Inside the Big Ten TV Negotiations between Fox and ABC

I was privy to some information regarding the negotiations between The Big Ten, Fox Sports, and ABC a couple of years ago when ABC came out with it's Saturday Night Football idea.


As many of you know, Fox Sports owns 49% of The Big Ten Network and felt they had the inside track on getting the entire Big Ten Football contract as well. Both Fox Sports and ABC/ESPN had appointments to present their packages to the Big Ten executives. Fox Sports was first to present to Commissioner Jim Delany and offered up a Special "Big Ten" Saturday Night Football Deal that would showcase a Big Ten match-up every Saturday Night in Prime Time. Delany and the Big Ten executives ate it up and were very excited to move forward with Fox Sports proposal.


ABC/ESPN game in the next day and offered up their "Saturday Night Football" concept. As we know now, The Big Ten elected to go with the ABC/ESPN package. On one hand, I can see the reasons behind having your brand on the Network that covers the most college football, on the other ABC/ESPN does not show a Big Ten game every week in Prime time.


Did the Big Ten miss an opportunity to showcase more games nationally? Would Fox had too many Big Ten games? Did the Fox proposal leak to ABC/ESPN? Those are all questions that we probably won't ever get answers to. Either way The Big Ten needs to work on it's perception problem with the level of competition in the Big Ten and the mess that the BTN network has caused. Having more Big Ten games in national prime time slot might have gone along way in solving those issues.