Why Negotiations between BYU and the Big East Collapsed
Negotiations with both the Big 12 and the Big East fell apart over BYUtv as well as BYU’s other TV deal with ESPN. Both sides feel they have valid points. BYU doesn’t trust conferences right now because of welched gentlemen’s agreements with the MWC over television. The Big 12 and Big East don’t want any team in their conference (besides Texas) having an unfair advantage. I can live with that. All three sides have agreed to disagree.
BYU’s Point of View
From the Cougar perspective, I can see why they are leery in the negotiations with both leagues given the uncertainty of the future of the BCS and both the Big 12 and the Big East. Both leagues have inner turmoil and are currently dysfunctional.
Just three months ago it didn’t appear that the Big 12 would be able to salvage itself. That had been going on for a year and a half as the PAC was trying to steal what was the best half of the league in creating a superconference. Most of the members of the Big 12 have a problem with Texas and their heavy handed bullying, but when it all came to a head, they decided that they needed their bully more than they’d like to be rid of him.
The Big East seems to need life support more than the Big 12 ever did with most of it’s football power being pirated away by other leagues. The Big East seems poised to swallow a poison pill in order to salvage it’s coveted BCS status. They have offered to legitimize Boise State, blue turf and all, as well as inviting some of the better non-AQ teams into the club, creating a true Conference USA that stretches nearly from coast to coast. If the University of Alaska played Division I football with any amount of skill, it wouldn’t have surprised me if the Big East had offered them too. When The Big East formally invites San Diego State University and they immediately join without reservation, the league will stretch over 2000 miles between the two most extreme geographic points.
BYU left a dysfunctional league for independence a year ago. They don’t seem to want to go back into another dysfunctional league, AQ status or not. The MWC had been poised for years to become the seventh AQ league or displace the Big East for their spot, but the leadership of that conference couldn’t bring itself to make the necessary moves to make that happen. All Craig Thompson would have had to do to keep the MWC together and gain AQ status would have been to honor an agreement with BYU about rebroadcast rights and offer Boise State five years earlier, which incidentally BYU, TCU and Utah had all urged him to do repeatedly.
When it looked like the PAC was going to raid the MWC for Utah and BYU, Thompson tried to cover a ruptured artery with a band-aid by offering Boise State. The Broncos immedieately accepted but it was too late and didn’t salvage the conference. In retrospect, Boise State probably would have been better off staying in the WAC and urging Karl Benson to raid the MWC for some of it’s talent because the Broncos left a sweet deal with ESPN to banish themselves to television oblivion. If I had been the president of Boise State, I’d have backed out of the MWC and stayed in the WAC after Utah and BYU left since the league the MWC was delivering wasn’t nearly the league they sold. After the strength of the MWC had all vacated that league, the WAC had a stronger case for inclusion than the MWC did.
The PAC would have been a great home for BYU for many reasons:
*They would have made a home for one of the fiercest NCAA rivalries between Utah and BYU which is always big money
*BYU already has a good relationship with most of the programs in the PAC
*The majority of BYU graduates and LDS members live in the PAC footprint so there is already a strong fanbase there
*BYU is already competetive with the PAC schools in most sports including football
*BYU would have brought basketball class to the PAC which it currently doesn’t have much of
The PAC didn’t offer BYU on “cultural” grounds.
Why BYU’s negotiations broke down with the Big 12
BYU was on the verge of an invite and were negotiating with the Big 12 but eventually the two sides reached an impasse and the invite was not offered. The points of contention were (in no apparent order):
*BYU’s Olympic sports. The Big 12 wasn’t interested in a football only BYU and the Cougars are very reluctant to leave the WCC after they had been very gracious and provided a home for their lesser sports when BYU left the MWC to become a football independent. The WCC is a conference of primarily smaller religious schools and the BYU administration and LDS church leadership do not wish to appear ungracious for something as tenuous as BCS AQ status.
*No Sunday play. While not an issue with football, other sports play games on Sunday. The Big 12 did not want the headache of rescheduling games or the negative attention of having a BYU team occasionally forfeit a championship game because it fell on a Sunday. BYU has walked away from championship games before in Olympic sports because of Sunday play.
*BYUtv. BYU left the MWC for two reasons. First, their chief rival Utah left, second the MWC didn’t honor an agreement with BYU to allow the Cougars to rebroadcast BYU home games that were shown on the mtn. They also wouldn’t allow BYU to televise home games not on the network. The distribution and access that the mtn delivered was abysmally small and BYU fans across the country could not see their team play. BYU spent hundreds of millions of dollars building the most high tech television studios and capabilities and widest distribution of any college in the country. All the sports venues are hardwired into the broadcast building so it’s merely a matter of plug and play. No real set-up required. In addition they have the capability of broadcasting on the road as well because they built a mobile studio that is state of the art and the best of it’s kind at any level west of the Mississippi. They didn’t spend that money to merely rebroadcast weekly religious devotional adresses. They could already do that.
The Big 12 already had Texas that had bullied the other conference members with it’s television prowess and they weren’t willing to have another school with that kind of capability in their league. BYU wouldn’t have wielded BYUtv like a blunt object the way Texas has, but the other members of the Big 12 didn’t want to take the chance. Wherever BYU lands, BYUtv will be part of the deal.
Why negotiations with the Big East failed
Whereas no Sunday play and Olympic sports were issues with the BIg 12, neither one of these issues posed a problem with the Big East. It actually made better sense for BYU’s Olympic sports to stay on the west coast. Geographically it is better for both parties to play regionally. It’s better for the fans and better for the teams.
The culture of the northeast is more tolerant of the no Sunday play than other parts of the country, probably stemming from the Puritan roots of the people of that area. Several coaches and administrators of schools were quoted in local publications during the negotiations saying they’d rather not play on Sunday anyway because the players did better in their sports and academically if they took one day off. No Sunday play wasn’t an issue for the Big East.
Really the negotiations stalled and finally ended when BYU was unwilling to give up their television rights. During the first year of independence, BYU was on national television nearly every week of the season. Most of this was brokered by ESPN. Even some of the away games, BYU played on television. Of the games ESPN didn’t carry, BYU produced and ran on BYUtv. Even the Oregon State game which was played in Corvallis was produced and broadcast on BYUtv. This came after a four year drought of BYU on national television. When the MWC started the Mountain Network (mtn) they promised BYU that they could rebroadcast home games and have the rights to them. They never honored that agreement which is one of the main reasons BYU left the conference.
It’s been a heady experience for the Cougars and their fans to play on national television every week and BYU isn’t willing to give that up.
It’s kind of perplexing to read what officials from the BIg East are saying about the negotiations. They seemed genuinely surprised that BYU wouldn’t give up television to join their league. Perplexing because BYU left the MWC over television distribution and negotiations broke down with the Big 12, a stronger and more solvent dysfunctional league, over television rights. Why then did the Big East think it would be any different for them? Why did the Big East believe that a league with less to offer could make BYU give up something they wouldn’t give up for the Big 12?
What BYUtv can do
BYU signed an eight year deal with ESPN when the network helped BYU broker the road to independence. Not only did ESPN help BYU leave the MWC they also assisted BYU in scheduling the first couple of years. ESPN has a profit motive, no doubt. BYU has a national brand and ESPN was on the verge of losing it’s biggest cash cow in the Mountain Time Zone when Boise State joined the MWC. ESPN needed a team from this region to fill a slot. What better team than BYU? A team with a history of excellence, a team with a nationwide following, a team that was hungry for television exposure.
When ESPN was brokering the deal with the Y, rebroadcasting games wasn’t even a blip on the negotiating table. BYU asked for it and ESPN said, sure. Once the game is played, as far as the network is concerned, it’s ancient history and they need to move on. Why not allow a school to retain rebroadcast rights? It’s a no brainer.
BYUtv has the widest distribution of any college or conference network, and that is by a wide margin. It appears on cable and satellite systems nationwide and is available in 100 million homes, most of which are in this country.
This season, BYU produced and broadcast all of the home games that ESPN did not pick up. When ESPN declined to show the BYU at Oregon State game, BYU negotiated with OSU at the last minute and brought their remote broadcasting truck to Corvallis and produced that game nationwide, allowing both fans of the Cougars and the Beavers nationwide to view the contest.
Broadcasting capability like BYU has and like Texas has will only increase and multiply from campus to campus. Eventually all major universities will have similar facilities. BYU and Texas find themselves at the front end of a trend that will become commonplace as years go by. It’s too bad that the leaders of the Big 12 and the Big East cannot see that.
With the uncertainty of the BCS, and the instability of both the Big 12 and the Big East, maybe independence is a better choice for BYU.
the Big East should bend over backwards to get BYU …
With their future schedules, they don’t need the burden of playing a bunch of teams nobody wants to watch and on Thursday night at that. I think independence will work for them, especially since they are private institution that can spend their funds however they wish, without scrutiny. It doesn’t appear that the elders mind throwing dollars at the football program, so good for them.