The BE fits their plans but there's two problems.
1) ESPN has the branding and and established profitable business model, NBC Sports (Versus) is not profitable. How much will they overpay in a bidding war? Not as much as we'd like I'm thinking
2) The BE gives them some Premium College Basketball content. BE Football and Depaul basketball won't establish NBC 24-hour. It's as likely NBC skims the Premium matchups for Broadcast NBC.
3) In theory BE Football could give them 13 weeks with 1 solid National matchup a week by proper scheduling BCS OOC opponents throughout November. That will take some work and the Big 4 aren't likely to budge much. ND may help here by scheduling the BE teams in November for home and neutral away.
Anyway you cut it ESPN has ridiculous inventory. And channel placement of Versus/24 hour sucks on DirecTV and Cablevision. It would help it was squashed in their with ESPN/ ESPN2