Automatic Cash Conference: ACC's TV Deal With ESPN Doubles Dollars

John Swofford is all smiles.

That wasn't always the case.

The commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference led his membership into the first large-scale "raid" of another big-time college athletic conference back in 2004 and 2005.  That expansion helped the ACC reach a lucrative increase in their football media rights with ABC/ESPN of over $35 million per year, but it created some bitter enemies from the remaining Big East members.

That deal expires after the 2011 spring semester, along with the basketball contract with long-time partner Raycom Sports.  By design, the ACC wanted to create leverage by having the two revenue sports deals offered up simultaneously.

But the recent collegiate conference landscape has some major rumblings that had many outsiders wondering if the ACC's expansion had failed to deliver on its initial promise.  The TV contract quickly became outpaced on the national stage.  The football members have played great games, but parity threatened to diminish their national appeal.

The contract for the football rights held a 60-day exclusive negotiating window for current rights holder ESPN to offer up their best deal.  The window came and went with no formal agreement.

Rumors trickled out that negotiations were not going well.  Was there a market for their league in the wake of the collosal contracts that the Big Ten and SEC had garnered?

Once on the open market, however, things got very interesting as the long-rumored college sports play of Fox Sports hit the ground running.  Fox battled with ESPN to drive up the value of the ACC combined sports package to more than double their current value.

John Ourand and Michael Smith of the SportsBusiness Journal are reporting that ESPN won the bidding war with a hefty $1.86 billion 12-year deal that comes out to $155 million per season, running from Fall 2011 to Spring 2023.  That is a 130% increase over the previous TV rights total for the ACC!

ABC/ESPN is quickly filling up their airwaves with the elite college sports conferences in football (SEC) and now basketball (ACC).

Will their be room for anyone else?

The Pac-10, Big 12, and Big East certainly hope so.  And don't forget about Conference USA hoops, who are currently on the block looking for a new deal past 2011 themselves.

The ACC deal means that there will not be an ACC Network, something the conference was never anxious to pursue.  It also protects their membership from feeling financial pressure in the wake of impending conference expansion chaos.

The near $13 million per school per season is comparable enough to the SEC's $17 million that schools like Clemson, Florida State, and Georgia Tech will not be tempted for the foreseeable future.

Value is always relative.  College sports, as a commodity, is very valuable due to their constant popularity and desired demographics.  The elite conferences in each sport have tremendous value on a national scale for TV networks. Combine that with the possibility of a Big East Conference break-up, and ACC basketball value is the JP Morgan to the Big East's Lehman Brothers.

The guaranteed supply of elite basketball was certainly the driving force behind the high bidding between ESPN and Fox Sports.  Having solid football members and some big media markets certainly helps, but the continued dominance of ACC basketball on a national scale made this deal possible.

This deal brings some stability to at least one part of the country during these troubling collegiate conference days.

The focus will remain on the Big Ten expansion scenarios, of course, but the real pressure will now shift out west.

The Pac-10 has paralleled the ACC in many respects, at least up until the ACC went "super" in 2004.  Can their "media agent" CAA Media Ventures' Chris Bevilacqua deliver for Larry Scott what IMG's Barry Frank did for John Swofford?

Can Larry Scott captain his ship through stormy waters better than, or at least comparable to, Swofford?

Will the "West Coast Advantage" be able to match the East Coast Bias?

Is an expanded Pac-10 the only road that gets them to a "Big Four" type TV contract?

The answer could be found in the new-found aggressiveness by Fox Sports.

The Pac-10 hopes that the networks bidding on the ACC was just target practice for the real gunfight in a Wild West Shootout for the Pac-10's media rights.