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The SEC’s fortunes are tied at the hip with ESecPN.

Unfortunately, you NOW have a nich regional product.

The Big boys NOW have the NYC/NJ, Maryland/Wash DC/Balitmorel, LA/Kalifornia, Seattle, Chicago, Columbus, Indy, and NIKE, OR as honorable mention.

This is a coast-to-coast Mega Media Marketing bemoth that will draw a TV and Cable revenue stream that dewarf’s the SEC.

A funny thing happened on the way to 16 team conferences and that was the B1G/B16 (see how that looks the same with 20-20 hindsight;), but I digress. The B1G channel broke this conference off the ESPN bandwagon, and for the past two years the B1G Cable Programming has almost matched the whole ESPN revenue stream. Then you have the B1G conference TV packages that will pull more air time from 12 EST to 12 PST or about 15 hours a day - as the season conference rankings heat up in the B1G fans in DC or NY will be tunning in to Seattle or LA. I imagine NIKE can get a good commercial deal with the home conference.

When USC or Washington is playing in Ann Arbor or at Rutgers at 12 EST they will watching and when Ohio State is playing a 8-9 PM EST game in Kalifornia or Eugune, Columbus will be watching til midnight. The SEC will have gone dark 2-4 hours earlier, but even if the SEC starts playing 9 PM games, the Media Markets are not going to compete for commercial revenue payouts. The Big Boy Network is going to get rich.

Bottom line is the SEC is an 11-hour air time conference and the B1G is 15 hours - those commercials are going to pull in a lot of Cash.

When the B1G broke with ESPN that newtork promoted the SEC over the the B1G. It made a big difference for about 4-5 years and then the B1G revenue stream began to exceed that of the SEC/ESPN deals.

There are two implications of the SEC Cable tied to ESPN is already showing up in the per team payouts as the B1G TV and separate Cable B1G Network is showing a few million a year advantage - before the Left coast is added.

That second implication is that a National Conferance with greater viewership than a less profitable regional conference will get fewer post season plum invites, so maybe in ten years it will even out in fairness as less deserving B1G teams garnering more attention will bump a Georgia, Alburn, Bama when they give out the 12 invitations to the play offs;)

FOLLOW THE MONEY.