This is the stupidest argument in the history of Boneyard arguments. EVERYONE can schedule like the NFL, unless there is a league who's fans are reverse vampires and can't watch a game after sunset. 12, 3:30 and night. Yeah, the ACC and SEC don't do this every week. The Big East can play a game at 7 or 8 pacific time.... so could the WAC or Mountain West and nobody gives a damn about them. Half the time it would include San Diego State anyway, unless you are going to allow Boise State to play a 14 game home schedule.
ESPN has the lead in internet, mobile, online...and viewers. ESPN does regional broadcasts on the night games by the way - depending on where you live you get reverse mirrors of the ABC games. So people watching ESPN in different parts of the country are seeing different games.
Here is the ESPN schedule from a random week in 2011 - week 9.
12:00
Michigan State @ Nebraska - ESPN
Purdue @ Michigan - ESPN2
NC State @ Florida State - ESPNU
3:30
Oklahoma @ Kansas State - ESPN
Wake Forest @ North Carolina - ESPNU
7:00
Ole Miss @ Auburn - ESPNU
7:15
South Carolina @ Tennessee - ESPN2
8:00
Wisconsin @ Ohio State - ESPN
Please tell me what combination of Big East games is going to compete with that lineup. You could play SMU/UCF in my back yard and I'd rather watch Wisconsin/Iowa State or Michigan State/Nebraska.
By listing each channel, that is the only channel carrying each game coast to coast, in each time slot, you've made my point for me. But your too full of negative wind and energy and disdain for the big east to realize it. Or maybe just too thick.
To Dan97.....on the right track. What a regional programming system set up like NBC appears to be structuring, you don't have to take UCF and/or USF and put them head to head to Florida and Florida St. If Florida and FSU are playign at 12:00 and 3:30 respectively EST, you schedule USF / UCF to play at 2:00PST for example.
IF Texas is playing at 2:30 PM CST, you schedule Houston to play 3:30 PM PST @ SDSU, and you avoid going head to head regionally in the market.
BUT - the key is you need to have a single network that is regionally based. NBC sports could carry USF/Boise at 8:00PST and avoid head to head broadcasting with FL and FSU playing earlier in the day, and get that game broadcast to TExas and Pacific time zones, and Houston and SDSU can still play in primetime on the west coast, while UConn and Louisville were in primetime 3:30 time slot in the NYC, NewEngland demographic...and on and on. You'd need a big board with a big grid to lay it all out, but the flexibility to schedule across four time zones, and have regional broadcasts all under the same channel is exactly what the NFL does.
With 13-14 teams, especially once conference play starts, you have the very real potential to broadcast every single home team in a primetime college football saturday afternoon or evening slot within their own market.
It's all about the structure of the broadcasting platform. ESPN doesn't have it, and the conference is currently being set up by the Big East - to be broadcast exactly like that.
No other college conference can do it, because there is no other ocnference that can play games locally in all four time zones. You can't schedule every single game at 3:30pm and reach your local audience....unless you've got multiple channels trying to do it....that's the ESPN model - and it doesnt' work nationally for a multiple broadcasting arrangement to local regions.
What ESPN does have though, is the cyberspace broadcasting realm to work with, and the big east provides and excellent opportunity to create a platform to make that work coast to coast.
and don't forget about basketball in all of this, and multiple tiers of broadcasting.
BTW _ wouldn't surprise me at all if whaler11 worked for ESPN or something. The negative energy out of that guy is something else. In one sentence he's proclaiming that he's a diehard fan, and the next, everything about anything big east and UConn sucks.