Why we left...

[CL82]

no rivalry can match cash? i guess not if you're a prostitute.

ehh................ let's show some class.

Res ipsa loquitur.

 

[CL82]

The ACC’s contract with ESPN, which is valued at $155 million a year, contains a standard line called a “composition clause” that allows either the conference or ESPN to reopen the deal if membership increases or decreases by at least two schools. The conference or the network can act on that clause any time the conference’s membership changes by at least two schools.

Do we have one these in our contract?

 

[The Funster]

Don't blame SU for going. Don't like that it took everyone by surprise.

 

[Murph]

Don't blame SU for going. Don't like that it took everyone by surprise.

Don't like that we aren't going with them.

 

[uconndogs]

Did this guy really post on this board to tell us that Syracuse left for the money?

Good lord, what an utterly useless use of electrons.

It gets dark at night..........no !

 

[gabect]

http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2011/09/26/Colleges/ACC.aspx

If you read that and do the math, that's approximately $15m per year, per school. That means updated practice facilities for all sports, updated game facilities for all sports and better pay to retain quality coaches. If that means we lose a game or two in NYC, so be it.

No rivalry can match that.

Please go back to your own board, thx.

 

[noeynox]

Don't blame SU for going. Don't like that it took everyone by surprise.

These things usually are a surprise. I think they tend to happen more in this fashion than the way Texas A&M did it. That is why the more news got out that UConn/Herbst was meeting/talking with other conferences, the clearer it became we weren't going anywhere in the short term.

 

[fasko]

http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2011/09/26/Colleges/ACC.aspx

If you read that and do the math, that's approximately $15m per year, per school. That means updated practice facilities for all sports, updated game facilities for all sports and better pay to retain quality coaches. If that means we lose a game or two in NYC, so be it.

No rivalry can match that.

I can't believe it's all about the money. Hopefully, we will be joining you soon at the ACC to continue that rivalry.

I hope they aren't too rude there, you know how the new kid sometimes gets treated poorly. I have always admired your girl's team trying so hard against our ladies and being such good sports when they lost.

Good luck.

 

[NEforceUConn]

Do we have one these in our contract?

Thats the correct question. If BE had this clause why $@k didn't we expand by 2 a couple years ago. The year when WVU almost played for the NC game (Pitt beat them and ruined their undefeated season), is when the BE had some street cred.

If we had that clause and did not expand then we are really stupid.

 

[FfldCntyFan]

We'll be hoes too if given the opportunity. I have my fingers crossed.

Many of us (at least posters on this board) were willing to be hoes for the imminent contract we supposedly were in line to get. I guess somehow it is more honorable if you are the one receiving the big paycheck than if it is someone else.

 

[ZooCougar]

I also think Syracuse should take some of that lacrosse money and use it to not suck at football.

 

[upstater]

it's only sports is my thoughts exactly. they're hoping for get $15m/year, whereas we just turned down $11m/year. UConn just adopted a $1 billion annual budget (which by the way seems ridiculously high to me). i don't know what syracuse's will be, but to do all this for an extra $4 million/year? Cuse dropped their pants for pocket change. that's a cheap prostitute in my book.

A university's budget has a lot of fixed costs. Look at the research budget. That's money coming in. At UConn it's $300 million. You can't sit there and say, hey, we have a big budget! $300 million in research. That's fixed. You're contractually obligated to spend that money. No cuts allowed. So much of that $1 billion is impossible to cut. Take tuition. You're going to return 30% of tuition money to students in the form of financial aid (most schools average around 40%). That's another $100 million right there. After you factor in health insurance, police, buildings, etc., the general budget that may be fungible is closer to $100-150 million. That's why when the state cuts $30 billion, it hurts badly, and why a school losing $20 million on sports is bleeding. It's not chump change. That's a huge amount of money.

 

[mattp]

Thats the correct question. If BE had this clause why $@k didn't we expand by 2 a couple years ago. The year when WVU almost played for the NC game (Pitt beat them and ruined their undefeated season), is when the BE had some street cred.

If we had that clause and did not expand then we are really stupid.

if we had a clause like this, knowing that we were being paid way undermarket, and Tranghese/Marinatto failed to expand in the last couple of years, than we have a serious problem with the management of this conference. i always felt like people gave the Providence crew more blame than they deserved, but if they could have upped our contract $$ two years ago by adding a team or two and didn't, than they deserve every bit of scorn they get.

 

[mattp]

. After you factor in health insurance, police, buildings, etc., the general budget that may be fungible is closer to $100-150 million. That's why when the state cuts $30 billion, it hurts badly, and why a school losing $20 million on sports is bleeding. It's not chump change. That's a huge amount of money.

to be honest i think any school losing $20 million/year in athletics should shut their program down. i think it's ridiculous for a school to spend so much money on their athletics that they lose more than 10-20% of their general budget on athletics. if a school loses that much money on an extra curricular activity it needs to rethink it's priorities and scale back. but we're not talking about $20 million, we're talking about $4 million and it seems to me that much of that would be eaten up with the higher travel costs. that doesn't even take into account that our next contract would have likely been for quite a bit more than the $11 m we turned down. schools make decisions like this for money, but at the end of the day the money's not that great, and half the times it's still a losing investment, so what's the point really?

 

[06029]

F Syracuse and Pitt. The Big East had a huge payday coming from Comcast and Syracuse and Pitt screwed it up from everyone. Don't come here looking for support.

This has been your operating theory for a long time. Can you show me one article anywhere that deals with Comcast wanting the BE? If this were the case, why would teams walk away from this bonanza? Maybe they had better insight about TV contracts and what was going to happen than you do. More importantly, maybe they knew that the BB only schools were not willing to walk away from ESPN to go on a third rate cable channel for regular season and conference games. The BB's have an agenda too and you can bet that ND supported them and would do almost anything to keep NBC as their own network for FB.

 

[upstater]

to be honest i think any school losing $20 million/year in athletics should shut their program down. i think it's ridiculous for a school to spend so much money on their athletics that they lose more than 10-20% of their general budget on athletics. if a school loses that much money on an extra curricular activity it needs to rethink it's priorities and scale back. but we're not talking about $20 million, we're talking about $4 million and it seems to me that much of that would be eaten up with the higher travel costs. that doesn't even take into account that our next contract would have likely been for quite a bit more than the $11 m we turned down. schools make decisions like this for money, but at the end of the day the money's not that great, and half the times it's still a losing investment, so what's the point really?

What $4 million? The next contract isn't coming anywhere near $11 million. If the ACC is going to $18 million (the ACC averages $13 million now) you can bet the next BE contract will be closer to $8 million. UConn suddenly jumps into the black by moving into the ACC, and this is just the beginning as the 64 will start soaking up money all around once constituted.

 

[uconnbaseball]

If we join the Big 12, I wonder if that contract will be altered in any way? I sure hope not.

 

[mattp]

What $4 million? The next contract isn't coming anywhere near $11 million. If the ACC is going to $18 million (the ACC averages $13 million now) you can bet the next BE contract will be closer to $8 million. UConn suddenly jumps into the black by moving into the ACC, and this is just the beginning as the 64 will start soaking up money all around once constituted.

we were offered $11 million by ESPN earlier this year. we turned it down b/c we were in line to make more than that when we renegotiate. sure, we won't get that now, but if they stayed put in the Big East it was predicted we'd be getting $15 million or more. at the very least we'd have gotten more than $11 m. we were willing to continue at $8m or whatever we're getting now for two more years so you have to assume we expected to get a big enough increase to forego an extra $3m/year now. most reasonable assumptions were $15m or so. all of that's out the window now, but those are the numbers you have to look at to determine if it makes financial sense for Cuse to move from BE to ACC. our $15m versus the ACCs $18 m. and you have to keep in mind they have to pay us $5 m up front. after factoring in additional travel costs they moved for peanuts.

 

[RS9999X]

I'd like all the details into those negotiations incuding the media consultants who advised rejecting the offer and the team positions on that decision. We know where Pitt and WVU voted . I think the BE got Jerry Maguire as media consultant and the ACC got his protege Bob Sugar and we was snaked.

Hopefully, we fired Jerry Maguire.

 

[uconndogs]

we were offered $11 million by ESPN earlier this year. we turned it down b/c we were in line to make more than that when we renegotiate. sure, we won't get that now, but if they stayed put in the Big East it was predicted we'd be getting $15 million or more. at the very least we'd have gotten more than $11 m. we were willing to continue at $8m or whatever we're getting now for two more years so you have to assume we expected to get a big enough increase to forego an extra $3m/year now. most reasonable assumptions were $15m or so. all of that's out the window now, but those are the numbers you have to look at to determine if it makes financial sense for Cuse to move from BE to ACC. our $15m versus the ACCs $18 m. and you have to keep in mind they have to pay us $5 m up front. after factoring in additional travel costs they moved for peanuts.

The BE fotoball school Presidents and ADs absolutely screwed up. There is no way that they should have ever let the negotiations with ESPN take place without being aligned and committed to each other. That anybody is surprised that the ACC went this route and got two to jump is astonishing. Frankly, Hathaway was probably a lame duck and I doubt out interim president had the inclination to get into this quagmire. Swofford certainly must have realized he was dealing with a bunch of incompetents. Doesn't matter now.....he delivered the death blow.

 

[upstater]

we were offered $11 million by ESPN earlier this year. we turned it down b/c we were in line to make more than that when we renegotiate. sure, we won't get that now, but if they stayed put in the Big East it was predicted we'd be getting $15 million or more. at the very least we'd have gotten more than $11 m. we were willing to continue at $8m or whatever we're getting now for two more years so you have to assume we expected to get a big enough increase to forego an extra $3m/year now. most reasonable assumptions were $15m or so. all of that's out the window now, but those are the numbers you have to look at to determine if it makes financial sense for Cuse to move from BE to ACC. our $15m versus the ACCs $18 m. and you have to keep in mind they have to pay us $5 m up front. after factoring in additional travel costs they moved for peanuts.

I'm assuming they were not going to get more than $11 million and that's why ESPN decided to cut bait.

 

[nelsonmuntz]

What $4 million? The next contract isn't coming anywhere near $11 million. If the ACC is going to $18 million (the ACC averages $13 million now) you can bet the next BE contract will be closer to $8 million. UConn suddenly jumps into the black by moving into the ACC, and this is just the beginning as the 64 will start soaking up money all around once constituted.

I am skeptical about the ACC really going to $18 million. If that is the case, than ESPN committed to about an incremental $100 million a year for the next 10 years just to destroy the Big East? That seems a little silly. The Big East isn't that much of a threat that ESPN would pay another league a billion dollars to take us out, and not even really take us out. And if they are going to $18, then it indicates the market is still very strong and Comcast may get desperate and pay up.

 

[HartbeatHusky]

I am skeptical about the ACC really going to $18 million. If that is the case, than ESPN committed to about an incremental $100 million a year for the next 10 years just to destroy the Big East? That seems a little silly. The Big East isn't that much of a threat that ESPN would pay another league a billion dollars to take us out, and not even really take us out. And if they are going to $18, then it indicates the market is still very strong and Comcast may get desperate and pay up.

It's not about the Big East being a threat. It's about NBC/Comcast being one. With BCS college content they would be stepping up big time and could position themselves to better compete when the next round of rights negotiations start. Plus with Comcast's reach they could really put a dent in ESPN in the long term. Comcast already has regional sports networks in pretty much every major market.

 

[RS9999X]

Accordng to Swofford ESPN didn't commit to anything formal yet.

They are re-opening negotiations which involves the start date, extending the contact, third tier rights, new markets, and of course the new negotiations will be informed by the PAC deal and others. I imagine inking deals at MSG and Yankee Stadium will be part of all this and anything else that helps branding and EPSN might pay for.

They have a couple years to rework this deal and dot the i's and yes, I'm sure they have some guarantees from ESPN. .

Based on the last deal and the way it was reworked I'll guess $2 million more per team per year (no more when averaged over 10 years) plus the $15 for Pitt and SU after phase in which is $54 million tops per eyar and that includes the ACC extending and giving up some additional media rights. $2 million a team for 10 years is $20 million and that's not chicken feed It would pay for a practice facility over 20 years). Anything more seems foolish.

 

[upstater]

I am skeptical about the ACC really going to $18 million. If that is the case, than ESPN committed to about an incremental $100 million a year for the next 10 years just to destroy the Big East? That seems a little silly. The Big East isn't that much of a threat that ESPN would pay another league a billion dollars to take us out, and not even really take us out. And if they are going to $18, then it indicates the market is still very strong and Comcast may get desperate and pay up.

Work the numbers a little more.
$11 million to 9 BE members PLUS say another $3 million to an additional 8 bb-onlies. That's $123 million a year to the BE.
Then you look at the ACC and realize that $13 million was well below what, say, the Pac-10 was offered, so they had an undermarket arrangement. ESPN could stand to throw a few more bucks to the ACC anyway.
As I see it, that's $60 million more the already existing ACC members, plus an additional $14 million more to Pitt and Cuse combined. That's $60 million LESS than what they WERE going to pay the BE plus it gets the ACC off their back in terms of complaining about an undermarket deal. That $60 million less is naturally eaten up anytime a BE school joins a bigger conference, but nonetheless, it still represents a consolidation for ESPN.