In case you haven’t been following the Big Ten’s TV rights negotiations—and I do hope you’ve had better things to do—the most significant development is that the league will be leaving ESPN. The Big Ten will instead cast its lot with Fox, CBS, and NBC.
Big money involved, lots of moving parts, etc. etc. But I couldn’t help but ponder what this means for me, the fan of an ACC school—the league with the ESPN contract. ESPN’s current deal with the Big Ten has it televising about two Big Ten games per week during football season.
Those slots are going to be opening up, so perhaps this means more ACC games on the Worldwide Leader’s linear networks? Maybe the ACC’s weekly pecking order of games will move up a notch, so fewer of them are relegated to Bally/RSNs? If so, that’s good news for us, the fans, because ESPN’s game productions are superior to those regional networks—or any other network, for that matter.
So we got that going for us! (Potentially.) In any case, I’d rather be watching my team’s games on an ESPN network instead of Fox/CBS/NBC. Especially NBC. Mike Tirico’s probably gonna lock up twice a quarter, dizzy with disorientation as he realizes once again that he isn’t calling a Notre Dame game. I’m sure the money is nice, though.
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