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Big East Media Day: Conference Holding Out For Best TV Deal

There was no news regarding the conference's lack of a new TV deal, but Commissioner John Marinatto did have plenty to say on the topic at the Big East media day. The Post-Gazette's Paul Zeise also has a good rundown of how things have turned out thus far:

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The Cliff Notes version of the background on this is that ESPN came to the Big East an offered a 7-year deal for football and basketball worth about $11 million per school.

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The basketball schools said let's jump at it, Big East commissioner John Marinatto was on board, and Pederson and the football schools stepped in and said "we can do better."

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There was division, there was some arguing, there was some splintering UNTIL Comcast/NBC got into the game and began driving prices up to the point where the Pac-12 got $3 billion over 12 years.

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That's when everybody in the conference got on board and said, "let's wait this thing out."

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Still, don't look for anything to get done right away. The conference has nothing but time to kill as they've got another year to negotiate a deal with other networks. As the last major conference without a deal, you can expect them to hold networks at bay until they get the best deal possible. They still may not be able to command as much as Pac-12, but they'll likely do better now that they've waited it out.

Photographs by dizfunk used in background montage under Creative Commons. Thank you.