Scott Ushers in PAC Change

Barack Obama campaigned on a platform of widespread change for those fed up with the political status quo. With his reelection approaching, the President may want to look to Larry Scott for a blueprint on change.

Scott’s taken over as the Pacific Conference commissioner with an ambitious agenda akin to Obama’s. And like Obama, not all of Scott’s ideas have come to fruition. He has instituted significant changes to the league though, and Wednesday should put the largest feather in his cap yet.

Rewind nearly two decades, to a time without Internet and cable television meant access to 25 or more channels. How could anyone possibly take in all this programming? The lucky few with that magic wire channeling seemingly limitless television options into their home still struggled to see more than two PAC-10 football games a week.

Pacific 10 Conference coverage in those days was relegated to the Keith Jackson-called, 12:30 PT kickoff ABC game and the Raycom Game of the Week.

Increased availability of satellites and the advent of digital cable have deluged consumers with programming options, and yet PAC football has been stuck in its old ways.

The reported $2.7 billion/12-year ESPN/FOX partnership keeps Scott & Co. on pace with college football’s Joneses: the Big 12, Big Ten and SEC. The new PAC-12 contract is akin to what the Big 12 brokered less than a month ago. Aside from scattered ESPN broadcasts, Big 12 football was sequestered on the FSN regional No Man’s Land, but its new deal doubles the amount of nationally broadcasted games.

Details of the PAC-12 contract are still filtering through. Tomorrow’s officially announcement will outline the networks’ respective roles, but initially seems a mutually beneficial partnership for the PAC-12 and FOX to make each a true player. FOX has the means to make a PAC-12 football the most visible it’s ever been on the national stage. A late morning Major League Baseball game in September is a strong lead-in to late afternoon pigskin, and October’s Playoffs can get a boost from a football lead-in. Lower echelon games can go on FX and assuredly outdraw reruns of That ’70s Show.

Comcast is left in the lurch with FOX stealing the splash it was hoping to make. The media conglomerate Comcast took over NBCUniversal earlier this year, and had was rumored to be running with the PAC. The Notre Dame contract has long been NBC Sports’ flagship, but as conference contracts expand and UND sputters through mediocrity, it’s becoming apparent NBC needs to bolster its college football coverage.

Comcast not only loses the possibility of becoming the exclusive provider of PAC-12 football, it loses the occasional PAC game it already had on Versus Network. UND could have been the mantlepiece of Saturdays rivaling sports giant ESPN: the Irish at 1 ET, a PAC doubleheader to follow with the lower tier games on Versus. Instead, UND will continue enjoying a lead and follow of Flavor Wave informercials.

The PAC was in a no-lose position — Comcast, FOX/ESPN, no matter where it landed, Scott’s road map of change had it sitting pretty. But the divide in the Bowl Championship Series has widened. It’s no longer the Big Six, rather the Big Four-Plus-Two.

The ACC is less than a year removed from brokering a deal with ESPN worth nearly a full billion dollars fewer than the PAC’s. At the time, the ACC move was monumental, more than doubling its previous television revenue. Now, it’s looking a bit like purchasing an Apple product — it’s great when y ou get it home and tinker with it, but a year later something much shinier hits markets. That the ESPN deal was also an Us-vs-Them issue with FOX, when the network arranged a partnership for both the Big 12 and PAC-12 compounds the issue.

The Big East has a $200 million deal expiring next year, but with uncertainty looming. Big East Coast Bias‘s Mark Ennis pointed out today via Twitter that Big East basketball is far too lucrative a programming chip for ESPN to let the conference seek rights elsewhere, like Comcast. Yet for football, ESPN’s table is getting very crowded with the expansion of PAC and Big 12 coverage, and massive contracts already in place with the Big Ten and SEC.

Comcast would provide Big East a home to be THE game in town — only, the conference’s affiliation with Notre Dame in every other sport seems a potential curveball for football. Sharing a network with a conference it has no affiliation is one thing, but how would the long time lynchpin of NBC Sports feel react to its own conference joining the one-man party its independence grants Notre Dame? Furthermore, any expansion of television rights the Big East is to gain will come after it expands and its markets are shored. That is a matter no less murky now than it was six months ago.