Iceland12
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If you're here, you're a College Football fan and might know some or even a lot of this, but maybe not all of it. Quite long, seemingly complete and a good read. Makes the Big Ten's ability to get the BTN off the ground without the help of ESPN even more amazing.
The extent of ESPN’s influence over college football is literally displayed on the face of your ticket to next week’s game. Tickets to most games are printed with the date and the opponent’s name, but something is missing: the kickoff time. That is because ESPN, under its contracts with conferences, has the right to set kickoff times and wait until 12 days before game day, or in some cases only six, to inform universities.
Every Monday morning during the season, ESPN’s football brain trust meets in a war room in Building 12 on the network’s sprawling campus in Bristol, Conn., to consider options for coming games and make sure the hottest teams get the choicest time slots on each of its channels. After decisions are made, calls go out across the country, setting off a scramble on dozens of campuses as universities arrange everything from parking to security to team transportation...
The power of television contracts has driven the recent fever of conference switching, as colleges forsake geographic loyalties in pursuit of more lucrative deals. In the last year, three universities jumped to the Atlantic Coast Conference for all sports: Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Louisville, none of them located within 200 miles of the Atlantic coast. Each stands to receive more than $16 million a year from the A.C.C.’s $3.6 billion contract with ESPN..[
Using much the same logic, ESPN dived into Deep South tradition to persuade Mississippi and Mississippi State to reschedule this year’s edition of their annual meeting, known as the Battle for the Golden Egg.
From 1998 to 2003, the game was televised by ESPN on Thanksgiving, but since 2004, it has been played on the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Last fall, ESPN’s schedulers realized they needed a high-impact game for Thanksgiving night. They also knew they could persuade Mississippi, Mississippi State and the SEC with an enticing pitch: if the game returned to Thursday, it would not be lost in the glut of big rivalries on Thanksgiving Saturday..
Underscoring ESPN’s special relationship with college football is the fact that it created and owns the software used for scheduling games. The online portal, known as the Pigskin Access Scheduling System, or PASS, is now used by virtually all conferences and colleges, as well as competing networks. Generally, the colleges work together to set up nonconference matchups, but sometimes they reach out to ESPN for a suggestion, or even to play matchmaker./I]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/s...balls-most-dominant-player-its-espn.html?_r=0
The extent of ESPN’s influence over college football is literally displayed on the face of your ticket to next week’s game. Tickets to most games are printed with the date and the opponent’s name, but something is missing: the kickoff time. That is because ESPN, under its contracts with conferences, has the right to set kickoff times and wait until 12 days before game day, or in some cases only six, to inform universities.
Every Monday morning during the season, ESPN’s football brain trust meets in a war room in Building 12 on the network’s sprawling campus in Bristol, Conn., to consider options for coming games and make sure the hottest teams get the choicest time slots on each of its channels. After decisions are made, calls go out across the country, setting off a scramble on dozens of campuses as universities arrange everything from parking to security to team transportation...
The power of television contracts has driven the recent fever of conference switching, as colleges forsake geographic loyalties in pursuit of more lucrative deals. In the last year, three universities jumped to the Atlantic Coast Conference for all sports: Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Louisville, none of them located within 200 miles of the Atlantic coast. Each stands to receive more than $16 million a year from the A.C.C.’s $3.6 billion contract with ESPN..[
Using much the same logic, ESPN dived into Deep South tradition to persuade Mississippi and Mississippi State to reschedule this year’s edition of their annual meeting, known as the Battle for the Golden Egg.
From 1998 to 2003, the game was televised by ESPN on Thanksgiving, but since 2004, it has been played on the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Last fall, ESPN’s schedulers realized they needed a high-impact game for Thanksgiving night. They also knew they could persuade Mississippi, Mississippi State and the SEC with an enticing pitch: if the game returned to Thursday, it would not be lost in the glut of big rivalries on Thanksgiving Saturday..
Underscoring ESPN’s special relationship with college football is the fact that it created and owns the software used for scheduling games. The online portal, known as the Pigskin Access Scheduling System, or PASS, is now used by virtually all conferences and colleges, as well as competing networks. Generally, the colleges work together to set up nonconference matchups, but sometimes they reach out to ESPN for a suggestion, or even to play matchmaker./I]
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/25/s...balls-most-dominant-player-its-espn.html?_r=0