Iowa's soon-to-be-gone AD had a press conference about the Big Ten TV.
Here are some quick hitters:
-Goes into affect in August 2007.
-They plan to make the channel available on expanded basic cable, not any type of special sports package or anything. Don't know if this is nationally or just regionally.
-The only football games that are not guaranteed to be on either ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, or the Big Ten Channel will be the non-conference away games but they would work with those teams/regions about getting them on TV. All conference games would be on TV.
-Game times will be more spread out so they don't have 4-5 running at the same time including one "prime time" game a week.
-Other conferences are trying to start something like this as well.
-Each school is getting an extra 7.5 million of this new TV deal.
-All the coach shows will be shown on here as well as locally. They are also going to try and create original content (Hawkeye Lacrosse Talk with Matt Benson?!?!
)
-Men's Basketball still has a deal with CBS through 2010 so CBS would still show games on weekends.
-They are also possibly getting some old games from ABC/ESPN to show some "classic games".
Sounds like a promising deal if you ask me.