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[QUOTE="nelsonmuntz, post: 4656059, member: 833"]
What is Vanderbilt's shared vision with Mississippi State?  Vanderbilt is a premier academic institution in the same athletic conference with a school like MSU that is worse than most community colleges in the northeast.

The OBE was doomed when ESPN had a massive, public tantrum and tried to teach the conference a lesson for not accepting its first offer.  The result was ESPN losing Rutgers to Fox/BTN, the Catholic Schools (and now UConn) to FS1, WVU (and now Cincinnati) partially to FOX, and having to pay Miami, VTech, BCU, Louisville, Pitt, Syracuse and Notre Dame (basketball only) MUCH more than they would have been willing to settle for in the Big East.  It also effectively upgraded a bunch of mid-majors like ECU, Tulsa, and Tulane to much bigger contracts than they had before.  And by taking out the Big East, ESPN lost leverage with the other major conferences, which is part of why it finds itself in the situation it is in today.  ESPN has probably spent over a billion dollars more in the last two decades than it would have if it had just paid the Big East a market rate.

ESPN's decision to destroy the Big East may have been the stupidest business decision in broadcast media history.
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