the Minnesota Timberwolves. In 2004 he turned down the Wolves' offer of a three year extension for $21MM, famously saying that he had a family to feed. He played out that final year of his contract and then faded into the sunset, except for scrapes with the law.

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What did Rutgers, WVU, syracuse, Pitt say about the old contract offer while they were trying to jump ship? They probably opposed the grant of rights because it would hinder their exit.

The Pitt AD, and an AD from another school I can't recall, were the main drivers behind holding out for more money.

who fired Dave Wannstedt and replaced him with a carousel, and who fired Frank Solich at Nebraska after a six-year stretch with 58 wins and three top-10 finishes. Good horse sense on that guy.

so they scuttled any deal that would preserve the Big East.

Now if we find a relationship between that and their refereeing in 2004 and 2009 and we have grounds to tell the ACC that we never schedule them again.

IIRC, the other BE schools trusted Pitt's AD and chancellor when negotiating the contract, only to see them bail for the ACC shortly after rejecting the contract. To answer DavidAddison's question, I think we voted against it too, but this was based on the input from Pitt since their AD was the prior chair.


http://bleacherreport.com/articles/856065-why-syracuse-and-pittsburgh-destroyed-college-basketball-and-the-big-east

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ESPN? They needed to get even a crap league like the new Big East if they had any hope of building a college football viewer base. I would have liked to see them get the Big East and feature the road Navy games on NBCSN or NBC every even year.

The Cable companies are paying through the nose for ESPN, Comcast wants a legitimate competitor to ESPN so they have leverage in negotiating contracts.

I'd expect them to seriously bid for the NBA when the current contract expires in 2016. They already have the NHL, and the NFL contracts are locked in for years.

As for college, they're shut out for more than a decade on the biggest contracts -- the football playoff and the NCAA basketball tournament -- and every major conference is locked up for years in both football and basketball. All they can really do is work at the margins, like the Big East, and bide their time.

family to do college sports. Similar to ESPN at their inception (Australian football . . . )NBC has started slowly; i.e. college hockey. Next year you'll see more college hockey on NBC including ND games. I think this is a foot in the door, and will grow from there.

regional cable sports.

first offer and what they agreed to. The Big East has become Conference USA.