I missed this article on Baseball America, that was posted on their web site on March 29th. ESPN, SEC DON'T AGREESoutheastern Conference games are conspicuously absent from the ESPN schedule. The league wanted ESPN to pay for the rights to televise the games, while ESPN felt the national exposure carried enough worth on its own. "I can tell you our institutions pretty much decided that with no rights fee we were not going to be part of the package," SEC assistant commissioner Charles Bloom said. "We talked in our meetings that to increase national exposure of college baseball is a positive, and we feel our games are attractive for TV, but our institutions felt that they wanted a rights fee for them coming into stadiums and broadcasting games." The Atlantic Coast, Big 12, Big West, Conference USA, Missouri Valley or Pacific-10 did not require a rights fee to show games from the home parks of its members. (Because SEC member Louisiana State plays at Tulane, that game falls under the discretion of CUSA.) ESPN had to work around previous television arrangements between conferences and other national, regional and local distributors. For instance, the Florida-based Sunshine Network signed on to show a large number of games involving Florida, Florida State and Miami prior to ESPN showing interest. The SEC expressed hope that a deal could be worked out in the future. "We'll just see how it goes," Bloom said. "Will there be SEC games (on ESPN) next year? Hopefully, we can get these things ironed out." http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/news/050324espn.html for the rest of the story.
This is the second year the SEC has placed NINE teams in the NCAA. Why is there a need for an EIGHT team tournament? It couldn't be $90 tickets that go straight into the leagues coffers, could it? The SEC tournament has outlived its usefulness in its current form.
