The recent rumors and speculation regarding athletic
conference expansion (primarily the Big Ten looking to expand and possible
fallout from that move) got me to looking at the most recent financial
information regarding the six BCS conferences. The most recent information
available is from the IRS Form 990 filings for the fiscal years ending June 30,
2008. None of the conferences present their significant revenue detail on a
truly comparable basis. So, the ACC model was used as the base model to report
significant revenue amounts. The other conferences' significant revenues are
aligned according to the detail in their reports.
In addition, there has been a lot of news about the new
contract between the SEC and ESPN which purportedly will substantially increase
the individual payouts to each SEC school by as much as $9 million. So, how does
this potentially impact the ACC and the other BCS conferences? At this point, I
am not sure. The ACC television contract is nearing its renewal date and there
has been speculative talk about an affiliation agreement between the ACC and Pac
10. I suppose such an agreement could possibly result in scheduling of games
between the conferences or other arrangements - possibly having a joint
television venture or network.