ESPN sees the light

Granted, we are obviously WAC-biased but it's great news that the Western Athletic Conference was finally able to reach an agreement with 800-pound gorilla in the living room ESPN, thereby allowing more WAC football and basketball games to be televised. Thank you to the Boise State and Hawaii football teams for their part in providing leverage.

A hat tip to Aggie Sam at BleedCrimson.net for letting us know of the article.

WAC to get boost from ESPN
Proposed deal would increase exposure, pay $4 million per year
Ferd Lewis
Honolulu Advertiser
July 11, 2008

All signs point to the Western Athletic Conference shortly announcing a significantly upgraded and expanded contract extension with ESPN.

Conference officials have been in negotiations with ESPN for several months and WAC members held a conference call yesterday apparently to approve a deal in principle.

The new agreement, when announced, is expected to run from 5 to 7 years and, on top of a several-fold increase in rights fees, include heavily expanded exposure for conference teams.

The WAC had been receiving $900,000 per year on a six-year deal set to run through the 2009-10 academic year. That figure was down from $1 million after Texas-El Paso and three other schools left for Conference USA in 2005. The new agreement is expected to be worth, on average, approximately $4 million per year to the conference...

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