College Football Television Broadcasts

An AQ / Non-AQ Split Is Inevitable And Necessary

In recent weeks, there's been a lot of talk about pay-for-play from two of the BCS heavyweights -- Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany and SEC commissioner Mike Slive. Both commissioners have made arguments for expanding college football scholarships to include the "full cost of attendance."

That's well and good for members of the six BCS conferences, who can afford the luxury of paying student-athletes with their lucrative TV media rights deals, but what about the non-AQs? CBSSports.com columnist Tony Barnhardt believes that this could be  the start of an inevitable split between college football's haves and have-nots :

"Schools on the lower end of Division I-A, whose budgets are already deep in red ink as they try to keep up with the big boys, feared such a move would further widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots. They were concerned this was just the first shot across the bow in a process where the six BCS conferences will eventually break away and operate as a separate division in college football."

Barnhardt proposes that the six BCS conferences and the four independents -- Army, Navy, Notre Dame and BYU -- will break from the BCS and the non-AQ conferences to form a 70-team group called the College Football Association. This group of 70 would crown its own National Champion, either through the bowls and polls or through a college football playoff.

The rest of Division I-A, the roughly 54 programs left standing -- current members of the WAC, Mountain West, Sun Belt, MAC, Conference USA and I-A upstarts Texas State (WAC), Texas-San Antonio (WAC), UMass (MAC) and South Alabama (Sun Belt), would then  ban together with several of the I-AA conferences to stay afloat , forming a new Division I.

Sound far-fetched? Perhaps. But if you ask me, the wheels for such a split are already in motion ... the writing on the wall. Why else would guys like Delany and Slive be advocating to pay student-athletes? Why are the Big Six conferences getting extremely lucrative TV media rights deals? This is just the beginning of the widening gap between the AQs and the non-AQs , with the potential of the gap only getting larger.

It's not hard to see the gap widening when you look at the Pac-12's new TV rights deal compared to that of, say, Conference USA. Pac-12 programs will make  roughly $21 million annually  under the conference's new media rights deal. Conference USA teams will make just $1.3 million. Just taking the revenue from TV alone, that's a revenue gap that is 6x larger than the total revenue gap between the Yankees ($427 million) and the Pirates ($160),  according to Forbes . No matter how much these non-AQ schools raise student fees, they won't be able to consistently compete with the BCS conference programs given the widening gap in revenues.

ESPN 3D Nearly Doubles College Football Coverage in 2010 ... - 3D TV

Like in the HDTV revolution in the 2000s, sports is playing a major role in 3DTV adoption. While prospective consumers have historically pointed to the lack of content for 3DTV owners, ESPN took a bold move in 2011 when it debuted ESPN 3D , an all 3D sports channel. With its second year on the air, ESPN 3D is set to air even more programming for early adopters.

This summer, ESPN 3D will air X Games 17 (X Games has become an early staple for the fledgling network) as well as the BCS National Championship in college football again. This year, 3D college football games will be nearly doubling, going from 11 to a whopping 20.

Like watching MLB stars hit dingers? The All-Star Weekend’s annual Home Run Derby will also be returning this July along with the Little League World Series in August.

“It’s an exciting time for ESPN 3D as it enters its second year of providing compelling action of some of the biggest sporting events,” says ESPN VP Bryan Burns in a statement.

“Our programming continues to evolve and grow. Last year we presented 11 regular season college football games and this fall we will have 20 regular season games plus six bowl games, including The Allstate BCS National Championship. Information concerning games and dates will be available later this summer.”

It’s not all pigskins and corked bats. The semifinals and finals from Wimbledon will also be aired in 3D this July. What? That’s manly enough for you? How about boxing?

Starting on June 24, ESPN 3D will air five nights of punch-your-head-off boxing via ESPN’s Friday Night Fights series.

World soccer will also return to ESPN 3D with two exhibition matches between the LA Galaxy and Real Madrid as well as Madrid squaring off against Mexican powerhouse Chivas Guadalajara.

While I’m still waiting for 3D NFL action, but seeing ESPN 3D boost their line-up is music to 3D lover’s ears.

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