Thank whatever deity you pray to because JP/LF/RAYCOMM has lost their syndication rights for SEC football and basketball for the 09 season going forward to ESPN. http://charlotte.bizjournals.com/charlotte/stories/2008/08/25/daily4.html Not only does this mean more nationally televised SEC games, but, sweet mercy, the end of the 3 Daves, bar none the most horrible broadcasting crew in all of college football.
Well, hopefully this will mean no more early morning starts but, somehow I doubt that will cease. Aside from when they pick up LSU games, I actually enjoy laughing at how bad they are (please, for the love of God, go read the chapter about Jefferson Pilot in the book Dixieland Delight).
I actually look at this as kind of bad news. I could care less about the announcers. I don't pay attention to them anyway. The only thing that mattered to me was I could see JP Sports games on Broadcast TV. Aside from a few ABC games here and there that we might see, everything else will be on one of the ESPN's. For someone like me who doesn't have/want cable. . .this is actually a bad thing.
A fifteen-year contract with ESPN means the SEC will be all over ESPN's 24/7 sports coverage promotions. And the money is huge. Thats the good thing. The bad thing is that ESPN has 11:00 AM games and we'll be on a lot of them in the next 15 years, as well as those prime-time games.
im worried that im gonna have to pay more for tv to get all the espn channels. LF sucked but it was free and the mute button always works.
Wow, ESPN is paying $150 million a year!? In comparison, the article states that CBS pays $55 million a year. I guess ESPN really wanted to make sure that there would be no SEC Network.
You can always cancel expanded cable after football season. That's what I plan to do and it will be a 12.99 charge yearly to hook it back up.
This is huge for the inherent bias ESPN has for the conferences that they have rights to. With ESPN having a piece of the SEC, they'll no longer have insentive to push the Big 10, Big 12, or Pac 10 teams over an equivalent or superior team from the SEC. GREAT NEWS for LSU and the SEC.
