A Few Thoughts on Independence

BYU is the Texas of the MWC.  They are not Texas by any means, I am just comparing what BYU does for the MWC being similar to what Texas does for the Big XII: make TV money and put butts in the seats.  The main difference (besides the extra zero at the end of the dollar amounts), the Big XII bends over backwards for Texas, whereas the MWC seems to always do what it can to screw BYU.  Is this rumor about BYU leaving the MWC for independence in football and the WAC in all other sports akin to what happened with Texas earlier this summer?

The Mtn TV deal is laughable, at best.  BYU carries the network, yet receives only 1/9th of the revenue from it.  Without BYU (and Utah), the deal is certainly not worth what it costs ($66 Million over the next 6 years), even with Boise State in the fold (which would apparently be in jeopardy if BYU left).  So, given this breaking "development," will Comcast renegotiate the deal to try to keep BYU in the fold, or will it risk "wasting" a large portion of that $66M over the next 6 years without them.  Would they, and the MWC teams, sweeten the deal to keep BYU on board (just like the Big XII did with Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas A&M)?  It would probably take both a bump in the contract PLUS the MWC schools offering BYU its "fair share" (i.e. more than everybody else, aka unequal revenue sharing) to be enough to attempt to counter what BYU would get on its own.

What can BYU get for a TV contract outside on its own?  Well, ESPN knows the value of BYU: they approached BYU for the opener with Oklahoma at Cowboy Stadium last year.  Three of their top 10-rated football games ever have been BYU games.  BYU played the first ever college football game on ESPN.
For comparison's sake: the Big East deals with ESPN and CBS are currently worth $6M per school (that also includes basketball, however).  One would think that BYU would easily be worth the "average" Big East school, in football at least.  BYU would still make MUCH less than all other BCS teams, but they would probably make 3 times more than what they get now from the MWC TV deal.  If they aren't making 3 times the current MWC deal, the entire exercise should be nixed ASAP.  Obviously, if you compare Notre Dame's sweet deal as an independent to what they would get in a conference, it's not even close.  However, BYU is just as much NOT Notre Dame as they are NOT Texas.
In addition to potential ESPN deals, BYU already has its own network, which is available worldwide, and will be available in full HD prior to the 2011 football season.  However, that is not a revenue-producing channel.  They don't sell ads.  The few "commercials" they do have are LDS church spots.  They would have a very limited number of entities they would be willing to sell ads to, based on the religious nature of the current programming and university.  They will only purchase textbooks from a limited number of sources (driving up the cost for students), so something tells me they will be exclusive in whom they offer commercial space to.
If BYU joined the WAC in every other sport, would they allow BYU full autonomy in broadcasting its games in other sports?  Given how cash-strapped a lot of schools in the WAC are, they would probably be willing to make any concessions to add BYU.  That's the rub-down on the money.  BYU stands to make much more as an independent from TV deals.  The WAC would also benefit from BYU too because of, again, TV revenue and butts in seats.  They know this: that's why they would entertain offers for BYU.  However, how much would be offset by having to travel further for 4 football road games that would have been played at MWC locations?  Plus, what would be the added expenditure of all other sports traveling from Hawaii to Louisiana for games, meets, and matches?

Now to accessibility.  No question that BYU-TV and ESPN are easier to get, nationwide, worldwide, and even in the MWC footprint, than the Mtn, Versus, and CBS-CS.  ESPN is ESPN, they are available everywhere on every platform.  BYU-TV is available on Cable in the Rocky Mountain region, plus Northern California (I hear, never lived there myself to know for sure) and on satellite everywhere in the nation.  An estimated 60 million homes in the United States have BYU-TV (though my guess is that 58 million of those have no idea!), plus approximately another million viewers overseas.  Plus, add in the bonus that BYU fans don't have to try to figure out which of the 3 obscure networks BYU is on.  For BYU fans, this is great.

Going independent is by far the best TV option.  The money is good.  BYU fans can watch their team without the current hassles.  But what about everyone else?  What about gaining national exposure if their ESPN games don't end up on ESPN or ESPN2, but go to ESPNU, ESPN-Classic, or ESPN3 instead?  Most football fans aren't scouring BYU-TV (or ESPN the Ocho) to find football.  And besides, isn't the mission of the university about much more than letting BYU fans watch their football team?