NBC has a deal with Notre Dame football for the next three years. It doesn't have a whole lot of football to pair with its Notre Dame football. Pretty much the only big league football available is the Big East's, so that idea about NBC packaging its entire Saturdays around the Irish by picking up the Big East could mean a big payoff for the somewhat forgotten power conference:
Sources suggest that if NBC, which is desperate for sports inventory, signs a TV contract with the conference, it would be willing to pay the Big East football teams $10 milllion apiece and throw in an additional $4 million for the 16 basketball schools. One of the network's ideas may be to run a full day of Big East football, along with Notre Dame home games, from noon to midnight Saturdays on either NBC or its still-growing cable channel.
That $14 million would come in just shy of what the ACC was able to get for its own full members, but that's not all:
No one saw that coming.
— Matt Hayes(@Matt_HayesSN) August 5, 2012@ucfsports: Big East TV deal "could exceed value" of ACCs (monetarily and exposure)@nickcarparelli tells 700 WLW ."
Carparelli is the Big East's senior associate commissioner, and he's apparently feeling confident enough in the Big East's chances of landing a good deal to make some waves ahead of time. By "exceeding" the "value" of the ACC's deal, he's counting the exposure that would come with preceding and following Notre Dame as greater than the exposure the ACC is getting, which will often mean ESPN3.com games.
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