Mountain West cutting ties with ESPN, ‘Big Monday’

Steve Guiremand

Thursday, Aug. 26, 2004 | 11:21 a.m.

In its promos, College Sports Television boldly calls itself "The new home of college sports."

As of 2006, the upstart New York-based network will be the new home of Mountain West Conference sports.

In a bold and surprising move, the MWC announced this morning that it was breaking ties with industry powerhouse ESPN at the completion of its current seven-year, $48-million contract in the spring of 2006 to join CSTV, which was started in 2003 by Classic Sports Network founders Brian Bedol and Stephen Greenberg and former Nike executive Chris Bevilacqua.

Terms of the deal weren't released but sources familiar with the negotiations said the contract was worth $77 million for seven years. That money will be divided nine ways with the addition of TCU to the conference in 2005 and breaks down to about $1.3 million a year for each school, compared with the $750,000 each receives annually under the current ESPN contract.

"Today, unequivocally, is the most important announcement in Mountain West history ... its relationship with CSTV," conference commissioner Craig Thompson said. "One thing that's most important is that it's 'College' Sports Television. We are all about college athletics and CSTV is all about college athletics. We couldn't be more thrilled."

One of the major reasons for the switch was the fact that conference presidents had grown tired of ESPN's "Big Monday" basketball package, which forced teams in the Mountain time zone to start games at 10 p.m. ESPN also was pushing the conference to begin moving football games to midweek.

"This arrangement will allow our member institutions to have a measure of control of their assets," Thompson said. "Certainly a point of emphasis was to play at times that our fans wanted to attend games."

The move obviously is a blow to ESPN, which had director of public relations Josh Krulewitz proactively calling media members in Mountain West cities on Wednesday to give his network's spin on why it had lost MWC rights.

"We did not agree on the value of the product," Krulewitz said. "Given our overall inventory of college football and basketball, we chose to decline their offer. ... We wish them well."

CSTV is currently unavailable in three of the MWC's three biggest media markets -- Denver, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas -- except for DirectTV satellite subscribers who pay an additional fee. But Thompson believes other deals involving expanded cable distribution as well as local and regional TV exposure can be worked out in that area in the next two years.