The soon-to-be-renamed Big East Conference announced its $126 million multi-sport media rights deal with ESPN on Tuesday. A basketball TV deal with CBS could also possibly be reached by next week Mike Aresco, the new commissioner of the league said.
UH Athletics Director Mack Rhoades said he was satisfied with the deal and is excited about the attention ESPN will draw to the University.
“It’s an improvement, in terms of the TV numbers, from Conference USA, and we are excited about being affiliated ESPN,” Rhoades said.
The new league, which will include Central Florida, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Houston, Memphis, SMU, South Florida, Temple and Tulane for all sports and East Carolina and Navy for football as a “challenger brand” hopes to announce its new name by April or early May, Aresco said.
Conference officials are working with branding officials to develop a name since the Catholic 7 schools, which broke away from the conference earlier this month, will retain the Big East name and the conference tournament in Madison Square Garden. The Catholic 7 schools launched along with Butler, Creighton and Xavier on Wednesday and will start playing under the Big East name in the fall. The league also has a speculated 12-year agreement with Fox worth about $500 million with the possibility of increasing to $600 million if the league added more teams.
What a mess. UH got into the Big East, but now it’s no longer the Big East. The Big East is now something that split apart from the Big East.
Is it really worth joining the Big East if away games will now be very far? I’d hardly consider UH to be an “Eastern” university. Geographic-based conferences always made more sense to me.
It is what it is. It’s an improvement, however little it may be, but all we can do now is look to the future and support our guys.
In Tempore