My job is to watch Big 12 men’s and women’s basketball. Some nights, the league’s biggest partner, ESPN, makes that a difficult task.
Witness Wednesday night. The Big 12 had three men’s games and seven women’s games on the slate.
Only one was on a linear channel, as Cincinnati visited UCF on CBS Sports Network. The other nine games were on ESPN … Plus.
That included the biggest game of the night — No. 9 TCU at No. 12 Kansas State, perhaps the top women’s game on the slate. It was relegated to the streaming service. It was not one of the 20 women’s games the Big 12 got onto national TV this season, and apparently, no move was made to get that game a bigger spotlight.
The schedule was baked back in October, and unlike the football schedule, there don’t appear to be look-ins or windows to make network changes.
But this is the Big 12, the most respected basketball conference in college basketball, right? So, on a Wednesday night with 10 games, where’s ESPN’s love?
Elsewhere.
Look at the ESPN family of networks, and you’ll find that ESPN broadcast an NBA doubleheader, ESPN2 showed an ACC/SEC doubleheader, and ESPNU showed two mid-major games, followed by an ACC game on the West Coast.
The SEC Network, owned by ESPN, had a doubleheader. The ACC Network, also owned by ESPN, had a tripleheader.
So … ESPN couldn’t slide one of those ACC or SEC games on one of the ESPN channels to their respective networks and give the spotlight to one Big 12 game? Apparently not.
Last week, our Pete Mundo did a podcast on whether ESPN was sabotaging Big 12 basketball by not putting the league in a bigger spotlight. I made the point in my Postscripts column that it’s not so much sabotage as it is prioritization. It’s not surprising to me that ESPN would put the NBA on the main network, for instance.
But — and no offense to Chattanooga, Wofford, Arkansas State ,and Marshall — ESPN relegated the Big 12 to the Plus but elevated those four schools to ESPNU. One of those slots should have gone to the Big 12, if the conference really is a priority to the network.
You can go on and on about the lack of a “Big 12 Network,” but remember that Oklahoma and Texas basically nixed that with their own deals that they weren’t giving up, especially the Longhorn Network. You can’t have that kind of network unless all of the programs are ready to share their third-tier rights.
With next year’s TV deal, ESPN holds all of the third-tier rights and can consign as much as it wants to the Plus. The network is only going to sub-license so many Big 12 games. After all, it does need SOME programming. But plenty of those conference basketball games are still going to end up on the streamer.
The Big 12 should push the envelope where it can. The league has already slid some of its men’s games to Sunday. It may need to push some to Thursday as a way to nudge the network for more traffic on the linear channels. The league has already moved a few women’s games to Friday night, which has helped.
It’s disappointing that on a night like Wednesday the Big 12 didn’t get a single game on any of ESPN’s linear channels, especially with a game like K-State and TCU, a battle of Top 15 teams.
By the way, ESPN, you missed a great game. Kansas State won — at least, that’s what the scoreboard says on your website. Some of us actually do watch the games.
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
