The Big Ten has completed a new seven-year media rights agreement with Fox, CBS and NBC that is set to bring in more than $7 billion to one of the nation's most powerful athletic conferences.
www.espn.com
Apparently there’s a clause later in the contract that the Big Ten could come back to ESPN for some game coverage.
People are speculating that ESPN is keeping an open door in case the Big Ten grabs up the remaining west coast teams of value as we head towards mega conferences. ESPN might not want to lose a 10 o’clock EST time slot in that world.
Currently ESPN runs college football on their stations through four time slots on Saturday’s (12:00, 3:30, 7:30-8:00, & 10:00 EST). I get those games now aren’t always the greatest but at least ESPN can advertise it as a P5 game in the current landscape. If we got to mega conferences a matchup of like Washington State & Utah who’s left out of the mega conferences could be equivalent to like a Conference USA game today.