- Fox will continue its decade long partnership with the Cotton Bowl, signing on for another four years to televise the game. Part of the deal, now that the game has moved to Cowboys Stadium, is that the game will be played at night starting with New Year's Day 2011.
- The PAC-10 and Alamo Bowl have made it official. The conference will provide its top non-BCS bowl selection to the Alamo. The Alamo hopes to finalize the other half of the bowl, the Big 12, within a few weeks.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Bowl News
Two items:
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Week 1 Viewers Guide
Labor Day weekend is the start of the college football season. Its a mixed bag like in prior years where there are some decent games but a glut of FCS-FBS matchups.
All times Eastern
Thursday
Really, there is only one good game of note and you should stay up for it.
Oregon at Boise St. (ESPN HD, 10:15pm) - Chip Kelly's 1st game running the ship for the Ducks vs. a juggernaut in Boise St. Kellen Moore needs to avoid any form of the sophomore jinx to give the Broncos a marquee win as they attempt to again represent the non-AQ conferences in a BCS bowl.
Saturday
Minnesota at Syracuse (ESPN2 HD, 12pm) - Minnesota is coming off a two season stretch where they improved by six wins from 2007 to 2008. Doug Marrone, in his 1st season at SU, is hoping to make a similar leap with the Orange, his alma mater. Plenty of press for the Orange, from the culture changes at practice (more focus on conditioning) and who will be the QB (former Duke point guard Greg Paulus).
Georgia at Oklahoma St. (ABC HD/ESPN2 HD, 3:30pm) - An early season matchup of upper tier Big 12 and SEC teams and a rematch of a 2007 matchup than ended in a 35-14 victory for the Dogs in Athens. Oklahoma St. has made some marked improvements since then, but like a fair amount of the Big 12, it is more known for its offensive firepower than its defensive work. Georgia's balance could be the difference, but they'll need someone to step up to replace both Matt Stafford and Knowshon Moreno at QB and RB, respectively.
BYU vs. Oklahoma (ESPN HD, 7pm) - This one will be played at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington as part of an agreement between the Big 12, ESPN and the Cowboys to play an opening Big 12 non-conference game there every season. BYU's Max Hall vs. defending Heisman winner Sam Bradford is the QB battle and OU may be the most complete team in the nation, but BYU will not be a cakewalk as coach Bronco Mendenhall will have his team prepared, particularly on the defensive side of the ball.
Alabama vs. Virginia Tech (ABC HD, 8pm) - Another neutral site game and the game of the day involving two teams involved in BCS bowls last year. Virginia Tech's top RB had his year cut short and the Hokies will need to control the ground game to keep themselves within reach of the Tide. A blocked punt or two couldn't hurt.
Monday
Cincinnati at Rutgers (ESPN HD, 4pm) - Important conference game to start off the Big East season. Rutgers finished strong last year, winning their last seven including their bowl against NC State. Cincy won the Big East for the 1st time but lost the Orange Bowl to Virginia Tech. The key will be the Bearcats defense, which is almost entirely turned over at the starter level.
Friday, August 28, 2009
SU game times announced
http://suathletics.com/news/2009/8/28/FB_0828090323.aspx
I wrote the other day that I took them down and now I have a good reason. They are not being televised (yet) on Time Warner Cable, but they will be webcasted on SUAthletics.com
I wrote the other day that I took them down and now I have a good reason. They are not being televised (yet) on Time Warner Cable, but they will be webcasted on SUAthletics.com
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Conference TV Contract: The PAC-10
The PAC-10 has always taken flak for its TV deals, usually from those of us on the east coast. From games that start too late (not for me, but for others), broadcasting entities that some portions of the media will tell you that they can't find to a general lack of televised games available. Will these change over time or are the conference presidents and officers generally happy with the coverage.
http://www.mattsarzsports.com/2009/PAC-10.aspx
The PAC-10 has a contract with ABC for over-the-air coverage with some games on ESPN. The contract calls for 20 telecast windows and 6-8 of those windows can be national telecasts on ESPN. By allowing games on ESPN, the conference can have a few games scheduled on Thursday nights or part of Labor Day or Thanksgiving Friday coverage if it desires. When ABC televises a game at 3:30pm it is exclusive and no other PAC-10 game is available for telecast at that time. The PAC-10 contract with ABC is a five year contract and will end after the 2011 football season. ABC and ESPN can concurrently televise games, but this is the only scenario where ABC can coexist with a PAC-10 cable broadcaster. ABC also televises a fair number of PAC-10 games in their 8pm ET/5pm PT telecast slot, often on split telecast windows.
FSN is the pay-tv rightsholder for the conference and has national rights to 18 telecast windows. FSN sells off five telecast windows per season to Versus and keeps thirteen windows. In the early part of the decade, the five games that FSN has sold off to Versus belonged to TBS and before that they were syndicated on over-the-air networks in the PAC-10 footprint.
The games not chosen for national telecast revert back to the individual schoold to sell for regional telecast. Many of the regional rights holders are affiliates of FSN, but some are not:
One item missing from the PAC-10, particularly with the FSN and Versus games, is an accompanying webstream of the game. The ABC/ESPN games are often accompanied by an ESPN360 stream. Accoring to the FSN contract press release, FSN has new media rights, but it is unclear whether they can stream games live.
One of the interesting things about the PAC-10 is that they often have at least 50% of their ABC/ESPN and FSN/Versus telecasts chosen before mid-June. ABC/ESPN has to provide the conference the games the will televise and telecast windows where there will be a 6-12 day window selection by May 1st before the forthcoming season. FSN and Versus must then choose their game telecasts and selection windows before June 1st.
FSN also appears to have the ability to select specific games ahead of ABC. For example, the USC-UCLA game can be locked in for an FSN telecast one time every four seasons and was locked in for 2009.
As their contract is now at the halfway point, questions have risen as to where the PAC-10 should go next. The FSN portion of the television side continues to be derided and new commissioner Larry Scott, formerly of the WTA tour, has been given the charge of raising the conference profile. Rumors have come out about the conference partnering with the ACC to create some form of east coast-west coast network to try to increase the number of national telecasts. Others want to move more telecasts from FSN over to ESPN.
Whatever the PAC-10 decides to do, it will be interesting if it does indeed raise the profile of the conference east of the Mississippi beyond late night telecasts and the perception of USC and nine other schools.
http://www.mattsarzsports.com/2009/PAC-10.aspx
The PAC-10 has a contract with ABC for over-the-air coverage with some games on ESPN. The contract calls for 20 telecast windows and 6-8 of those windows can be national telecasts on ESPN. By allowing games on ESPN, the conference can have a few games scheduled on Thursday nights or part of Labor Day or Thanksgiving Friday coverage if it desires. When ABC televises a game at 3:30pm it is exclusive and no other PAC-10 game is available for telecast at that time. The PAC-10 contract with ABC is a five year contract and will end after the 2011 football season. ABC and ESPN can concurrently televise games, but this is the only scenario where ABC can coexist with a PAC-10 cable broadcaster. ABC also televises a fair number of PAC-10 games in their 8pm ET/5pm PT telecast slot, often on split telecast windows.
FSN is the pay-tv rightsholder for the conference and has national rights to 18 telecast windows. FSN sells off five telecast windows per season to Versus and keeps thirteen windows. In the early part of the decade, the five games that FSN has sold off to Versus belonged to TBS and before that they were syndicated on over-the-air networks in the PAC-10 footprint.
The games not chosen for national telecast revert back to the individual schoold to sell for regional telecast. Many of the regional rights holders are affiliates of FSN, but some are not:
- FSN Northwest: Oregon St., Washington St., Washington
- Fox Sports West/Prime Ticket: UCLA and USC
- Fox Sports Arizona: Arizona St.
- CSN Bay Area/California: California and Stanford
- Oregon Sports Network: Oregon
- Arizona Wildcasts Sports Network: Arizona
One item missing from the PAC-10, particularly with the FSN and Versus games, is an accompanying webstream of the game. The ABC/ESPN games are often accompanied by an ESPN360 stream. Accoring to the FSN contract press release, FSN has new media rights, but it is unclear whether they can stream games live.
One of the interesting things about the PAC-10 is that they often have at least 50% of their ABC/ESPN and FSN/Versus telecasts chosen before mid-June. ABC/ESPN has to provide the conference the games the will televise and telecast windows where there will be a 6-12 day window selection by May 1st before the forthcoming season. FSN and Versus must then choose their game telecasts and selection windows before June 1st.
FSN also appears to have the ability to select specific games ahead of ABC. For example, the USC-UCLA game can be locked in for an FSN telecast one time every four seasons and was locked in for 2009.
As their contract is now at the halfway point, questions have risen as to where the PAC-10 should go next. The FSN portion of the television side continues to be derided and new commissioner Larry Scott, formerly of the WTA tour, has been given the charge of raising the conference profile. Rumors have come out about the conference partnering with the ACC to create some form of east coast-west coast network to try to increase the number of national telecasts. Others want to move more telecasts from FSN over to ESPN.
Whatever the PAC-10 decides to do, it will be interesting if it does indeed raise the profile of the conference east of the Mississippi beyond late night telecasts and the perception of USC and nine other schools.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Note on Syracuse's game times vs. NU and Maine
Earlier you may have noticed that I posted the kickoff times for the Syracuse home games against Northwestern and Maine and that both would be televised on Time Warner Cable. Per a request from the school, I have removed those listings and those games once again appear in the Non-Televised List portion of the week three & four schedules.
I am complying with the request because the school has not officially announced the kickoff time & broadcaster for those games. I've let them know that my source for the listing of these games was the Time Warner Sports websites serving the Rochester and Central NY areas so that they realize that the information that I posted was on a publicly available website and not inside information. The Rochester site appears to have been asked to change the listings to TBD and has done so.
If/when these games are available for television, they will be reflected on the site.
Thanks.
Monday, August 24, 2009
Conference TV Contract: The MWC
The Mountain West has fought for BCS AQ access, paved the way for conference television networks and managed to get a couple wins in BCS bowls. They managed to leave ESPN of their own accord and live to tell about it. And they have the highest paying contract of all non-AQ conferences.
http://mattsarzsports.com/2009/MWC.aspx
The MWC and CSTV announced a partnership in late 2004 that was slated to start in 2006 and run for seven year. The MWC spurned ESPN's reported offer to stay on the network because ESPN intended to offer the MWC slots for football on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. The contract with CSTV covered all MWC sports and would also move the MWC off of Monday nights where they were part of the Big Monday basketball series. The schools were supposedly unhappy about the 10pm MT start times that those telecasts carried and wanted to get away from the 6-12 day windows where kickoff times were set by ESPN.
Two components were key to the agreement:
The MWC, by requesting its kickoff times be set before the season starts, has no in-season selection order for games. Versus takes on eight games, CBS College Sports (formerly CSTV) usually takes nine games (they have rights to 24 and the count is the sum of the Versus and CBS C games) and the mtn. takes the rest of the games. It appears that the conference has some sort of clause in their contract that makes sure each team appears at least once for a national telecast. The only downside to this is that the national telecasts can often match teams towards the middle or the bottom of the conference, while a key game could end up on a mtn. regional telecast.
One of the quirks of the television portion of the contract revolves around the BYU-Utah game. The game is often the highest profile game that the conference offers and it has been televised on multiple networks two of the past three years, though in 2008 it stayed exclusively with the mtn.
The one component that seems to be missing from the original CSTV-MWC agreement is the web streaming component. Outside of the games on CBS College Sports, games are not webstreamed. Only time will tell if that ever happens.
The MWC has the revenue and on-field comparisons that rival some AQ conferences. Computer rankings show a divide that exists between them and the other four non-AQ conferences. As their exposure rises through increased availability of their TV partners and their on-field performance as a conference continues to improve, the BCS may have a hard time ignoring them.
EDIT: The MWC has a 10 year deal with CBS College Sports. It is a 10 year, $120 million contract.
http://mattsarzsports.com/2009/MWC.aspx
The MWC and CSTV announced a partnership in late 2004 that was slated to start in 2006 and run for seven year. The MWC spurned ESPN's reported offer to stay on the network because ESPN intended to offer the MWC slots for football on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. The contract with CSTV covered all MWC sports and would also move the MWC off of Monday nights where they were part of the Big Monday basketball series. The schools were supposedly unhappy about the 10pm MT start times that those telecasts carried and wanted to get away from the 6-12 day windows where kickoff times were set by ESPN.
Two components were key to the agreement:
- CSTV, which had limited distribution, had to distribute eight football games to a national over-the-air network or national cable network. Supposedly the magic number for a network to be considered national was 70 million homes.
- CSTV would create a regional sports network for the conference, absorbing SportsWest Productions, which was a syndicator of WAC and MWC football broadcasts.
The MWC, by requesting its kickoff times be set before the season starts, has no in-season selection order for games. Versus takes on eight games, CBS College Sports (formerly CSTV) usually takes nine games (they have rights to 24 and the count is the sum of the Versus and CBS C games) and the mtn. takes the rest of the games. It appears that the conference has some sort of clause in their contract that makes sure each team appears at least once for a national telecast. The only downside to this is that the national telecasts can often match teams towards the middle or the bottom of the conference, while a key game could end up on a mtn. regional telecast.
One of the quirks of the television portion of the contract revolves around the BYU-Utah game. The game is often the highest profile game that the conference offers and it has been televised on multiple networks two of the past three years, though in 2008 it stayed exclusively with the mtn.
The one component that seems to be missing from the original CSTV-MWC agreement is the web streaming component. Outside of the games on CBS College Sports, games are not webstreamed. Only time will tell if that ever happens.
The MWC has the revenue and on-field comparisons that rival some AQ conferences. Computer rankings show a divide that exists between them and the other four non-AQ conferences. As their exposure rises through increased availability of their TV partners and their on-field performance as a conference continues to improve, the BCS may have a hard time ignoring them.
EDIT: The MWC has a 10 year deal with CBS College Sports. It is a 10 year, $120 million contract.
Conference TV Contract: The MAC
The Mid-American Conference has sat in the shadow of the Big Ten for much of its existence and after achieving a fair amount of success at the beginning of the 2000s, has fallen back in terms of national recognition. Ball St.'s 2008 regular season undefeated run was discounted by a less than stellar set of OOC opponents. The conference has went 2-10 over the last four bowl seasons. But it has upgraded its television contract slightly.
http://mattsarzsports.com/2009/MAC.aspx
In late January (one day before the commissioner who negotiated the contract stepped down), the MAC negotiated a new eight year contract starting with the 2009 season. The prior contract was a combined contract, like this one, for all MAC sports and generally 7-10 MAC games would air on ESPN/ESPN2 with additional games on ESPNU. The new contract calls for a minimum of eleven MAC games to air on ESPN Networks (six on ESPN/ESPN2, five on ESPNU) with additional games available to be selected by ESPN360. The conference championship game is also available for telecast on ESPN/ESPN2
The MAC has had vast majority of its ESPN/ESPN2 coverage on weeknights, along with some of its ESPNU coverage. A new quirk introduced into the scheduling of MAC games on ESPN is for two games to be scheduled on a weeknight, with the best game provided to the network that has the better coverage, ie (ESPN2 vs. ESPNU or ESPNU vs. ESPN360).
Starting with the 2007 season, the MAC began a package of regional telecasts in conjunction with ESPN Regional Television and that package will continue with the new contract. The package was developed to provide content to many of the local stations in the Big Ten/MAC footprint who lost games when the Big Ten created the Big Ten Network to replace ESPN Regional games.
The MAC has also placed several games for regional telecast on Fox Sports Ohio and Fox Sports Detroit. All other telecast rights revert back to the individual schools to use for local rights packages.
With the exception of the days where ESPN can choose between two weeknight games and place them on multiple ESPN outlets, no weekly selection order exists for the MAC, though ESPN can pick up additional games throughout the year. ESPN generally announces their national telecasts once the MAC releases its schedule for the year. The ESPN Regional games are announced close to mid-June and other telecasts trickle out throughout the summer.
The MAC has also partnered with JumpTV for its web presence and has an online streaming package called All-MACcess where all non-ESPN owned games are streamed live.
For the foreseeable future, the MAC is secure with national telecasts (albeit a rights fee that is rumored to be less than their WAC counterparts and comparable to what C-USA receives from ESPN) and a very solid syndicated package of games reaching the target MAC markets. The conference needs to continue working as individual schools at increasing their local and regional packages. Schools like Buffalo (Time Warner), Bowling Green and Toledo (Buckeye Cable) and Northern Illinois (CSN Chicago) have very strong regional packages, while the Michigan based schools and Ball St. which used to have games on the the Comcast Local regional channel have yet to replace those lost telecasts.
http://mattsarzsports.com/2009/MAC.aspx
In late January (one day before the commissioner who negotiated the contract stepped down), the MAC negotiated a new eight year contract starting with the 2009 season. The prior contract was a combined contract, like this one, for all MAC sports and generally 7-10 MAC games would air on ESPN/ESPN2 with additional games on ESPNU. The new contract calls for a minimum of eleven MAC games to air on ESPN Networks (six on ESPN/ESPN2, five on ESPNU) with additional games available to be selected by ESPN360. The conference championship game is also available for telecast on ESPN/ESPN2
The MAC has had vast majority of its ESPN/ESPN2 coverage on weeknights, along with some of its ESPNU coverage. A new quirk introduced into the scheduling of MAC games on ESPN is for two games to be scheduled on a weeknight, with the best game provided to the network that has the better coverage, ie (ESPN2 vs. ESPNU or ESPNU vs. ESPN360).
Starting with the 2007 season, the MAC began a package of regional telecasts in conjunction with ESPN Regional Television and that package will continue with the new contract. The package was developed to provide content to many of the local stations in the Big Ten/MAC footprint who lost games when the Big Ten created the Big Ten Network to replace ESPN Regional games.
The MAC has also placed several games for regional telecast on Fox Sports Ohio and Fox Sports Detroit. All other telecast rights revert back to the individual schools to use for local rights packages.
With the exception of the days where ESPN can choose between two weeknight games and place them on multiple ESPN outlets, no weekly selection order exists for the MAC, though ESPN can pick up additional games throughout the year. ESPN generally announces their national telecasts once the MAC releases its schedule for the year. The ESPN Regional games are announced close to mid-June and other telecasts trickle out throughout the summer.
The MAC has also partnered with JumpTV for its web presence and has an online streaming package called All-MACcess where all non-ESPN owned games are streamed live.
For the foreseeable future, the MAC is secure with national telecasts (albeit a rights fee that is rumored to be less than their WAC counterparts and comparable to what C-USA receives from ESPN) and a very solid syndicated package of games reaching the target MAC markets. The conference needs to continue working as individual schools at increasing their local and regional packages. Schools like Buffalo (Time Warner), Bowling Green and Toledo (Buckeye Cable) and Northern Illinois (CSN Chicago) have very strong regional packages, while the Michigan based schools and Ball St. which used to have games on the the Comcast Local regional channel have yet to replace those lost telecasts.
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