Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 24, 1993 TAG: 9312250043
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: IVAN MAISEL DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
CBS has a three-hour hole in its starting lineup. CBS has a lot of unspent money in its wallet. Col- lege football is the next product up for bid. The current five-year deals with ABC ($175 million) and ESPN ($125 million) expire in 1995.
For a number of reasons, however, CBS may be too late.
The CFA already has a lucrative offer to extend its contract with ABC. According to one person involved in the negotiations, the network has offered "almost" the same $175 million for four years, a 25 percent increase. The extension may take effect beginning next season, canceling out the two remaining years on the current contract.
That increase doesn't take into account the Penn State bump. The Nittany Lions belong to the CFA for television reasons through 1995. When they join the Big Ten Conference television package, their appearances and rights fees will go to other CFA members.
If the CFA moves to CBS, then all three major networks would televise college football. NBC has Notre Dame. ABC has the Big Ten and Pacific-10 conferences. If college basketball is any indication, three networks is a sure recipe to kill ratings.
CBS has been pining to televise college football since the CFA left after 1990. As of Monday, when CBS learned that its 38-year marriage with professional football would end, that pining gained a new urgency. CBS needs a win psychologically. That need should translate into big dollars for the CFA.
"College football is in a position to examine its options as never before," CBS Sports vice president Len DeLuca said. "If I remember simple economics, when there's a single entity with a product and two people willing to participate, doesn't that create leverage?"
Gee, who would have thought it would come down to economics? Oklahoma athletic director Donnie Duncan, a member of the CFA television committee, put it bluntly:
"I have this quirk about a playoff and about television," Duncan said from El Paso, Texas, where the Sooners are preparing to play in the John Hancock Bowl. "Discussion intent is one thing, dollar intent is another. What we're talking about is not discussion intent. It's dollar intent."
DeLuca answered that concern without hesitation.
"Is there a willingness at CBS to risk more?" DeLuca said. "The answer is potentially yes."
CBS' major selling point is that it will televise college football nationally. It runs smack into ABC's method of televising the sport. ABC takes the CFA and its Big Ten and Pac-10 games and tosses them into the same time slot. The network will shows as many as four games regionally simultaneously.
With ABC, more schools get on TV. More schools share in the proceeds.
CBS's argument is that CFA members don't even get sufficient regional exposure. The Big Ten and Pac-10 contracted with ABC to be shown to 50 percent of the nation. That results in some strange definitions of "regional." For instance, the Texas-Syracuse game on Sept. 21 did not appear in New York City. Penn State-Iowa did.
Yet three-fifths of the committee - Duncan, Southeastern Conference commissioner Roy Kramer and the supposedly aggrieved Syracuse athletic director Jake Crouthamel - expressed support for the concept of regionalization.
"With the exception of a handful of games," Crouthamel said, "football is a regional sport. The same can be said of basketball."
Basketball may be the key to CBS' bid. With Sunday afternoons in December and January open, CBS can throw basketball exposure into its CFA offer.
Everyone who is anyone in college athletics will congregate in San Antonio on Jan. 8 for the 1994 NCAA Convention. There will be a great deal of discussion there. There may be a great deal before then.
Since CBS televises the Hancock Bowl, DeLuca suddenly found it necessary to go there and oh, maybe bump into Duncan.
by CNB