Article Published: Thursday, August 26, 2004

League to trade ESPN for CSTV in '06

By Natalie Meisler
Denver Post Staff Writer

The Mountain West Conference, a staple of "Big Monday" basketball and Thursday night football since the league's inception in 1999, is trading the massive ESPN exposure for a potentially more lucrative contract with upstart College Sports TV, according to conference sources.

The MWC will remain with ESPN until the new contract takes effect in the fall of 2006.

CSTV is currently unavailable in the MWC's four biggest media markets - Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and San Diego - except for DirectTV satellite subscribers who pay an additional fee. By the time the agreement goes into effect, coverage could have expanded cable distribution.

The MWC called a news conference for today to announce details. MWC and CSTV officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The MWC's current contract with ESPN is a seven-year, $48 million deal. The new contract, sources said, would be at least $77 million over seven years. It would be divided nine ways with the addition next year of Texas Christian.

The current contract allowed ESPN to match any third party offer, MWC commissioner Craig Thompson said last week. Apparently, that did not happen.

"We did not agree on the value of the product," ESPN director of media relations Josh Krulewitz said. "Given our overall inventory of college football and basketball, we chose to decline their extension offer. It's a competitive environment and they pursued another home. We wish them well."

New York-based CSTV is a 24-hour sports network that programs nonrevenue college sports such as volleyball, soccer, lacrosse and baseball in addition to football and basketball. It is available on Time Warner, Adelphia and Insight cable systems. It recently announced the signing of former Colorado football coach Rick Neuheisel as an analyst on a Wednesday preview show and Sunday recap show.

MWC presidents this summer expressed opposition to 10 p.m. basketball starts after the current ESPN contract expired and voted against Tuesday or Wednesday football games. Missed classroom time and fan inconvenience were cited as the reasons. The league's basketball coaches hoped to eliminate the late Monday starts in the upcoming season and go back to a Thursday-Saturday rotation but each school was assigned two late Monday games. Thompson said last week the league would have had to give ESPN a rebate to drop out of the late Monday time slots this season. Those games start at 10 p.m. in the Mountain Time Zone.

MWC football and basketball games have not drawn well on ESPN by comparison to other Division I conferences, with some exceptions. The 2002 Notre Dame-Air Force football game recorded a 4.07 national rating, but last season's triple overtime Air Force-Utah game drew a .55 rating. The SEC average for its football games, according to ESPN figures, was 1.84 a year ago.

Natalie Meisler can be reached at 303-820-1295 or nmeisler@denverpost.com

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