This is not an anti-Boston College thing, so avoid commenting on BC specifically - not about them, they were just handy.
ESPN will show three Boston College games across all sports this year - that breaks down as three football games, zero men's and women's basketball games. If you look at Wake, it's worse - something like one football game and a pair of hoop games.
Those two schools will get a total of six showings on ESPN or ESPN2.
UConn will likely have 20 games on the two premiere ESPN networks. The UConn women make more appearances than Boston College and Wake Forest combined.
For this, Wake and Boston College will receive around $45,000,000. UConn will receive $1.45M.
By virtue of their own programming, ESPN has decided that UConn is far more desirable for their premiere networks than either of those two programs, but their talking heads will keep trotting out the "that's what they're worth" nonsense.
To put the $1.45M in further perspective, prior to the formation of the AAC, UConn had a deal with SNY to sell them remnant tier 3 inventory in women's basketball - that is the games left over after ESPN and CBS had put claims on the schedule. That deal paid UConn about $1.2M annually.
Leftover UConn women's hoop games - $1.2M a year.
ESPN destroys the Big East. The American is formed. American has to get a television contract - entire conference has to give all rights to the conference. ESPN assumes the SNY contract - that is that they now own and are paid the $1.2M a year we used to receive for those remnant rights.
In the exchange, we basically receive $200,000 more per year for our entire Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 rights.
Summary - ESPN is robbing us.
Want to know our biggest challenge in realignment? We're subsidizing payments to Boston College, Wake Forest, etc.
