Exciting news (or not really news, since we kinda knew already what they were gonna lay out in front of us) yesterday. Mike Slive bestowed upon us a remote control that is coated in 24 carat gold.
Mike Slive’s Southeastern Conference is in its “golden age.”
That’s what the conference commissioner said Thursday when he and ESPN president John Skipper announced that the SEC Network will launch in August 2014 and will carry 1,000 events each year.
Slive said 450 events will be televised and 500 will be distributed digitally each year. Forty-five football games will be carried each season, three a week for 13 weeks, with an early game, a mid-afternoon game and a night game.
Giddyup! I've already told my HDDVR to clear all the singing and dancing reality shows the hell out. But the most interesting part is the fact that this SEC TV thing will last until I'm too old to remember the 2010 Liberty Bowl. Take it away Groo.
* – this is way off-topic, but you start to wonder what the product will look like in 20 years. Will athletics be one of the few physical remnants of universities that will have otherwise moved online? Will safety concerns transform the game of football into something far different? Will some of this money begin to trickle down to the student-athletes and bring a whole other set of equity questions that reshape college athletics? Will the success of these major conference networks further pry apart the top schools from the rest of the NCAA?
If my seat in Sanford has a flask refill station nearby I'll be ecstatic. GATRemote y'all!
