The Game to Show the Games

Call it the calm before the storm.

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I haven’t been putting my posts on the Sports TV Wars on Bleacher Report (with only one exception), because I use terminology like “Sports TV Wars” that would likely turn off the uninitiated. But they are posts on actual news stories, and I’d like to be able to establish myself as an “expert” of sorts on the topic, a sort of go-to place for analysis for those interested, which putting them on Bleacher Report can only help, so I keep not liking my inability to put them there.

So seeing my recent post on the Breeder’s Cup’s move to NBC get linked to on the Fang’s Bites blog gave me pause. Not merely because Fang’s Bites is a vaguely prominent blog in sports media circles, one I personally follow (sometimes), run by someone I’ve had… interesting run-ins with on Twitter, who nonetheless never links to my posts despite almost recommending the site to people two years ago (if only I wasn’t trying to move to MorganWick.com at the time). But clearly he felt the post was accessible enough to his audience, though to be fair the only obtuse terminology I use in that post is a single, easily-missed reference to “wars”.

So I’m wondering… should I keep doing what I’m doing (and maybe work harder on the Wars posts to make them more worthy of such links)? Cut down on the obtuse references to my own personal concepts so I can put them on B/R? Or perhaps my Wars posts are accessible enough to put on B/R as is? Would people understand them on B/R if I just did a little introductory post to get them acclimated?

The floor is open for your opinion on this sensitive topic.

The Breeder’s Cup moves to NBC – what it means to all parties

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A while back we started getting TVG network on our digital package. There was a time when I would flip on the channel and become addicted for hours at a time watching races I knew nothing about until ten minutes before post time and didn’t care about. Granted, it was probably because of how fast and furious races could come, but I was probably ready to dance on horse racing’s grave before then and now I often quietly cheer for the sport to stop shooting itself in the foot and make a return to American consciousness.

So I have to say I like the Breeder’s Cup’s new deal with NBC that will put the Cup on NBC and NBC Sports Network starting this year. After the Cup Classic was relegated to cable the past few years, the main NBC network will now put the Classic on in primetime. Don’t get too excited – we’re talking about Saturday, also known as “the night that doesn’t exist as far as the networks are concerned”, which nonetheless is being increasingly colonized by sports like ABC’s “Saturday Night Football” college football franchise – but it should still help the Cup’s aura as the championship of horse racing. Anything that focuses the masses’ attention more on the Cup and less on the Triple Crown can only be good for the sport – as does building a strong identity of being on NBC, which will now have both.

ESPN is pulling a “they didn’t fire us, we quit” card, and may now be out of the horse racing business. But this deal is very, very good for NBC and NBC Sports Network, especially since the non-Classic races may be up there with some of the biggest non-hockey programming on NBCSN. With NBC now being so strongly attached to horse racing, it’s easy to see them loading up even more on the sport, especially to fill time on NBCSN, which could use all the events it can get. NBC and NBCSN already have this past summer’s “Summer at Saratoga” series (highlighted by the famed Travers Stakes) and have signed up to show many of the Derby prep races this spring. I could see NBCSN loading up on as many relatively top-notch horse races as it can on Saturday afternoons outside college football season, especially on weekends when NBC has golf commitments, which can certainly only be good for the sport in the long term.

Only one other sporting event has moved from ESPN to NBC since the wars started – and the Belmont Stakes had actually reached an agreement before the NBC/Comcast merger became final. Fox has so far been more successful at taking events away from ESPN, highlighted by the World Cup, and ESPN has been more successful to this point at taking events from NBC than the reverse, highlighted by Wimbledon. To pick up a real win over ESPN, even a small one, has to feel huge inside the NBC Sports offices, and goes a long way towards proving that smaller events can have a home on NBC Sports Network. No wonder ESPN’s denying it was a real “win”. If they were interested, they have to have legitimate concerns right now.

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What the New York City Marathon’s new TV deal says about the sports TV wars

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You probably don’t care all that much about the New York City Marathon, but its recent deal with ESPN says a lot as we approach the one-year anniversary of the start of the Wars.

Previously, the New York City Marathon had aired on Universal Sports, a network most people probably haven’t heard of, and WNBC-TV in New York, with NBC airing edited highlights later. It’s quite understandable that the Marathon would want a network that could give it a truly national audience (especially with Universal Sports losing a lot of households at the start of the year as it transitioned away from airing on NBC stations’ digital feeds), but that didn’t necessarily mean leaving NBC, now that NBC has the NBC Sports Network in the fold.

I don’t know if NBCSN had other plans for that day, but it still shows that NBC has a long way to go to prove that it’s a viable platform for smaller events on par with even ESPN2.

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Breaking down what the NFL’s new TV deals mean

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The NFL may have just made the biggest change to its television and week-by-week scheduling structure since it lifted the blackout on sold-out home games… without changing any networks.

Last week, the NFL renewed its deals with CBS, Fox, and NBC for another nine years through 2022. One part of the deal will involve “expanded flex scheduling”, which apparently means NBC will be able to flex out of games as early as Week 5, but only if the game is a disaster waiting to happen like the Colts’ games this year. But it will also mean that games could flip between CBS and Fox. Before this point, there was an AFC network and an NFC network, and which games aired on which networks was set in stone. Now, while the rules for which games air on which networks will remain the same, some games may air on the other network on occasion. The situation we saw a few weeks ago, where Broncos-Vikings, normally a CBS game, flipped to Fox, will become more common. The exact rules haven’t been decided on, but one reason to flip games may be to shore up the second half of the doubleheader, though Broncos-Vikings became the premier game of the first half of the doubleheader.

That means that starting in 2014, my SNF Flex Schedule Watch could be very different… and I may have to give up the ghost entirely if the rules end up being too complicated.

The NFL also made a change to how it divvies up playoff games. NBC has traded in one of its Wild Card games for a divisional game. Most of the smart money has ESPN picking up the Wild Card game NBC gave up, putting a playoff game on cable for the first time. The third divisional game could conceivably rotate between CBS and Fox, go to ESPN as well, or go to NBC as well. My money is that it’ll go to NBC, balancing the number of playoff games on the broadcast networks before the Super Bowl at three apiece. Rotating between CBS and Fox would be hard logistically, and the NFL doesn’t seem to be the sort of entity that lets ESPN have playoff games that deep.

The NFL Network will also expand its Thursday Night schedule. This doesn’t necessarily mean selling the back half of the Thursday Night package is off the table, if it means going to 10-12 as a “stepping stone” to a full-season split schedule and as a way to put more pressure on those holdouts that don’t carry NFLN, but I could see it happening (hopefully it doesn’t mean the NFL will keep the additional NFLN games and try for an 18-game schedule again). However, the Thanksgiving Night game is moving to NBC, which doesn’t really surprise me, but does seem to be a good sign for NBC Sports Network’s prospects of winning the Thursday Night package (although if NBCSN does win it’s likely to be only seven games as a result of this). By my calculations, that means the Thursday night schedule would begin somewhere around Week 4-6.

Finally, NBC Sports Network will throw its hat into the ring of the Sunday morning pregame shows. That’s another good sign for NBC Sports’ prospects of winning the Thursday night package; however, if the NFL went with Turner then every single contender in the sports TV wars would have a Sunday morning pregame show.

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Catching up on the sports television wars

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I stopped doing my Sports TV Wars posts in an attempt to reserve all my blogging time for football posts, so let’s not wait any longer to catch up on the developments from the last two months.

The World Cup bidding ended in a double upset, making the Wars far more interesting: Fox stealing the World Cup from ESPN (and indirectly NBC) and Telemundo stealing the Spanish language rights from Univision. I had thought Fox’s lack of MLS coverage, the main motivating factor behind their bid, would ultimately kill it because of FIFA’s desire for the winner to go all out to promote the sport in the US. I also thought NBC still had more motivation to grow Versus and establish their soccer brand. Instead, Fox sent a strong message that they are not to be ignored. I would expect most non-broadcast World Cup games to air on FX; the main value for Fox Soccer Channel will be all the lesser tournaments they now hold the rights to, filling the spring and summer programming time MLS left behind. Time will tell if this presages an effort to steal the MLS contract out from under both ESPN and NBC in a few years.

I was also surprised Telemundo even went ahead with a bid without corporate sibling NBC picking up English language rights, but apparently it may have been the other way around. (Which shouldn’t be surprising, considering Telemundo paid $100 million more than Fox.)

Also:

  • The Tennis Channel extended their rights agreement with the WTA Tour through 2016. ESPN3 reached an agreement with the WTA in the same deal. I’m not sure whether to count that half-and-half between Tennis Channel and ESPN or all Tennis Channel, but I’m going to do the latter for now.
  • Nearly a year after announcing it was dropping the “College” from its name, CBS Sports Network has finally picked up a non-college contract! Sure, it’s with super-tiny Major League Lacrosse, but still!
  • We then had a slow period through the rest of November and into December until just the other day, when ESPN extended its agreement with the NCAA for its non-men’s basketball championships, swiping some lesser women’s championships from CBS Sports Network and making me pine even more wistfully for what might have been had ESPN trumped CBS and Turner for March Madness.

Yes, I know I’m ignoring a far greater prize that was just awarded. But despite being essentially a formality, it’s a deal that’s far too big not to deserve its own post, for reasons that have nothing to do with who won them. More on that later.

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More dispatches from the Wars

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No Thursday Night Football? No problem: just go after a different football. The three major contenders in the sports TV wars will square off this week to pick up the rights to the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. ESPN will be looking to defend its World Cup incumbency, arguably its biggest non-NFL, non-BCS event, from the assault of NBC and Fox, two entities looking to shore up their soccer presence in the wake of NBC’s pick-up of an MLS contract.

Apparently, Dick Ebersol had a deal in place for NBC to take over the World Cup starting last year in 2005, but lost it partly because it had no interest in broadcasting soccer the rest of the year. NBC is in a different situation now, and in fact would like to make MLS less of an outlier on NBC and its sports network; other than the Olympics, NBC Sports hasn’t shown basically any of the sport. For NBC, it’s relevant that this contract will also be for two Women’s World Cups and other FIFA programming, to further fill out NBCSN’s schedule and build its soccer credibility. As with the Olympics, though, I don’t think the World Cup is the killer app NBCSN is looking for; one month every four years will not get it done, even in conjunction with the Olympics. I think that fact will depress how much NBC is willing to bid.

If NBC is trying to shore up its MLS programming, Fox is trying to make up for the loss of it. Fox has built its brand as one of the premier homes of soccer through its Fox Soccer channel, which has resulted in some matches airing on FSN, FX, and even the Fox network; the World Cup would be the crowning achievement of this trend. Fox Soccer is in half as many homes as NBCSN, but I would expect most non-Fox matches to air on FX, at least for the main men’s World Cup. The other competitions would be valuable programming for Fox Soccer, especially during a part of the schedule that will be even more dead with MLS leaving.

My guess is that ESPN has better than even odds of retaining the contract, given their demonstrated commitment to the sport. If ESPN loses the contract, I would make NBC the favorite over Fox. The World Cup will not grow Versus that much and Fox has a more established soccer infrastructure, but NBC still needs the Cup more, and I think losing MLS will kill Fox’s bid as much as motivate it, given FIFA’s desire that the winner promote soccer in this country through airing US National Team and MLS matches. (Also, without MLS Fox is much more likely to simply pull commentary from the English feed, something that might be verboten, certainly with soccer fans.) For that same reason, I would expect this fight to be a harbinger of who will take the MLS contract in full in a few years; the winner of this fight could be the odds-on favorite.

There is one more development to speak of, and it’s a little surprising. Since it started airing French Open matches, Tennis Channel has actually been the lead rights-holder, with ESPN2 coming along for the ride. Now Tennis Channel has renewed its deal for the next decade, and it will be the lead rights-holder for real, with ESPN2 being relegated to early-morning and other backup coverage.

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College football’s moment of truth

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College football needs to make a conscious decision about what it wants to be, a decision it should have made a long time ago. It can attempt to reclaim the notion of showcasing students who happen to play football, or it can embrace its current popularity and become the NFL’s developmental league, with teams effectively selling their naming rights for a fanbase, probably adopting some sort of playoff system. It can be popular, or it can be college, but it can’t be both.

One of the glories of college football in the pre-ESPN, pre-BCS era was that the results didn’t really matter. Yes, good teams went to bowls at the end of the season and rivals wanted to beat each other, but the real heart of college football was everything surrounding the game – all the pageantry that purists like to talk up. Polls crowned a national champion at the end of the year, but few people really cared. In the words of Ed Guenther, whose series on the college football playoff debate informed my own series on the same debate two years ago, college football was a sport “played regionally on Saturdays”, whereas now it’s “played nationally for four months”.

The BCS is the biggest proximate reason for this change, but it is itself a result of the increasing television attention focused on college football, which began with the birth of ESPN in 1979 and the court case that stripped the NCAA of control over the TV rights to regular-season college football. Once conferences began selling their own TV rights, it became possible to follow college football on a national basis over the course of the whole season. It’s no coincidence that the rise of conference TV contracts coincided with the rise of attempts to provide some sort of “national championship game”. As the national championship became more important, and as the bowls started coming into more and more money as more and more people across the nation became interested in them, the focus shifted away from the overall college football experience, and wins and losses became more important, even all-consuming.

Combine the influx of money into the sport with the increased stakes for getting the best players, and the result is a dog-eat-dog recruiting world. It’s no wonder the college football landscape has been rocked by scandal in recent years, scandal that has, in all likelihood, only scraped the surface of the corruption and under-the-table “extra benefits” trading hands in college football. The ongoing scandal at Miami (FL) is only the worst that has come to light.

The notion of amateurism – once thought to be the bedrock of college sports – now seems quaint to almost everyone outside the NCAA offices, even exploitative when one looks at the amount of money these players provide to their schools and the NCAA while seemingly getting little to nothing in return. The idea of paying players has started to look rather appealing, with the major obstacle being the practical matter of paying participants in non-revenue sports; I believe someone on ESPN (maybe during their Blueprint for Change series?) pointed out that sports are the only collegiate activity that isn’t paid.

Of course, sports aren’t like other collegiate activities. The school band or the student newspaper doesn’t have the whole school coming out to support all of their activities, nor are they broadcast on national television for a tenth to a fifth of the country to see. The school band or student newspaper don’t rack in millions of dollars for their universities, nor do they engage in high-stakes recruiting battles with other schools for the best trombonist or the best reporter. Paying players would only exacerbate a trend that has been growing for the last few decades: players as mercenaries taking their talents to whatever school they feel would best prepare them for the NFL or NBA, or in this case, selling their services to the highest bidder, with no real connection to their schools, and turning college football into a de facto developmental league for the NFL, or college basketball into the NBA’s de facto developmental league, with teams simply selling their naming rights to schools for a fanbase.

College football’s gatekeepers need to figure out whether they want to keep making money hand over fist, or reclaim the notion of amateurism once thought to be at the heart of collegiate athletics. I don’t think the latter can withstand the continuation of the former. The pay-players movement has too much momentum, and lawsuits will be filed if things continue as they are. But college football needs to definitively choose one or the other; they can’t have it both ways. Either approach, however, would involve some hard choices and some decisions college football’s gatekeepers don’t want to make.

If the decision is made to go all-in and turn college football into a money-making developmental league for the NFL, the first thing that should be done is to divorce college football from the NCAA, ASAP. The NCAA has its origins in an effort to clean up college football shortly before World War I, but football is now the sport the NCAA has the least connection to. Cutting off college football from the NCAA at all levels would save the NCAA from an all-sports defection from the big-name football schools that would probably cripple it permanently, allow conference realignment to proceed to 16-team superconferences (and the potential playoff that comes with it) without screwing up the conferences for other sports, and depending on how such a split would be interpreted through the lens of Title IX, save lesser collegiate sports from being sunk by the requirements imposed by the need to pay players. And make no mistake: unless the NCAA and college football’s gatekeepers take steps to reclaim the notion of amateurism in collegiate athletics immediately, they will have to pay players. Hell, it’s already happening under the table and everyone knows it.

The new collegiate football association would then be able to impose the sorts of rules and regulations necessary to create a fairly stable status quo, one that brings the current black market into the light, that could propel what was left of college football into the future without the NCAA’s unnecessary bloat – possibly including a playoff, but such a divorce would open up another approach, which I’ll get to in a later post.

If the NCAA decides that, ultimately, the money isn’t worth losing the soul of college football, then some drastic actions will need to be taken to reclaim it. The first thing will involve putting pressure on the NFL to start its own developmental league (whether from scratch or by absorbing the UFL) and allow potential players to declare for the NFL draft right out of high school without necessarily changing the age limits for the big league, a step absolutely necessary to give people who only see college as a stepping stone to the pros an alternative, similar to the college baseball model.

Then the NCAA needs to impose some drastic, top-to-bottom reforms to, possibly, put the toothpaste back in the tube, completely remaking the rulebook, getting tough on corruption and the Nevin Shapiros of the world, beefing up the enforcement staff and making clear that the age of Michael Wilbon comparing the NCAA to “Barney Fife” is over. It’s possible that ending athletic scholarships and recruiting entirely may be necessary, or at least severely restricting them.

If – and it’s a big if – these moves are successful at bringing the stakes in college football and college sports in general back down to earth (besides potentially keeping the stakes high, the NFL could balk at starting its own developmental league and the big schools could decide they want to keep making money and secede from the NCAA), it’s going to start another major shake-up in college sports. Conferences that were formed for reasons of money will shatter in an instant, with the return of regional rivalries possible but a big long-shot (more likely, conferences remain capped at 12 teams). The BCS could collapse, not necessarily replaced with a playoff as opposed to the old bowl system, and probably half the bowls shut their doors immediately. The result would be a long period of uncertainty, and maybe – maybe – a return to a more idyllic time in college football at the end of it.

I can’t guarantee that any of that would actually happen. It’s possible it’s too late for anyone to save the ideals at the heart of college football. But college football needs to make that decision on its future soon, lest it collapse under the weight of its own scandal and corruption.

Cleaning up some notes on the sports television wars

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So I made a big deal about the new Thursday Night Football contract coming down later this month, and it came out today that it’s probably not happening by the end of the year at least. Not that my post was completely useless, as it may well still happen in time to show up on the 2012 schedule (my guess is an announcement will come Super Bowl weekend), but it won’t be happening quite as quickly as I implied.

That came out in a press conference to announce ESPN re-upping with the NFL for the next decade, which like the PGA TOUR with CBS and NBC, was pretty much a formality, reported as early as January. It does mean, though, that combined with reported ongoing negotiations to re-up with the NFL’s other TV partners, the TNF package may be more than a two-year trial run, but may be another decade-long deal. Also, the scorecard now reflects NBC taking back the Belmont Stakes from ABC, which wasn’t announced until this past February.

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Handicapping the Thursday Night Football race

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Good news: We’re not getting an 18-game schedule!

If that’s the bad news for the NFL, here’s the good news: They’re going to take Thursday Night Football full-season!

Back in 2006, the NFL surprised many observers by putting a slate of late-season Thursday night games on its own NFL Network, rebuffing offers from other cable networks. Now reports are that the NFL will soon be awarding an early-season slate of Thursday-night games, giving those networks a second chance. And with the sports television wars heating up, the timing couldn’t be better, as the NFL – somewhat unexpectedly – plays host to the second major battle of the Wars with the Olympics in the rear view, one with no true incumbent.

Naturally, all the major cable players are involved, as well as one surprising dark horse; according to reports, Turner and Comcast are the front-runners. The NFL could even hand over control of the NFL Network to the winner. Before we continue, I should mention that I doubt the NFL will sign with any network for more than two years, when their other contracts expire. That means this contract will ultimately be a “trial balloon” of sorts. That said, here are the major players, what they have to gain, what they have going against them, and what their ultimate chances are:

Turner Sports

What they’re fighting for: Turner has the major advantage of not only having cable sports experience, but even being a pre-existing NFL rightsholder, holding half the then-Sunday night package until ESPN decided they wanted the whole thing. They’ve wanted to get back into the game ever since; apparently during the 2005 negotiations, Turner had actually hired some analysts for games before striking out on all the packages. Putting NFL games on TNT would not only give them a shot at redemption, it also would be the best fit from the perspective of the uninformed casual fan wondering why the Thursday night games move to the NFL Network midseason – the NFL would shuffle off TNT just in time for the NBA season to start. Turner also has experience running a league-owned network in NBA TV. Then there’s the prestige factor; Turner would join ESPN as the only entities to have all four of the modern major sports at the same time.

What they have going against them: Turner is already established in the game, which means they don’t have as much to gain as the next contenders…

NBC/Comcast

What they’re fighting for: Simply put, nothing less than firmly establishing their position as the competitor to ESPN they so dearly want to be. You know Comcast is looking longingly at the blueprint ESPN established for their success using NFL games. They’d love to relish the sweet irony of turning that blueprint against them, especially with the ability to tie it in to the NBC Sunday Night package (and make the season-opening game on NBC a natural extention of the Thursday package). In fact, in 2005 Comcast and Versus came closest of any other entity to getting the Thursday night package before the NFL took it to the NFL Network, setting up a lengthy carriage dispute between NFLN and the nation’s largest cable operator.

There’s a meme going around that Comcast tapped themselves out of cash on their Olympic bid, but that doesn’t make much sense to me. As I’ve said before, I don’t buy that two weeks every two years will grow the soon-to-be-NBC-Sports-Network, especially since audiences, even if they hate tape delays, have grown used to watching NBC’s primetime Olympic highlights packages. For Comcast to spend so much money on the Olympics that they’d doom any effort to get another high-profile package seems like a risky all-in bet to me for their ESPN-killer hopes. And they, too, have experience running a league-owned network, even if it’s just the mtn.; NFLN could also look to the Golf Channel to see what Comcast running the show might look like.

What they have going against them: I don’t think Comcast is hurting too much for money in the short term, the NFL’s relationship with Comcast has improved since the NFLN carriage dispute, and NBC Sports Network could probably handle showing games just fine, even if it shows UFL games right now. So what would a problem be? Well, Comcast may ultimately decide that, while the NFL would be nice, it has other options to grow the NBC Sports Network… like Major League Baseball in a year or two. For reasons I’ll get to when we get closer to those negotiations, if Comcast doesn’t win this fight I would consider them the favorites to snag some MLB games, and if Comcast decides they have a better chance of beating Turner or ESPN for MLB rights than beating a crowded field for eight NFL games, they might decide to underbid now.

Fox

What they’re fighting for: Fox has made no secret of their ambitions to return big-time sports to FX. The NFL would not only fit the bill nicely, but would also tie in nicely to Fox’s existing NFL package, and NFLN would be just one more sport-specific network to join the likes of Speed, Fox Soccer Channel, BTN, and Fuel TV.

What they have going against them: Fox’s existing NFL package is all the NFC games the primetime packages don’t snag, while FX would show games from both CBS and Fox, which would be awkward. But a far bigger issue is that, according to reports, cable operators have a clause that protects them from any rate hikes for FX. That means nothing Fox adds to FX’s lineup can increase their revenue from subscriber fees, effectively reducing FX to the level of a broadcast network and preventing them from effectively competing with networks that can hike their fees to cable operators. I would expect Fox to try to change this at the soonest opportunity – whether or not they can is another matter – but until they do any serious effort to turn FX into a sports power is likely to be a nonstarter, including netting them a slate of NFL games. FX will likely have to settle for its new UFC programming to grow their sports brand, along with select college football games.

ESPN

What they’re fighting for: An existing slate of NFL games that would tie in neatly, as well as the most powerful brand in sports. Also, ESPN once floated the idea of increasing NFLN’s distribution by merging it with ESPN Classic, so they’ve flirted with taking over the network before. For the most part, though, ESPN is mostly fighting to keep this slate away from (or make it cost-prohibitive for) their competitors, especially Comcast.

What they have going against them: Besides their utter lack of motivation, ESPN has already committed to college football on Thursdays; their fall slate is already pretty crowded, though ESPN could bump college football to the Deuce. Also, while ESPN may have flirted with NFL Network before, they have never run a network owned by another entity – Longhorn Network, which is less than a week old, is wholly owned by ESPN – and neither ESPNU nor LHN quite prepares them for the challenges they’d face running the NFL Network, owned by them or not.

Spike TV

What they’re fighting for: The big five contenders in the sports TV wars represent only five of the top six biggest media conglomerates in the country. You have to imagine that Viacom – the other half of the split that produced the CBS Corporation – wants to take their own place in the wars. Since the then-National Network picked up WWE programming in 2000, the network now known as Spike TV has used first WWE and later UFC programming to goose its fortunes. Now the UFC has bailed for Fox, and Spike may feel it needs another draw. The NFL would seem to fit the bill nicely.

What they have going against them: I’ll believe that Viacom is serious about competing in the war when I see it. For now, I’ll simply point out that like Turner, Viacom doesn’t have a broadcast TV outlet (not even a potential one like the CW). Like Turner, Viacom could shack up with its former corporate sibling CBS for anything that would seem to need a broadcast outlet. Unlike Turner, Viacom has zero experience broadcasting sports – even their WWE and UFC programming has been produced by those entities themselves – other than TNN’s time showcasing the short-lived XFL, and even less experience running a league-owned network. It’s going to take a lot of doing to convince any league to shack up with someone as unproven as Spike. Comcast managed to convince the NHL to shack up with a little outfit called the Outdoor Life Network; can Spike convince a prominent league to do the same? In any case, Spike isn’t mentioned in the SportsBusiness Daily’s latest reporting on the subject, so they’re probably out of the running by now, if they ever were.

Who will ultimately come out on top? Past history backs up the notion that Comcast and Turner are the favorites, as does motivation. Both factors also suggest Comcast will come out ahead. By all accounts, Versus would have nabbed the Thursday Night Football rights in 2006 if the NFL hadn’t given them to the NFL Network, and Comcast has far more motivation as well, with nothing less than the cornerstone of a new sports empire at stake. If the soon-to-be NBC Sports Network wins this package, it will go down as a turning point in the history of sports television in America, the point that gave birth to an entity with enough firepower to challenge ESPN’s stranglehold over the sports landscape.

Back in July, Ken Fang of the Fang’s Bites blog tabbed Fox as the third favorite over ESPN, citing Fox’s motivation and ESPN’s crowded schedule. I think he underestimates the impact of FX’s inability to raise subscriber rates, as well as ESPN’s desperate desire for Comcast not to get the rights. The last thing ESPN wants is for Comcast to gain a foothold that would allow them to become a true competitor to ESPN. Unless Turner proves virtually untouchable, I would expect ESPN to stay in the race right to the end, at least trying to influence the outcome.

Comcast is the most likely to pick up eight Thursday night NFL games unless Turner and ESPN can hold them off. I don’t know if ESPN can tip the scales from Comcast to Turner, but they can certainly bite the bullet and crowd their Thursday night schedule in the early season if they value not having a lot more to worry about from Comcast for many, many years to come. Many sports fans have been hoping for some sort of real competition to ESPN. Within a month, they may have their answer.

The PGA TOUR re-ups with CBS and NBC

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I almost feel like this was a formality, as it only brings the broadcast rights to expire at the same time as the existing Golf Channel deal. ESPN’s alleged quest to kill sports on ABC probably took that network out of the running, and golf will never, ever be on Fox. But it does take place after the NBC/Comcast merger went through, keeps golf off ABC for the rest of the decade, and apparently broadens the Golf Channel’s role, so however technically, it counts as a win for NBC and CBS.

What’s far more notable is Versus’s new evening programming, which turns out not to be the SportsCenter-killer I was hoping it’d be, but still, baby steps.

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