NBC lands Ivy league

[B1GEast]

The conference has struck a major national TV deal with NBC Sports Network to broadcast football, men's basketball and lacrosse.

http://www.philly.com/philly/sports...-television-deal-with-NBC-Sports-Network.html

 

[Dann]

wow they must be getting ready to upgrade the league back up. big changes in the bcs coming...

 

[B1GEast]

ESPN & Fox to share B-12 contract, $20 million per team

http://www.cbssports.com/collegefoo...21/big-12-verbally-agrees-to-new-espnfox-deal

 

[VAHuskyFan]

Great move by NBC! They just locked up the rights to three of the all-time best teams in college football: Yale (17 national championships), Princeton (14 national championships), and Harvard (8 national championships).

Only 31 of those 39 championships came before the advent of the forward pass!

I actually think Ivy League basketball was a nice pick-up. It's a distinctive and compelling style of play and the absence of a conference tournament greatly increases the importance of the regular season games. Ivy League football, on the other hand, is just unwatchable. No idea what the "plan" is with those games.

 

[coachcap]

Ivy football? Well, at least the suits at 30 Rock will be able to watch their alma maters play live on a regular basis. FBS vs Ivy League is light years apart. It's the difference between watching NASCAR at Daytona or Talladega & then flipping to a closed circuit broadcast from Waterford Speedbowl. Better to have the "Big Three" plus Penn decide to secede & declare to upgrade to FBS. But that's not happening.

 

[TouchdownHusky]

Take the Ivies, add Army, Navy & Notre Dame and you can have a new BCS conference - The "We use to be a Contender" Conference (back in the 40's).

 

[CTMike]

I'm amazed that people can even feign interest in watching Ivy League sports. Good for them though; no reason they shouldn't try to get paid too.

 

[UconNate]

For all the crap the Big East has taken over the past few years...maybe decade...I don't think anyone would argue the IVY is a more competitive or interesting league to watch in football or basketball or anything other than rowing or squash.

I'm happy for them, happy for their student athletes and happy for us because if NBC has an appetite for IVY then we should be in a good position when it's our turn.

 

[TouchdownHusky]

For all the crap the Big East has taken over the past few years...maybe decade...I don't think anyone would argue the IVY is a more competitive or interesting league to watch in football or basketball or anything other than rowing or squash.

I'm happy for them, happy for their student athletes and happy for us because if NBC has an appetite for IVY then we should be in a good position when it's our turn.

"We should be in a good position when it's our turn"?????? Holy Wayback Machine, Batman!!!! UConn left the Ivies behind decades ago, after having been the poor stepchild (never as good) for decades prior to that. UConn is in a BCS confernce, has won said BCS conference title, has played in a BCS Bowl. How are "we" gonna be in a good position when it's "our turn". UConn is at a point where Michigan & Tennessee (real powers) are coming into their yard in East Harford. "We are at a point where fans are upset that a "living in the past" program like Notre Dame has the brass to demand a home & neutral site of their choosing series. So, if UConn is still chasing the Ivies in this day and age then it will NEVER be "our turn".

 

[RS9999X]

4 of the 10 surviving NBC regional networks are on the East Coast

If you look at the schedules for SNY, SportsNet -Philly, New England, and Mid Atlantic they need content. The old Comcast assets and schedules are a joke.

They should bid for the A-10 when it comes up in two years. Ivy, BE and A-10 are good assets. Most other teams and conferences will provide content for free . Like Quinnipiac.

 

[UconNate]

Our turn for a new contract.

I didn't think it was that complicated but I got six "?" and red font!!!!

If the IVY league, who is miles behind us, can get something like this from NBC then I think our contract, assuming we stay together could be pretty good.

This is what I love about economics. We'll know exactly how much we are worth when the contract comes out but until then we have to look at the market and make guesses. I think the IVY getting a contract from NBC is a good sign that the Big East will have a decent market and get a decent contract.

Sorry if that wasn't clear.

 

[TouchdownHusky]

Our turn for a new contract.

I didn't think it was that complicated but I got six "?" and red font!!!!

If the IVY league, who is miles behind us, can get something like this from NBC then I think our contract, assuming we stay together could be pretty good.

This is what I love about economics. We'll know exactly how much we are worth when the contract comes out but until then we have to look at the market and make guesses. I think the IVY getting a contract from NBC is a good sign that the Big East will have a decent market and get a decent contract.

Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Frustration isn't with you, my friend, it is with the sorry state of college football. The Big East should still include Miami, VT, BCU, Syracuse, Pitt & WVU. Add teams (USF, UConn, UCF, etc) fine. But the NCAA needed to stop the preditory poaching by other conferences with the intend on destroying the competition. Don't need 36 teams in a conference. What next basketball-like conference tourney's before the Bowls begin?

 

[UconNate]

Thanks TouchdownHusky,

I can relate to the frustration.

Was it Sports Illustrated that did an article taking about a great new idea for a conference and basically added all of the old BE to the 2011 Big East? It was obviously a joke but as a Big East fan it was hard to read.

 

[Carl Spackler]

The Yale university endowment is over $19 billion dollars. Harvard university endowment is freaking $32 billion dollars. I think Brown, in Providence is the red-headed stepchild of the bunch at $2.5 billion or something.

Money is not an object to the Ivy league. Whatever NBCSports is paying the Ivy's to broadcast them is loose change in the couch cushions to this league of higher education institutions. A $30 million dollar year broadcasting revenue rights deal, is a drop in the bucket for these universities and would be enough to warrant it's own line at the bottom of an income/expense sheet somewhere.

What the Ivy league craves is not money, it's power, and frankly - in athletics - bragging rights. THose of you that poo-poo the Ivy league, just understand that if the power brokers in the Ivy league ever get the taste for the adrenaline and social and public perception power that 21st century division 1-A football brings - and getting on TV regularly, is definitely going to give them a taste......most importantly - if they decide that a college football post season, that is based on pure competition to determine a champion, rather than popularity? and they decide to get back into what they got of 60 years ago? Scholarships and post season play? There are annual discussions in New Haven about the state of college football, and why colleges like Stanford, and Notre Dame, and Vanderbilt can compete at 1-A and the Ivy doesn't. and they get louder every year.

You'll see how fast the power of those institutions takes back from the south, what they created in New Haven, CT in 1876. College football.

 

[Jimdish255]

Everything is for sale nowadays, even the curriculum when certain creeps get involved. I'm not sure this has anything to do with markets though because I don't see anybody paying for Ivy Football unless they've got money to burn. That's also why I don't think this bodes well for us. It just muddies the waters unless it's part of a larger strategy. But this is NBC we're talking about.

 

[Jimmy Serrano]

Carl, I appreciate your passion and optimism......but enough with the comparisons to the south. College football will never, in any of our lifetimes, be as big up here as it is down there.

And, I'm not necessarily sure that's a bad thing.

 

[HuskyDogArt]

Ivy League football, on the other hand, is just unwatchable.
Yale Harvard unwatchable?? To whom?? People in Fiji??

 

[Carl Spackler]

Everything is for sale nowadays, even the curriculum when certain creeps get involved. I'm not sure this has anything to do with markets though because I don't see anybody paying for Ivy Football unless they've got money to burn. That's also why I don't think this bodes well for us. It just muddies the waters unless it's part of a larger strategy. But this is NBC we're talking about.

NBC's strategy is simple. They are wheeling and dealing to buy up Mediterranean Avenue through Connecticut Avenue to build hotels, and ignoring the rest of the board except the railroads and utlities, and waiting. It's a strategy that relies on having enough in the bank to survive as many rounds around the block as it takes before you can make the moves for the park ave's and boardwalk's of the world.

NBC, through their recent mergers, has more than enough money in the bank to go around the block for awhile, and wait, and through Comcast, definitely owns the railways and utilities of the broadcasting world the the other players on the board have to pay for using.

 

[Carl Spackler]

NBC's strategy is simple. They are wheeling and dealing to buy up Mediterranean Avenue through Connecticut Avenue to build hotels, and ignoring the rest of the board except the railroads and utlities, and waiting. It's a strategy that relies on having enough in the bank to survive as many rounds around the block as it takes before you can make the moves for the park ave's and boardwalk's of the world.

NBC, through their recent mergers, has more than enough money in the bank to go around the block for awhile, and wait, and through Comcast, definitely owns the railways and utilities of the broadcasting world the the other players on the board have to pay for using.

BTW: NBC already owns one of the boardwalk and park ave properties - Sunday night NFL football.

 

[Jimmy Serrano]

BTW: NBC already owns one of the boardwalk and park ave properties - Sunday night NFL football.

I "liked" this post for the sole reason of you quoting yourself in a post. Awesome.

 

[FAIRTIDES]

Ivy football? Well, at least the suits at 30 Rock will be able to watch their alma maters play live on a regular basis. FBS vs Ivy League is light years apart. It's the difference between watching NASCAR at Daytona or Talladega & then flipping to a closed circuit broadcast from Waterford Speedbowl. Better to have the "Big Three" plus Penn decide to secede & declare to upgrade to FBS. But that's not happening.

Didn't the channel that became "NBC Sports" (Versus?) do an Ivy League football game of the week over the last two seasons? I think that's where I watched the games.

 

[Adios]

You'll see how fast the power of those institutions takes back from the south, what they created in New Haven, CT in 1876. College football.

Harvard and Tufts in 1875 is actually to be considered to be the first true "American football" game played. Harvard played McGill in 1874, I think, and saw that McGill was pretty much building off rugby football and not soccer, as Rutgers and Princeton were in 1869.

 

[SubbaBub]

I like it. If the NNBE Football ends up on NBCs, it will look much better by comparison.

"If you want to look thin, hang around with fat people."
-Thorton Mellon

 

[VAHuskyFan]

Ivy League football, on the other hand, is just unwatchable.
Yale Harvard unwatchable?? To whom?? People in Fiji??

Yale-Harvard is a terrific matchup. . .

 

[Fishy]

This is just NBC Sports buying cheap content to fill air on the former Verses.

Instead of the Tour of Flanders segueing into Bass Masters on Saturday morning, it'll roll into Brown vs Columbia football.

It's a step up from a test pattern.