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Peter Brown's avatar

John, got a mail bag question for you. ESPN got pushed out of the B1G so they could look more like the NFL and leverage promotion on Sundays. Very smart.

Now ESPN has lots of available airtime that they have to fill and two complete time zones that no other conference can cover as the PAC-12.

How about a game of chicken? The Pac-12 is far more valuable to ESPN in-tact as a viable and competitive product than it would be if they did the following:

1. Low-balled their media rights offer at $30m per school

2. Oregon, Washington, Cal, Stanford leave for the Big 10 kids table and take $50-60m compared to $80-90 for everyone else.

3. Now The B1G controls the pacific time zone and hands it over to Fox, NBC and CBS... out of ESPN’s hands. Quite a fall for the worldwide leader in sports.

Would it not be better for ESPN to make an offer that keeps the Pac-12 in-tact, financially strong, an automatic bid to the playoff and pulling nationwide eyeballs?

It just seems to me playing hardball with the PAC-12 after losing the B1G only hurts them more.

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