I got a few emails this week asking if I knew where he was going. I didn’t then, but I do now.
Good for him, of course. I just hope Mickey doesn’t bury him behind a paywall.
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Category Archives: ESPN Is The Devil
Alex, I’ll take “it’s the money, stupid” for $200.
Really, somebody at ESPN thinks this is a mystery?
“A Sartre-reading intellectual”? Oh, blow me.
Filed under ESPN Is The Devil, PAWWWLLL!!!
Feeding the beast
There are fifteen, count ’em, fifteen, bowl games scheduled between the CFP semi finals and finals, including five after January 1st.
All of that reflects a general trend of stretching out the bowl season from start to finish.
In recent years, the bowl season has begun on a Saturday before Christmas with several games. This season, bowls begin Friday, Dec. 20 with the Bahamas Bowl at 2 p.m. ET. The Frisco Bowl is later that day. The next day six games, including the Celebration Bowl, which matches teams from historically black colleges in the Southwestern Athletic Conference and Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, will air on either ESPN or ABC.
(Also, don’t forget that’s just ESPN’s schedule you’re looking at. CBS and Fox have five more broadcasts to add to the mix.)
Don’t get me wrong here. I’ve got no problem with bowl games; the more, the merrier, as far as I’m concerned. But for a bunch that’s struggled with the message of making the CFP a special, new tradition for college football fans (how’s that whole “fuck it, let’s play on New Year’s Eve” thing going, anyway?), wholesale abdication of postseason scheduling to Mickey seems like a poor way to go about showcasing your crown jewel.
Hell, who am I kidding here? They’ll probably use it as another excuse when the time comes to expand the CFP to eight teams.
Filed under BCS/Playoffs, ESPN Is The Devil
Not your expected QBR story
85.1: The Total QBR for Georgia QB Jake Fromm in 2018, behind only Kyler Murray and Tua Tagovailoa.
Of course, that doesn’t include G-Day, so it’s really not definitive.
Filed under ESPN Is The Devil, Georgia Football, Stats Geek!
“We certainly are sensitive to church and other events that are held on Sunday.”
Oklahoma’s season opener against Houston has been moved to Sunday, Sept. 1. The game will be on ESPN at 7:30 p.m. ET.
This will be the first Sunday game the Sooners have ever hosted.
You knew Mickey would be involved.
I wonder if beer will be sold.
Filed under College Football, ESPN Is The Devil
Those that can, coach.
Those that no longer can, work for Mickey.
Best of luck with it, sir.
Filed under ESPN Is The Devil
The American Athletic Conference gets a raise.
It’s pretty substantial, relatively speaking.
The American Athletic Conference and ESPN reportedly have reached a long-term agreement that is worth $1 billion. The new deal would pay UCF and other AAC schools close to $7 million per year when it goes into effect to start the 2020-21 academic year.
ESPN would pay an average of $83.3 million per year, according to the Sports Business Journal. That’s four times the amount the AAC receives through its current rights agreement of a little more than $20 million annually.
The new deal runs through 2031-32.
It includes an annual payout of $6.94 million per AAC school, which is up $5 million from the current rights deal payout.
Sure, that pales in comparison to your typical P5 partnership arrangement, but four times more is still four times more. The real indicator this is a mid-major deal is this:
However, according to SBJ’s John Ourand, the new AAC agreement does include language that would protect ESPN financially in the event top programs leave the American and join other conferences during the contract.
Mickey doesn’t get to bargain for that kind of bet-hedging with the SEC.
In any event, what this really tells us is that, despite all the Clay Travis-type warnings about ESPN’s bleak future and what that means for college athletics, there’s still no safer place for a television network to put its money than live sports product.
