Friday, Nov. 29, 2002 | 10:51 a.m.
ESPN Regional general manager Tina Kunzer-Murphy believed Las Vegas football fans would be grateful when the television broadcasting rights to UNLV's recent game at Utah plopped into her lap.
As a UNLV graduate based in Las Vegas, Kunzer-Murphy was understandably excited last month, figuring a satellite feed for local television was only a phone call away to the Salt Lake City station that would be airing the game.
One problem. Or, to be more exact, billions. KJZZ transmitted its broadcast in fiber optics, which send computer data or voice and video signals through laser-generated light in bundles of ultra-pure, transparent fiber.
Hence, Kunzer-Murphy had no option to link to a satellite feed. Instead, broadcasting the Rebels-Utes game back to Las Vegas would have entailed hiring a complete package of crew, uplinks and equipment trucks out of Charlotte, N.C.
That would have cost the university, which Kunzer-Murphy's company represents, more than $25,000, or nearly three times the normal expense of a satellite feed. By airing the Toledo game, there was no leeway in the budget.
"A lot of people were clamoring, 'Why wasn't that game on?' Like everyone else, I wanted to broadcast it. But, financially, it has to make sense," Kunzer-Murphy said. "If no one complained, then you know no one cared. So it's fine. You want to hear from people, that they care.
"My office should be smarter than that. We'll try to get better."
UNLV athletic director and football coach John Robinson said maneuvering to broadcast the Utah game back to Las Vegas would have been a surefire money-losing proposition that would have defied common business practices.
"Things are not easy right now, financially," Robinson said. "We're doing everything we can to try. With the state budget the way it is, it trickles down. Right now, losing money to be on TV more is not the right thing for us.
"If our team were playing better, the Utah game would have been televised. That (winning) is part of being televised."
Ultimately, Robinson knows a 4-7 season doesn't demand much attention.
Still, apologies from Kunzer-Murphy are hardly warranted regarding a television contract that often appears to have enough chutes and ladders to make any television executive wince.
Trickle-down effect
Just to get to her desk, an unwanted game must trickle down past ABC, three entities of ESPN and the SportsWest Network, which has deals with KLAS-Channel 8 and Las Vegas 1 on cable.
Plum assignments are plucked from the schedule by the major players in August, then the pecking order is filled with six- and 12-day windows. For instance, ABC passed on UNLV's game at San Diego State 12 days before kickoff, which did not give SportsWest enough time to coordinate its crew and equipment personnel for a broadcast.
In August, UNLV-Utah appeared to be a prime candidate for ABC or one of ESPN's appendages, since Utah was considered a preseason league favorite and its game with the Rebels had been shown by ESPN Plus, on KFBT-Channel 33, the previous two years.
Kunzer-Murphy opted for certainty, taking the rights to UNLV's game at Toledo. Circling the UNLV-Utah game in August only to eventually lose it to a higher-ranking entity would have forced Kunzer-Murphy to return fees that had already been paid by advertisers.
"It's crazy, if you think about it," she said. "I wish we had picked the Utah game. But all we can hope is to try to make a halfway decent decision, learn from those and make better decisions next time."
Overall, the fact that three recent UNLV road games were not televised and two home games were on television are anomalies of a seven-year television deal that has been a boon to seven Mountain West Conference schools since it was struck in September 1999, coinciding with the birth of the league.
Utah, through its lucrative relationship with KJZZ owner Larry Miller, is allowed to arrange its own television pact.
To the other Mountain West members, the contract that commissioner Craig Thompson arranged gives them about $1 million a year. In UNLV's case, that's more than double the annual television revenue it had received in the years preceding it.
Including Saturday's game at Colorado State, the third time the Rebels will be on KLAS-Channel 8 this season, 33 UNLV football games will have been televised in Las Vegas during the first four years of Thompson's contract.
From 1995-98, 12 were on local television.
Before Robinson arrived to coach the team, the Rebels had played 10 games before a network television audience. Since, their games have been shown by a major network 17 times.
Either from national, regional or local feeds, Mountain West cities have shown 78 of a possible 98 MWC games this season.
Legal procedure
"We have a good package," Robinson said. "We've been on an enormous amount of times over the last four years, and we have to be pleased with that."
Since the conference -- in Thompson -- negotiated the contract, it did not violate Nevada state law mandating a bidding process for television rights.
Another misnomer, according to KLAS-Channel 8 sports director Dave McCann, is that SportsWest owns ESPN Regional. He has heard that, and other fallacies, enough times to find them laughable.
ESPN Regional is actually called ESPN Regional at UNLV, a localized and completely separate entity from the other ESPN branches.
"Some competitors see us with an unfair advantage and will say stuff that isn't true, to incite people," McCann said. "SportsWest had nothing to do with that Utah game not being on in Las Vegas. SportsWest, ESPN and then UNLV (ESPN Regional) all passed on it.
"If you go on the radio or a TV station and shout, 'UNLV has an illegal deal with Channel 8! It's a shame and that's why we're not getting the game!' Call someone and ask how it works. It's not complicated, if you understand where we're at in the pecking order."
Thompson signed off on each Mountain West program, besides Utah, yielding a maximum of six games to ABC or one of the ESPN companies. SportsWest makes its picks, and then the leftovers are property of each institution.
Those last two parties can only transmit broadcasts point-to-point, between the two schools' cities. ABC, ESPN, ESPN 2 and ESPN Plus are the sole owners of the Mountain West syndication rights, and they can farm those out accordingly.
That's how San Diego State at Colorado winds up on Fox, out of the Big 12 package. When UNLV played at Oregon State, it was on TBS out of the Pac-10 package. Thus, Wisconsin collected no rights fees when it played at UNLV.
Advance notice
Thompson said most of the schedules are set in February, when officials have a very good idea about which games will be attractive to which network. Those dates and times are not released for six months, he said, in case adjustments need to be made.
With its flexibility and unique time zone, the Mountain West is almost always willing to cooperate.
"It's the only conference in the Mountain Time Zone, mostly, with UNLV and San Diego State in the Pacific," Thompson said. "That's the other reason why UNLV and San Diego State will always have some games selected in basketball and football, no matter if (in football) they're 11-0 or 0-11."
That isn't entirely true, after an odd stretch in which UNLV home games were on TV and road games were not. When certain facts are known, though, it is easier to digest.
Considering that the Rebels set a home attendance record by averaging 27,582 fans this season, busting the 21-year-old mark by more than 2,500, Robinson is only unhappy with his team's won-loss record.
"We've gone from the bottom to a middle level now," he said. "Not, to go to an upper level, we have to have games like Wisconsin here, like we did. If we want to make money, we have to play on the road. If we want to build a program, we have to play home-and-home.
"We're trying to build a program, so we'll play anyone home-and-home ... Notre Dame, the Green Bay Packers. We're moving along. We had a flat year this year, but I think this program is going up."
Should the Rebels ever play the Irish, or Packers, count on being able to watch it on television.
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