Oh, I understand your argument. I don't necessarily agree that your data point (the number of ESPN appearances by UConn) supports your conclusion (that this means UConn is subsidizing schools within the P5 that aren't as valuable). UConn may very well be more valuable than Wake Forest, but I don't think that the number of ESPN appearances compared between different conferences that have different contracts supports that contention in and of itself. The only way that this would be possible is if ESPN actually pooled all of the basketball and football inventory from all conferences together and could freely pick and choose games on an a la carte basis despite paying different amounts to those conferences. If THAT were happening, then sure, you could argue that the UConns of the world are subsidizing members of the P5.
However, that's simply not how it works - ESPN is mandated to show x number of AAC games per week, and y number of ACC games per week, and z number of Big Ten games per week, et. al. So, the number of appearances by UConn certainly shows its relative value (at least for basketball) compared to the rest of the AAC. Since ESPN is mandated to show a certain number of AAC games per week, it's fair to say that ESPN finds the UConn games to be the most valuable out of its pool of AAC games. ESPN *has* to show those AAC basketball games, so it's going to ride UConn like it's Zorro compared to its other options. In contrast, I'm sure there were a lot better matchups that UConn had in the old Big East that were relegated to ESPN Regional (which would certainly make it to ESPN now if they were under the AAC contract) because ESPN had a lot better pool of games to pick and choose from in that old league. On the football side, Houston is likely going to end up with more ESPN and ABC appearances than Miami this season, yet that's because pretty much every Houston game is going to clearly be the #1 choice each week to fulfill ESPN's contractual obligations with the AAC than any notion that Houston is somehow more valuable than Miami (where ESPN is going to give priority to ACC games involving those still in the national title race like Clemson). You see this with ESPN's West Coast Conference contract, too, where ESPN fulfills its contract with that league by showing Gonzaga as much as possible (with maybe BYU thrown in every once in awhile). Same thing with ESPN's Mountain West contract obligations where it takes Boise State every chance that it gets.
You (and many others here) are also coming at this from the assumption that the AAC must be profitable for ESPN simply because it isn't paying the AAC that much. No one can know that for certain without looking at ESPN's books, but at the same time, no one should assume that the contract is profitable based on its low cost. Remember that ad revenue rates rise in a logarithmic (as opposed to linear) manner: a 5.0 rating football product doesn't just generate twice as much revenue as a 2.5 rating football product - instead, you can charge 3, 4 or 5 times as much for the 5.0 game because there's a premium associated for the larger audience (as it's becoming significantly harder to find any audiences on TV of that size). (Now, the AAC may certainly turn out to be profitable this year, but it would be because of Houston's ratings for football that have delivered at a P5 level this year.) With the exception of a handful of basketball games per year like Duke-UNC or when there's some combo of Duke/UNC/Kentucky/Kansas playing each other, the ratings for regular season college basketball simply don't approach anywhere near college football, and that's why basketball is paid accordingly.
ESPN and Fox and CBS and NBC aren't dumb: they're not paying literally hundreds of millions of dollars for P5 college football because they think they're going to lose money on those games. The P5 is getting paid because their 1 or 2 top games per week can consistently deliver a rating that is larger than any other regular season sporting event outside of the NFL... and people need to understand that those types of ratings numbers are VERY hard to find in today's fragmented TV environment. They're getting an extraordinary ad premium for those games (just as they're getting the same type of premium for NFL games and NBA playoff games), which is why they're paying a premium for those games in the first place. The rest of the games outside of those 1 or 2 top games are more or less filler (with some leagues like the SEC and Big Ten having greater depth than others) along with basketball. As long as those 1 or 2 top P5 games deliver each week, ESPN is happy and *that* is what makes them money as opposed to the filler content.
To put it into the movie context, the top P5 college football games are the equivalent of a Star Wars or Marvel movie: Disney is going to pay a massive budget for those types of movies because those are really the only movies that give it even a *chance* at massive profits. Those blockbusters might not make money every single time, but when one of them does exceed expectations (like The Force Awakens or the first Avengers movie), then it single-handedly makes the entire movie division massively profitable worldwide for multiple years. College basketball, on the other hand, is the equivalent of the low budget horror movies: low financial risk but also a low ceiling, so the amount of profit is low (albeit the profit *margin* can be high with a once-in-a-blue-moon breakout hit like Paranormal Activity).
Note what largely has disappeared from the movie landscape: mid-budget films (those in the $50 million to $100 million range). Movie people will pay big money for the biggest brand names and they'll sprinkle in some low budget filler films, but they do NOT want to pay for that middle tier. It's basically an all-or-nothing high-or-low budget strategy in Hollywood. Well, the same people that run Hollywood happen to be the same people that sign TV sports contracts. Disney/ESPN, Fox and Comcast/NBC/Universal are applying the EXACT same budget strategy to sports (both college and pro) and basically everything else on television. A few marquee sports properties get a ton of money and the other sports properties get low budget money (with no "middle class" in between). That's yet another reason why the gap between the P5 and G5 is so massive.
