Congrats to ESPN...They got their wish

[MU_Iceman]

They effectively killed the BE as they had set out to do. Congratulations! My question is why?? What was their motivation for it?? Did someone in the BE piss someone off at ESPN at some point?? What surprises me is ESPN always gets accused of "east Coast bias", which is where a lot of the BE schools resided, not too mention they ate one of their own(Uconn). You'd think the BE under those circumstances would have been their "baby". I just don't understand what their motivation was??

[CaribouJim]

They want to go the Super Conferences route and be the one to televise the pricey football playoffs after they break away from the NCAA. They'll then try and figure out a way to have b-ball break away from the NCAA and manufacturer their own exclusionary version of March Madness. I'm at the point of never watching a college football game again.

[IrwinFletcher]

Some believe it stems from the fact they rejected ESPN's TV contract offer last year. I don't think we will ever know the truth.

[IWB]

Some believe it stems from the fact they rejected ESPN's TV contract offer last year. I don't think we will ever know the truth.

Two reasons.....

1) As Fletch said, they rejected the almighty network's offer.

2) They committed such an unrealistic amount of cash to the other conferences and bowls, that they simply couldn't afford to pony up for one more conference.

[WindyCityGoldenEagle]

Two reasons.....

1) As Fletch said, they rejected the almighty network's offer.

2) They committed such an unrealistic amount of cash to the other conferences and bowls, that they simply couldn't afford to pony up for one more conference.

What other reasons are there for being able to say ESPN wanted to eliminate the Big East? Serious question...as someone asked me that today and I didn't really know.

[Alan Bykowski, "brewcity77"]

2) They committed such an unrealistic amount of cash to the other conferences and bowls, that they simply couldn't afford to pony up for one more conference.

At the end of the day, I think it's this. This, coupled with fear on ESPN's part. ESPN couldn't afford to pay the Big East what they wanted. But if they lost the Big East to NBC or Fox, suddenly they had the potential of having to compete with the Big East. While the Big East doesn't look like an imminent football contender, they are already there in basketball and the ACC isn't exactly a better football conference.

They had put their eggs in the ACC basket, but ESPN realized the potential the Big East had shown to grow a network. After all, it was largely on the back of Big East programming that ESPN went from insignificant cable sports news channel to industry giant during the 1980s. If they allowed the Big East to shop a viable product with recognizable national names to NBC or Fox, maybe in 10-15 years ESPN would wake up and realize they weren't the top dog anymore, or that they at least had to share the cable sports spotlight with another company.

Instead of accepting this fate, they torpedoed the Big East. Leave it decimated so that it had virtually no value to NBC or Fox. Sure, there's basketball, but that's not football, and now there's no risk of Notre Dame deciding to go all-in after all these decades and give the Big East (and potentially Fox or NBC) a viable national title contender while ESPN tried to parade out sucky ACC teams.

[WindyCityGoldenEagle]

Got it, so they essentially put all of their eggs in one basket and committed so much money to the ACC that it lured away teams from the Big East who wanted a piece of the lucrative fball tv deal ineveitably leading to conference realignment chaos. Makes sense to me, just not sure if there is enough there to say ESPN's initial goal was to make the Big East fall....then again maybe I'm just naive.

[Alan Bykowski, "brewcity77"]

ESPN told the ACC to take Syracuse and Pitt, BC's AD admitted that before his awkward attempt at covering up his own remarks. An Oklahoma newspaper also had a report up on their website that ESPN told the Big 12 to take WVU, but it was yanked from the print edition at the last minute.

They couldn't afford the Big East or felt slighted by them, whatever, but ESPN definitely tilted the dominos that led to our league collapsing.