with the networks, but don't expect anything concrete there until the Big Ten slams down its expansion hammer and we see where all the pieces end up.
Where anyone ends up, though, would seem to have less to do with how successful their programs are than how marketable they might be.
By Dave Hickman
Staff writer
MORGANTOWN - The next time someone tries to float the argument that West Virginia should be considered a prime target for anyone's conference expansion plans because of its successful athletic programs, well, now there's another point of fact that blows that argument out of the water.
Not that there needed to be another, mind you.
It's like athletic director Ed Pastilong was saying last week. Power programs have nothing to do with this.
"Look at the Director's Cup standings. We were 12th in the country through the winter sports,'' Pastilong said, referring to the all-sports rankings of all Division I schools. "If you're going to go out looking for teams to make you stronger, there aren't many schools with our resume.''
And the latest piece of evidence to illustrate how meaningless success really is? How about the ACC's brand spanking new television contract?
According to the Sports Business Journal, it's worth $1.86 billion over the next 12 years to televise ACC football and basketball games.
It's roughly twice what the ACC was getting in its current contract that expires at the end of the coming school year.
It will pay each of the 12 ACC members in the neighborhood of $13 million per year. That's more than twice the current sum of just under $6 million.
Oh, and here's the kicker. It's more than the ACC was asking. The league was hoping to get something that averaged around $120 million per year, or $10 million per school. But when Fox joined the bidding, ESPN ponied up a reported $155 million per year.
And this for a conference football package that features a league with exactly one BCS bowl victory in the last 10 years and a league championship game that more often than not since its inception has been an abject box office failure.
Now before the ACC faithful begin defending the league (or, I'm sure, marching out comparisons to the Big East), just stop. That's not the point. Maybe your schools play a terrific brand of football. Maybe it's even SEC quality in hibernation while Miami and Florida State get their collective acts together. I don't know. I don't care.
The point is that given the state of the current economy and the unquestionable state of ACC football as something less (at least so far) than the juggernaut that was expected after its own expansion, who could have imagined doubling its annual television rights fees? Shoot, not even the ACC, which was openly hoping for less than what it received.
Sure, basketball played a
part, especially Duke-North Carolina. But there's got to be more to it than two games a year. And granted, ACC basketball as a whole is a valuable television commodity. But in a business driven by football, it still doesn't explain the enormity of the contract.
What probably does explain it are two things. First, there's ESPN with all that air time to fill and all that money to spend after losing out to CBS and Turner in its bid to grab the NCAA basketball tournament. Throw in competition from Fox and you have a bidding war.
The second reason, though, seems just as compelling. And here's where we get back to strength of athletic programs meaning very little in the big picture. It's all about markets and footprints and all those other terms the TV and conference people throw out there these days.
The ACC, by measures known only to those who, well, measure such things, has a television footprint in 25 percent of the households in America. To those who argue that West Virginia or any other school would be logical or beneficial to the ACC (or any other league) need to dismiss any discussion of how strong the football or basketball programs are or how the school would be a geographical fit.
It's not about that. If the ACC can double its television money without expansion and with, as its calling card, what seems to most only a lukewarm football product, then what possible reason is there to go adding a school that adds nothing to that television footprint?
To paraphrase James Carville, it's the television, stupid. All of those other things (particularly successful athletic programs and fan bases) might be compelling arguments in a perfect world, but not in this one.
The logical next question, of course, is how the new ACC contract will affect other leagues. The first reaction by fans of the Big East or West Virginia will be one of outrage as to why the league can't do the same.
Well, there's one really good reason at the top, which is that the ACC's current contract expires after next season and the Big East's not until 2013. Next up in the pecking order are the Big 12 and the Pac 10, whose television agreements expire in 2012. Those two have talked about partnering in talks with the networks, but don't expect anything concrete there until the Big Ten slams down its expansion hammer and we see where all the pieces end up.
Where anyone ends up, though, would seem to have less to do with how successful their programs are than how marketable they might be.
