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[QUOTE="VAHuskyFan, post: 1711944, member: 1585"]
I think this is the first step in a negotiation between the B12 and ESPN.

B12: What's your offer to sweeten the pot with a B12 network?

ESPN: Nothing.  You'll get what the contract says and that's it.  $20M per school.  End of story.

B12: But we get $20M per school regardless of who we take.

ESPN: Right.

B12 (Loudly, to press): "Well it turns out we don't care about media makets at all and there's NO TELLING who we might invite! Gosh, it might be FOUR teams that are totally different from the two teams that our media partner might want.  Could cost our media partner a lot of $$$!!  And at SUCH an inconvenient time for them too with B10 media rights coming up."

This all seems like posturing to try to get to the next step:

ESPN: . . . Whoa, hey!  Maybe let's sit down and talk a little more.  I'm sure we could find some sort of arrangement that's mutually beneficial here.

Long story short - they're not actually pulling the trigger on 4 schools with a 50% haircut because they're trying to use that as leverage to negotiate for more.
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