What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond? I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.
This week, let’s look back at something our Pete Mundo talked about last week when it comes to Big 12 basketball, and more.
BIG 12 BASKETBALL SABOTAGE?
On Tuesday night, I was locking in for a loooong night of Big 12 basketball. We had games going all the way to midnight my time. During that stretch, our Pete Mundo posted this:
Pete’s point was that most of the games that night were not on ESPN’s primary channels. For instance, on Monday, Iowa State vs. Arizona didn’t wrap up until 1:00 a.m. ET. Then on Tuesday, Kansas-UCF, which turned out to be a great game, was on ESPN+. Baylor-BYU was on ESPN2 (I believe) and Cincinnati-Utah was on CBS Sports Network. It was a night filled with great games. But, the lead network for basketball coverage didn’t give the conference a real spotlight.
Saturday was better. Arizona and Arizona State got a spotlight on CBS before the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Iowa State-Kansas State, Kansas-Baylor and Texas Tech-Houston were on ESPN linear channels, but only Kansas-Baylor was on the mother ship.
Related: Five Biggest Takeaways From Saturday’s Big 12 Basketball Games
On Sunday, both games are on ESPN+.
So, is ESPN trying to deliberately sabotage Big 12 basketball? I don’t agree with the thesis. However — and perhaps this is splitting hairs — ESPN has priorities and, honestly, the Big 12 isn’t the network’s biggest priority.
ESPN has two exclusive relationships with power conferences — the ACC and the SEC. The network and sidearm channels (including the SEC Network and ACC Network) broadcast all of their games. So, naturally, ESPN is going to prioritize them over anything else, including the Big 12.
This includes discontinuing the Big 12-SEC Challenge a couple of years ago and starting an ACC-SEC Challenge after ESPN picked off the SEC package that CBS had broadcast for nearly 30 years. That’s part of the reason that went away.
ESPN is going to prioritize exclusive partnerships. That’s what any network or, frankly, any business would do.
The Big 12 doesn’t have its own linear network, either. That ship sailed several years ago after the conference talked about it but opted not to move forward. It was never going to work with Oklahoma and Texas hanging onto their third-tier rights. The Sooners and Longhorns weren’t giving those up.
That’s why many of these games, too many in my opinion, end up on ESPN+. This is also why Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark was keenly interested in the corner four schools in the Pac-12. It gave him access to a new broadcast window for basketball — and less sleep for me.
Yormark was right to extend the deal with ESPN a couple of years ago, a deal that kicks in this coming fall. But, the deal also surrendered all of the league’s third-tier rights to ESPN. That was the trade-off for guaranteed TV money at a time when the league was still a bit vulnerable.
That’s also why the sub-license approach is so important to the Big 12’s future, specifically when it comes to those next negotiations around 2030.
ESPN sub-licensed more basketball games to CBS this year, going from six to 26 games. It’s CBS quality, whether it’s the network or CBS Sports Network. CBS even sent two-thirds of its Final Four crew to broadcast the Arizona-Arizona State game — Ian Eagle and Bill Raftery.
The new TV deal also gives Fox access to the Big 12 basketball library for the first time. The package is likely 50 games a season, per Yormark. Plus, there is the new sub-license with Turner, which will put 13 football games and 15 basketball games on TBS, TNT and Max, the last of which is a streaming service.
So, if you’re scoring at home, there will be 13 more football games and 91 basketball games that won’t be on ESPN+ next year (I’m including the current CBS sub-license). They’ll, most likely, be on the linear cable (I say most likely because I’m not sure how Fox plans to spotlight the Big 12 along with the Big Ten and the Big East during basketballs season).
That’s not insignificant. And, as I’ve written before, this gives Yormark and his team six years to build deeper relationships with CBS, Fox, Turner and other networks to, perhaps, do what the Big Ten did — walk away from ESPN.
That would be a bold step, indeed. Six years from now, it still may not make fiscal sense. But the conference has the runway to explore it.
So is ESPN sabotaging Big 12 basketball? Honestly? The network may be sabotaging itself in the long run.
LET’S ‘NOT’ BLOW OUT THE SCHEDULE
Last week I wrote about how the Big 12 needed to turn the football schedule drop into a big to-do, kind of like what the ACC did last week.
Well, in the definition of a Friday news dump, the Big 12 did this:
Man, I hope the Big 12 has more than this up its sleeve.
TARYN SIDES, SHOT-CALLER
I watched the Kansas State-Iowa State women’s game Thursday night and K-State guard Taryn Sides hit this absolute circus shot that, frankly, the game feed didn’t do justice.
But this photo does.
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
