For nearly two decades the Duke–UNC rivalry has been the de facto national showcase game for college basketball. While many fans appreciate the skill of these two teams and the passion of their fans there is also a sizable group that has become disenchanted with the way that certain entities (notably ESPN) obsessed over the two (or more) games per year between the teams instead of talking about the other compelling rivalries in college basketball. The fans that fall into the latter group might want to skip to another article because earlier today CBS announced that it will be broadcasting the second game of this year’s rivalry (on March 5, 2011 from Chapel Hill) during prime time for the first time. The game is expected to be the feature game of the regular season for CBS, who is celebrating their 30th year covering college basketball. The match-up between the two schools (winners of 14 of the past 15 ACC Tournament championships, 12 of the past 14 ACC Regular Season titles, and 7 of the past 20 NCAA titles) who are separated by less than 8 miles will be the 231st between the schools with the Tar Heels holding a 130-99 advantage coming into the season.

Next Stop: Prime Time

The Blue Devils should be loaded for this match-up returning much of the nucleus from last year’s championship team including Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith while adding freshman Kyrie Irving and transfer Seth Curry. If the Blue Devils sweep the regular season series this year, Coach K will finally get over .500 against the Tar Heels (34-35 all-time coming into this season). While the defending national champion Blue Devils should be favored against a young Tar Heel squad, we expect the Dean Dome to be a tough place to get a win in March with Roy Williams (8-10 all-time versus Duke including 7-7 while at UNC) having almost a full season to work with Harrison Barnes, the presumptive #1 pick in the 2011 NBA Draft, and home court. And if you are one of the people who cannot stand all the hype this rivalry gets, we do have one small nugget of good news for you: CBS is broadcasting this game so you will not be subjected to over 2 hours of Dick Vitale mentioning how all these students got 1500s on their SATs, which incidentally is pretty mediocre now that the SAT is on scored a 2400-point scale.

Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 and Mountain West conferences and an occasional contributor.

With the news on Thursday that Utah has received and accepted the invitation to become the 12^th member of the Pac-10, it looks like the college sports realignment apocalypse has been averted for the summer. There may be further movement on down the line, but all signs point to a relative period of calm after weeks of frantic scrambling from all corners of the country. While it was a pale substitute for actual on-court play, we did have plenty of intrigue and suspense, action and strategy, and winners and losers. Now it’s just a matter of sorting out who was what.

The Greatest and Still Champion

Texas

A Lot to Be Happy about in Austin These Days

Texas definitely fits in the “winner” category, but I think lumping them in with these other schmucks below would be selling them short. And I’m sure they would agree. The Longhorns played this about as well as could be played, and they got everything they wanted out of it. The Big 12 keeps their television deal with ESPN (which doesn’t expire until 2016), but only has to share the proceeds among ten schools rather than twelve. The conference received a promise from Fox for a new deal when their current deal expires, with exponential increases in revenue on tap. And, on top of all that, Texas retains the right to sell local television rights and is free to explore its plans for a Longhorn television network. Bonus: in the process of trying to keep the Longhorns in the Big 12, there are reports that the neediest institutions in the bunch agreed to a plan that sent all of the money that Colorado and Nebraska owe the conference in buyout fees (reported to be somewhere between $10 and $40 million, depending on the source) to Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma. So, in the span of a week, without losing any of their traditional rivals in the Big 12 South, Texas goes from generating somewhere in the $12 million range in television revenues to earning an estimated $20-25 million annually. And, that’s not even the best of it. In the process, it became painfully obvious that Texas is the big dog in the conference and the other schools (aside from Texas A&M) are in some manner, just riding coattails. Schools like Oklahoma and Texas Tech made it clear that they were just going to do whatever Texas did, while others, like Missouri, Kansas, Iowa State and Baylor, had their futures twisting in the wind, reliant on Texas to save them. If the Longhorns had gone to the Pac-16, they would have just been one of the sixteen there. By staying at home, they are clearly the kings of their conference.

The Winners

Texas A&M

The Aggies showed themselves as the one school in the conference that had plans of their own regardless of Texas. While Oklahoma and others were happy to just do whatever Texas decided, A&M talked to the SEC, and by all reports, actually had an offer to join that conference. But, in the end when they could have run off and forced Texas’ move west, the Aggies agreed to stick around and share in the league’s windfall, excellent news for an athletic department that was $16 million in debt, and even better for a school whose once proud football program has fallen on hard times in the past decade.

Big 12 Basketball

Without a doubt, the Big 12 became a better basketball conference overnight. Over the last nine years, both Colorado and Nebraska have had an average finish of around ninth in the conference. Nebraska has never won an NCAA tournament game. Colorado has only had two NCAA tournament berths in the last 40 years. So as far as the basketball side of the equation goes, this is addition by subtraction at its finest. As the conference makes the transition to an 18-game schedule in which each team will play a full home-and-home round-robin, they will no longer have to worry about games against the Buffs or Huskers dragging down their RPI. Every night in the conference will be tough sledding, but every team in the conference will also have a better chance to build their resume for postseason play.

Watch Out, Big East and ACC...

Chip Brown and Orangebloods.com

Chip Brown has been the point-man on conference realignment for about two weeks now. He broke the original story about Texas dragging five other Big 12 schools to the Pac-10, and when Texas blinked in the 11^th hour, it was Brown who had that story first as well, even in the face of ESPN reporting the opposite. In the process, Brown, a former writer for the Dallas Morning News, has seen his Twitter followers increase exponentially, and the profile of Orangebloods.com, a Longhorn Rivals site of which he is part owner, has jumped from something that was only known amongst the most attentive Longhorn fans to an important resource for those of us following this story.

Utah

The Utes received just $1.2 million in television revenue from their association with the Mountain West Conference. Presently Pac-10 schools earn somewhere in the $10-$12 million neighborhood from their television contracts, and with the Pac-10 set to negotiate a new television deal which will begin the 2011-12 season, the Utah athletic department stands to make a nice chunk of change for very little trouble.  While the basketball program is going through a rough patch presently, it wouldn’t surprise anyone to see the Utes be right in the thick of things in the Pac-10 football chase immediately.

ABC/ESPN and Fox Sports

Both networks stepped in to help save the Big 12. ABC/ESPN agreed to keep their current contract with the Big 12, allowing the ten remaining members to split the revenues that had previously been divided amongst twelve. Fox Sports also agreed to large increases in their agreement with the Big 12 which expires next offseason. If Texas had bolted for the Pac-10 along with five other Big 12 members, both ESPN and Fox Sports would have had a major bidding war on its hands for the rights to the new Pac-16 conference television deal. The breakup of the Big 12 would likely have meant other moves by the Big Ten or SEC or ACC, moves that could have resulted in their contracts needing to be reworked. In the short term, both entities probably overpay for the Big 12 rights, but they saved themselves plenty of cash in the long term.

Big Ten

While it may have appeared to be the first rat on the way out before the ship went down, Nebraska’s move to the Big Ten makes a lot of sense, at least football-wise. Adding the Huskers gives the Big Ten four iconic football programs, the ability to hold a championship game and a fanbase that will eat up anything Huskers on the Big Ten Network. And, passing on Missouri is probably the right move as well. Picking up one Big 12 team brings the Big Ten to 12 schools, and allows them to take their time with any additional expansion they may be interested in, while getting the benefits of the 12^th team. If the Big Ten chooses to pursue further expansion, it will be mostly focused on Big East teams, including the great white whale, Notre Dame.

The Losers

Missouri

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1. Might want to set your alarms for this one.  UCLA will be holding a public ceremony at Pauley Pavilion for the late, great John Wooden on June 26 at 11 am PDT, and it will be broadcast live on Prime Ticket and streamed live at www.ucla.edu (brief aside: a smaller tribute will also occur today at UCLA’s graduation ceremony).  We doubt that Wooden’s tribute will get 1% the attention of what another departed Angeleno of far lesser character got last summer, but we’ll do our part (and we hope you will too) to honor the man who helped make college basketball what it is today.
2. One day after Kansas AD Lew Perkins was cleared of any wrongdoing by the university on an equipment flap, he announced his retirement effective next summer.  Um, congratulations?  Under your watch, you certainly helped to grow the Kansas football program (Orange Bowl winners in 2008) and keep the basketball program on the top plateau (national title in 2008), but the last year has been ridiculously bad, beginning with the football/basketball team fights and ending with KU apparently getting thrown to the wolves by the rest of the Big 12.  Well, he does have another year to solve some of those problems.
3. Tom Izzo update: he spoke with Cleveland officials today while MSU faithful held a rally on his behalf back in East Lansing.  His quote on the matter: “It’s not going to be forever,” referring to his dalliance with this NBA job.  Stay tuned.
4. UConn was warned over ten years ago about the “appearance of impropriety” with agent Josh Nochimson, but that didn’t seem to matter when it came to recruiting Nate Miles in 2006 and 2007.
5. Where’s your glove, Dickie V!?!  The larger-than-life ESPN commentator found a way to get himself into the news during the offseason by throwing himself into the path of a foul ball at a Tampa Bay Devil Rays game last night.

1. Is it just us, or does this feel like the busiest June in college basketball history?  Between Wooden’s passing, every college coach of note contemplating a chance to coach LeBron James, the insanity of conference realignment, and the endless discussion of violations and sanctions, you’d think that we were in the middle of January.  Whew.
2. The good news: Kansas cleared its AD Lew Perkins of any wrongdoing amidst allegations of trading tickets for athletic equipment.  The much, much worse news: he may no longer have a BCS conference in which to sell or trade those tickets.
3. Would Tom Izzo realistically leave his successful program at Michigan State to take a shot at coaching LeBron James in the NBA?  According to various reports last night, the answer is yes.  The MSU coach will visit Cleveland Thursday and his Spartan players already have a sense that he might be leaving for this opportunity, the latest of many in his career.  Reportedly Cleveland is offering Izzo twice his current salary of $3M per year, and of course, the opportunity to coach the player widely regarded as the greatest of his generation for the next decade.  This is a very interesting dilemma for the fiery Michigander.
4. Get excited now, kids — the SEC/Big East Invitational matchups were announced yesterday.  The headliner is that Kentucky will play Notre Dame in Louisville’s Freedom Hall after Seton Hall and Arkansas tip it off in the first game on December 8.  Three days later, Rutgers will face Auburn and Pitt will host Tennessee in the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh.  Contain yourselves.
5. As much as we like to poke fun at Digger Phelps in his role as ‘analyst’ on ESPN, we’re happy to hear that he’s recovering nicely after having prostate cancer surgery in recent days.  Quick question, though — why did Digger choose to have this surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle?  We thought he was pretty much an east coast guy.

Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Mountain West and Pac-10 conferences and an occasional contributor.

Although not official yet, it has been reported that ESPN and the ACC have come to an agreement on a new TV deal, with ESPN reportedly outbidding FoxSportsNet to the tune of $1.86 billion over twelve years for exclusive rights to ACC football and basketball. The new deal for the ACC will more than double their previous television revenues from their contracts with Raycom and ESPN; the previous ACC deal was for about $67 million per season, while the new deal will bring the ACC about $155 million per season.

The size of the new contract is seen as a major victory for the ACC, and is rumored to be the result of a bidding war between ESPN and Fox. However, Fox did not get a chance to match ESPN’s final offer because the ACC found ESPN’s brand to be too attractive to lose out on should ESPN drop out of the bidding. As for Raycom, they are expected to continue broadcasting some ACC games, which they will buy from ESPN (much like ESPN bought the rights to individual games from Raycom in the past), but the ACC Tournament will likely be exclusive to ESPN in the future.  An interesting side note of the new TV deal: Jim Young of ACCSports.com reports that there will be a new name for the league’s syndication package with Raycom: the ACC Network. However, for now this will not be a business venture similar to the remarkably successful Big Ten Network, rather just the regional syndication of games shown on Raycom.

As no official announcement has been made by either party, there are likely continuing negotiations on the fine print, and plenty of questions remain. With rumors swirling about ACC teams perhaps jumping to one conference or another (Maryland and Virginia are among the most recently rumored schools that the Big Ten is interested in, while schools like Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech and Miami have been mentioned in conjuction with possible SEC expansion), there will potentially be binding clauses in the contract allowing ESPN buyout options should the makeup of the conference change during the lifetime of the deal. There are also questions as to when and where ESPN will televise games and the fate of things like FSN’s ACC Sunday Night Hoops feature. It is possible that Fox will continue to purchase games from ESPN for broadcast on their networks. Once a final announcement is delivered, hopefully we’ll get answers to these things.

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1. Former UTEP forward Arnett Moultrie is the hottest transfer commodity going right now, according to Gary Parrish.  The talented 6’11 big man has schools in the SEC (Kentucky, Mississippi State, etc.) and CUSA (Memphis) hoping to get his services for a probable single season in 2011-12.
2. Ohio State’s David Lighty broke his left foot for the second time in a workout on Tuesday, the exact same injury that he experienced in December 2008 that cost him an entire season.  The rising senior will have surgery later this week and will miss up to three months of basketball, but the hope is that he will be back to 100% by the beginning of practice next year.
3. While the Big Ten may or may not have formally made offers to certain midwestern schools starting with M and N, Missouri is on record stating that they would entertain the offer (y’know, should there be one at some uncertain, unknowable point in the future).  Oklahoma State, who has not been not-offered by the Big Ten but has billionaire booster T. Boone Pickens around to create his own superconference powered by wind farms and unicorns should he choose to do so, is on record stating that OSU should remain a proud member of the Big 12.  Y’know, if anyone’s asking.
4. If you’re into this, and we’re admittedly having trouble getting used to the idea, ESPN 3D (now on Comcast and DirecTV) will feature the Old Spice Classic, the Jimmy V Classic, and the Big East Tournament next season as part of its enhanced coverage.  Just so long as we don’t have to see Bill Raftery’s broken capillaries in all three dimensions, we guess it’ll be ok.
5. The NCAA reported that attendance across the entire landscape of D1 men’s basketball was huge — to the tune of 27.54M at 5,251 games — but it was slightly down (<1%) from the 2008-09 season.  Given the state of the economy for the last year, this is no major surprise, but even scarce dollars didn’t affect the top five programs in average attendance: Kentucky, Syracuse, Louisville, Tennessee and UNC, all names that we see at or near the top of this list annually.  Forty-four schools broke the 10k average per game, and they are listed below (along with two near-misses).

1. Kentucky’s John Calipari is the news gusher that keeps on giving.  After a single year of work in Lexington, the school is already discussing a contract extension with the coach that would (ostensibly) keep him at UK until he retires.  Of course, Kentucky could give him a 1000-year contract and it would be relatively meaningless if he has his eyes on coaching a superstar like Lebron James in the League someday.  Last evening’s buzz is on the heels of rumors that the Chicago Bulls were interested in trying to lure the Squid back to the NBA.  Would the chance to coach Derrick Rose again (and no threat of vacated wins) and Lebron and D-Wade as free agents be enough to move on to Chicago?  You never know.
2. This is pretty amazing if you think about it.  Long before the endless griping about a 96-team tournament and the subsequent decision of the NCAA to opt out of its current television deal with CBS in favor of a new joint deal with CBS and Turner Sports, the Blinking Eye Network approached ESPN to take the Big Dance off its hands.  In fact, facing up to as much as a $50M loss in 2010, CBS was willing to pay ESPN to take it off their hands.
3. Bad decision, FTW, Alex.  Louisville’s Samardo Samuels has hired an agent and is locked into the NBA Draft even though most experts have him as a fringe second rounder at best.  Remember this from a few weeks ago?  It feels to us like Samuels just wants the hell outta dodge.
4. Will the last player in the state of Iowa leave the lights on?  Iowa’s Aaron Fuller, an all-Big Ten honorable mention selection who averaged 10/6 in 2010, will resurface at USC for Kevin O’Neill, and Iowa State junior Charles Boozer will transfer out of Ames after a weekend incident where he is alleged to have assaulted a woman outside his apartment complex.
5. If you can name the two current head coaching jobs still available, you likely already have your application in — Mt. St. Mary’s and Chicago State.  Thanks to Seth Davis’ wrap-up of this spring’s coaching carousel, we now know that factoid and you do too.  Check out the rest of his piece for a breakdown of the good and bad from this year’s version.

1. We asked the question in yesterday’s Morning Five, and today we got the answer — well, not really.  New NCAA prez Mark Emmert simply said (despite the headline of the linked article) he’d reserve comment about tournament expansion until the current 68-team proposal is approved.  That approval will likely come today, so we’ll be on the lookout for Emmert’s tabled comments on the matter, that’s for sure.
2. You won’t be hearing anything about PTPers or dipsy-doo-dunkeroos or the Bald Dome Index on any of the Turner stations when they start covering the NCAA Tournament.  Dick Vitale has no interest in ditching his analyst’s seat in the studio at ESPN for a color commentating spot at Turner.  No matter your opinion on his announcing style, you’ve got to hand it to the guy: his enthusiasm for this game is still unmatched, he’s still adored by coaches and players, and, considering he’d be 84 the next time he could possibly do color for an NCAA Tournament game at ESPN, his loyalty to his current employer is admirable.
3. C. J. Leslie has decided to stay at home and play for North Carolina State, disappointing reported fellow finalists Connecticut and Kentucky in doing so.  Leslie, a 6’9 and 205-pound power forward, is ranked 11th in the ESPNU-100 list of high school seniors, and happy Wolfpack supporters are beaming about the prospects of how he’ll meld with point guard prospect Ryan Harrow, ranked at 39th in the same list.  Add underrated 6’4 shooting guard Lorenzo Brown into the mix, and you’ve got an NC State squad that’s gong to be a lot of fun to watch next season.
4. Chuck Driesell has decided to bid a fond farewell to his assistant coaching position at Maryland to become the new boss at The Citadel.  And if the last name and the Maryland ties didn’t clue you in…yes, it’s Lefty’s son.  Despite a 20-13 (15-5) record in 2008-09, the Bulldogs slipped to 17-16 and 9-9 in a tougher-than-expected Southern Conference last season.  After four years at the helm in Charleston, Ed Conroy now departs for Tulane, so it’s now on Driesell to lead The Citadel to their first-ever NCAA Tournament bid.
5. More on this as it comes in, but Seton Hall forward and recent NBA Draft declarer Herb Pope fell ill and then actually collapsed during an afternoon workout at the school, and was rushed by squad to a local hospital.  The initial AP report (understandably) did not comment on Pope’s status or diagnosis, though one New Jersey-based site states he is indeed listed in serious condition.  We hope for the best and we’ll have more info as it’s available.

Over the past few months this site and many others that cover college basketball were filled with columns about what was viewed as an almost certain expansion of the NCAA Tournament to 96 teams. It turns out that almost everyone in the media (including us) had it wrong as the NCAA announced its plans to expand to a 68-team tournament while being broadcast on CBS and the 3 Turner networks (TBS, TNT, and truTV). Technically the NCAA Board of Directors still has to approve the changes next Thursday, but that should be a rubber stamp situation given the unanimity in today’s decision. The deal, which should account for approximately 96% of revenue for men’s college basketball, will pay the NCAA $10.8 billion over 14 years (or a little over $771 million per year) compared to the previous deal of $6 billion over 11 years (or slightly more than $545 million per year). That deal, which was signed in 1999, allowed the NCAA an opt-out by July 31 of this year. Once the NCAA exercised that option it was widely believed that their intention was to sign with ESPN in the network’s attempt to take over all things sports-related. When it became clear that ESPN was no longer the front-runner in the bidding, everyone’s attention turned to the CBS/Turner bid. We will get to the whole 68 team thing in a bit just bear with us while we go through the TV issues.

Coming soon to TBS. . .

While everybody is familiar with CBS’s work on the NCAA Tournament since they have broadcast every NCAA championship game since the 1982 Tourney which involved a freshman named Michael Jordan hitting the game-winning shot, Turner’s association with college basketball is a little less well-known. When I say “less well-known,” I mean that I am unaware of any prior association between Turner Sports and college basketball.  Some news reports are indicating that the NCAA was leaning towards the joint bid because of their desire to have every game broadcast nationally, which would require four channels broadcasting games. Even though ESPN would have that capability (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNews, and ESPN Classic) and we are still searching for truTV on our local cable provider (Comcast in Boston) it is being reported that this desire favored the CBS/Turner deal. All of the games will continued to be streamed online. What this will do is eliminate the need for Greg Gumbel to switch you to a different game (often at inappropriate times) and allow those of us who don’t get DirecTV’s March Madness package to watch two close games at once on a split screen (assuming you have picture-in-picture on your TV). [Ed. Note: TNT/TBS reaches almost six times as many households as DirecTV (99 million versus 18 million).] It is unclearexactly how much ESPN bid for the NCAA Tournament, but it is believed to have been relatively close to the CBS/Turner bid.

We won't be seeing these two broadcasting NCAA Tournament games any time soon

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Word has leaked through Sports Business Daily that the NCAA has two offers on the table for consideration of a new multi-year contract for coverage of college basketball’s premier event, the NCAA Tournament.  A joint bid from CBS (the existing rights-holder) and Turner Sports amounted to an $840M annual deal over fourteen years, while an ESPN bid came in at around $800M annually for the same duration.  The NCAA’s current exclusive deal with CBS (involving only 65 teams) is at $710M per year through 2013, so either of the proposed deals looks better in comparison.

ESPN Going Out Like That?

But what does this mean?  If this really represents ESPN’s final offer to carry March Madness, then CBS/Turner will probably have the rights for the foreseeable future, which would be fine if the Blinking Eye Network had a competent business partner in this venture.  No disrespect to Turner Sports when it comes to covering the NBA or MLB, but college basketball?  Does the network even carry a single game all season long?  Yet they’re going to switch off every other year with CBS on Final Four coverage?  This is insanity.  With the additional 31 games, we’ll have Marv Albert and Doug Collins doing random first round games where they’ll be calling Brad Stevens “Bud” and his star player “Dwight” Howard.  If you need a parallel example, look no further than how Fox has crapped the bed covering the BCS Bowls the last few seasons.  Yeah, the NFL and CFB are the same game, right — we can do that!  Ugh.

According to the NCAA, though, they are seeking to re-engage the WWL in an effort to integrate what only makes complete and total sense — for a cable network that devotes much of its existence from November through March to finish off what it starts each season.  You’re rarely going to find us around here shilling for ESPN, but this one appears to be a no-brainer from all possible perspectives except one.  Guess what that one is?  You got it — money.  It’s no secret that CBS is losing money on its current $710M annual deal to carry the Tournament, so how does ESPN expect to be able to make those dollars back with a bid at $800M or more?  Ahh yes, the mystifying and little-understood cable carriage fees.

Put very simply, ESPN is in a prime position to take complete control of college basketball from start to finish of every season for the next generation if it simply ups its bid by about $50M per year.  We’re certainly not saying that is an insignificant number, but with the inherent revenue advantage that ESPN has at its disposal based on cable carriage fees in addition to the increased advertising bump, this needs to happen.  ESPN needs to act like the monopoly that it is and take control of this situation.  Stay tuned.  A decision will likely be made within the next two weeks.