Mountain West on ESPN

Tuesday, Feb. 2, 1999 | 10:46 a.m.

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

The newly formed Mountain West Conference has reached agreement with ESPN to have its football and basketball games televised for seven years beginning with the 1999-2000 academic year.

No dollar figures were released Monday, but the Sun reported in November that the value of the deal is $48 million.

The MWC begins operations on July 1 and will be comprised of eight schools which broke away from the Western Athletic Conference: UNLV, Air Force, Brigham Young, Colorado State, New Mexico, San Diego State, Utah and Wyoming.

Under the TV deal, ESPN will have exclusive national rights to all Mountain West football games, with distribution through ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 and syndication via ESPN Regional Television (ERT). Basketball has the same deal, with the exception of ABC. ESPN's Big Monday basketball lineup will also include MWC games.

The football contract includes 19-23 conference or non-conference games per season, with minimums of two games on ABC, four games on ESPN, five games on ESPN2 and an average of eight games syndicated by ERT each season.

In basketball, a minimum of 12 games per season will be on ESPN, 8-10 on ERT as well as three quarterfinals and one semifinal from the MWC tournament. Also, ESPN or ESPN2 will televise the MWC women's championship game, plus one regular-season women's game per season.