To the surprise of few, it's now official. ESPN owns College Football. All of College Football...and the rest of us are now powerless to stop them.Much like the Empire in Star Wars, they've consumed pretty much everything out there in the game today. All the major "BCS" Conferences, the major bowl games and now of course, the upcoming 2014 Playoffs.
Our friends at the "4-letter" now own the rights to all College Football playoff properties for the next 12-years. Oh, the countdown starts with the 1st playoff, at the end of the 2014 season.
((ed note--Does this mean the 2015 Championship game now has to be called "The Tebow Bowl"?))
Details from the Press Release RIGHT HERE
Terms of the deal haven't been released, but expect we'd expect it to be in the $1 billion plus range. (added note--for those who don't follow college football, your cable/satellite bills are going up again in 2015 to pay for this)
Really, there isn't much more to say here other than it happened. If you are a general sports fan you are probably happy. If you are in Sports Media...probably less so. If you aren't a sports fan, well, like we said, your tv bill is going up. For those uninitiated, like many networks, ESPN charges cable/satellite systems based on a "Subscriber/Retransmission" fee. If they decided they want to increase that fee by 25% to pay for this deal, well, you can expect your bill to go up by at least a percentage of that. The reason: Cable/Satellite providers pass that fee down to their subscribers--whether they watch ESPN/Sports...or not.
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