Big Ten Football: Big Payout for Each Team Shows B1G Is Leading the Way for Now

According to reports in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Big Ten is set to disburse about $25 million in television revenue to each of its member institutions this year. That number is sky-high compared to the rest of the NCAA when it comes to television revenue, and it will be until at least the end of 2012.

After that, look out.

The Big Ten's edge in television revenue is largely a function of its remarkably profitable Big Ten Network. The channel, half-owned by the Big Ten, remains unique in its ability to generate revenue for the conference, and as a result the BTN pulled in $79 million in 2011.

That was good enough for over $7 million per athletic department (Nebraska does not receive a full share of profits yet), and unless the channel is massively mismanaged over a long period of time, it's hard to imagine that this revenue stream will ever dry up.

However, the Big Ten's dominance is set to be challenged. The Pac-12 will launch its channel over the next three months, and top officials there are optimistic that they can get on plenty of television sets as well.

"We’re right on track," said Gary Stevenson, president of Pac-12 Enterprises, when I caught up with him the other day. About half the staff of 120 has been hired, and a move into the headquarters building is set for early July in San Francisco’s technology-dominated SOMA district.

Stevenson has a chamber-of-commerce view of the whole Pac-12 Networks operation, from his reference to "about 12 Peyton Mannings" in his senior staff’s expertise to an "esprit de corps" in negotiations with cable carriers that haven’t yet contracted with the league.

Today, the unfinished business is that the Pac-12 has deals with four cable companies representing roughly a robust 40 million subscribers—Comcast, Time-Warner, Cox and Bright House. But that means there’s nothing lined up with others such as DirecTV and Dish Network.

"I would characterize the conversations as healthy, ongoing and productive," said Stevenson. No doubt referring to the Big Ten Network’s acrimony with Comcast a few years ago, he added, "If you recall a couple of networks that have launched over the years, that wasn’t always the case."

Now, Stevenson can talk all the smack he wants about the Big Ten, and he's right: The BTN had a lot of difficult negotiations to get to where it is now in terms of exposure. The fact that the Pac-12 Network is already aligned with Comcast is hugely important.

There are millions of satellite dish users out west too, though, and there the Pac-12 needs to make inroads or else there's going to be hell to pay.

The SEC's about to find this out too, as it tries desperately to excise itself from a media deal that looks worse and worse with each successive year. At the time, the SEC's $1 billion-with-a-b deal with ESPN looked great, and it was the largest deal put forth for a conference at that point.

What the ESPN deal didn't include, however, was a separate channel for the conference, and instead ESPN farmed out the third-tier games to Fox Sports through the 2013 season. Even though the SEC's recent acquisitions of Texas A&M and Missouri mean it can renegotiate its ESPN contract and get the ball rolling on the new network, the SEC can't undo the Fox deal, so it's going to be 2014 before that conference joins the rest of civilization.

Once there, though, it's hard to imagine that an SEC Network wouldn't be able to charge the steepest local carriage fees, as there's nothing in college sports like the hold the SEC has on the southeast. Maybe it's a bit much to expect ESPN-level money from customers in places like Tuscaloosa or Atlanta, but the negotiations should start only a little lower.

Then, by 2014, it'll be the Big Ten's move again. Jim Delany's not going to want to cede his top spot in television revenue without a fight, but where's a fight the Big Ten can win from here? And is this what'll finally prompt the Big Ten to expand its media footprint past its incremental additions of the last 20 years?