There looks to be no east coast bias when it comes to the Pac-12 snagging a sweet new TV deal.
The deal signed between the league and ESPN and Fox earlier this week is worth nearly $3 billion over a 12 year span. Starting in 2012, every school in the league will receive about $21 million in annual TV revenue. The only exception is Utah, which does not receive a full revenue share until the 2014-15 season.
It is a win-win deal for the Pac-12. The league's visibility is going to be much higher than before.
A total of 44 football games will be shown nationally on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ABC, FOX or FX. The remainder will be aired on the soon-to-be-launched Pac-12 Network. No more games consigned to the likes of Versus or FSN is a good thing for a BCS Conference that often gets lost in the Big 10, Big 12, SEC shuffle in the fall.
On the basketball front, 68 regular-season games will appear on ESPN and its affiliated networks or on Fox Sports Net. The remainder will be shown on the Pac-12 network.
Seeing the Pac-12 net a TV deal worth about $250 million annually has to rub the Big 10 and the SEC the wrong way. The Big 10 nets $220 million per year in their current ABC/ESPN deal and the SEC draws in $205 million annually in their CBS/ABC/ESPN deals.
More visibility could mean a bump in recruiting for the rest of the schools not named USC or Oregon. If anything, the TV deal could be a foreshadowing of the Pac-12 making a rise to dominance mirroring the rise of the SEC in the 1990s.
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