ESPN and the "death" of the Big East

[brewcity77]

All actions lead to reactions and so forth.  I put the blame squarely on the Big East.  After that, the broadcaster has to do what they have to do.  They weren't going to be held hostage by a two bit football league, even if basketball is great because basketball in the grand scheme of things doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of dollars.  Just thank God every day that Fox chose now to take on ESPN because we are getting multi-X return due to that timing.  Sellers market, and as a result MU and the C7 come out very well right now.  We should be sending love letters to David Hill, Eric Shanks and a few others every day.

Colluding behind the scenes with the ACC, directing them to take specific teams (as the BC president stated) and telling the Big 12 to poach WVU (as the buried Oklahoma newspaper article stated) was not the broadcaster doing what they had to do. They fixed the game against the Big East rather than allowing the league to test its value on the open market.

I'm glad of where we are right now. It all ended up working out for us. But acting like ESPN acted remotely ethically in how they handled the situation after the Big East elected to test their value is simply farcical. ESPN still had a contract with the Big East and deliberately worked against the best interests of their contractual partner.

[Tums Festival]

Let's not forget John Marinatto was in way over his head as commissioner. Hopefully, the new Big East commissioner will be up to the task during a very important time.