Thursday, January 27, 2011

Texas A&M Bolting to the SEC Is Just a Matter of Time

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Last week, the Texas Longhorns announced a partnership with ESPN that will bring the school just north of $12 million a year for the next 15 years after partnership fees are shared. That money is in addition to the substantial sums of money Texas extorted from its Big 12 brethren during last year's conference realignment shakedown. Make no mistake about it, we've entered a new era of college athletics, where once conferences were king now individual schools, in some cases, don't give a damn about anyone but themselves. Especially when those schools retain the all important local multimedia rights packages, as members of the Big 12 and SEC presently do. The Big Ten and Pac-12 schools have given up those rights.

As a result of the new network deal, ESPN gains the right to create a Texas Longhorn-specific network, the first of its kind. The programming is far from must-see television -- eight men's basketball games and one football game will take up about 20 hours of content -- but it will broadcast 8.740 additional hours of programming a year -- 8,740! It was trendy to make fun of the Big Ten Network's schedule early on, but the Big Ten Network actually carries a ton of games that your average fan would care about.

It's possible the Texas Longhorn network won't turn down a single pitch idea. Meaning Texas is probably going to be the first school in history to be able to offer television shows to assistant coaches.

 

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