The Big East conference announced Tuesday a giant media deal to broadcast, among select football games, every single conference basketball game on one of ESPN’s networks.

ESPN360, a broadbrand service, is a new outlet for college football. But it is just one of many new homes for college sports coverage.

The Big Ten announced this summer the conference will launch its own channel that will cover football, basketball and other sports.

The 24-hour channel will broadcast more than 35 football games, 160 men’s and women’s basketball games, conference tournaments and championships and 170 Olympic sporting events.

‘The Big Ten has a lot of alumni out there,’ said Scott Chipman, assistant commissioner of communications for the Big Ten. ‘Creating your own channel allows us to increase the number of games and sports that are broadcast to them.’

The top football and basketball games will still be aired on ABC/ESPN and CBS, respectively, but the new network plans to replace ESPN Regional to cover the less popular games.

The channel, which does not yet have an official name, will be the product of three years of discussions between the conference and its schools. It will be available on DirecTV to more than 15.4 million homes when it launches next August.

‘We’re working with local cable and national satellite providers,’ Chipman said. ‘The goal will be to get it distributed to as many homes as possible.’

The Big Ten is the first major conference to launch its own channel but it is not the first conference in the nation to do so. In September, the Mountain West Conference will launch the Mountain West Sports Network, making it the first network devoted to one conference’s athletics.

The Mountain West Conference will be a guinea pig for other conferences thinking about launching their own networks but Javan Hedlund, the associate commissioner of the Mountain West, said the conference is not concerned.

‘The Mountain West always strives to be on the cutting edge,’ Hedlund said. ‘We felt this was the best move for the institutions.’

While the Mountain West Sports Network has flown under the radar in places like Syracuse, don’t expect the Big Ten channel to go unnoticed. Mike Finn, associate commissioner of football for the ACC said his conference will pay attention to the success or failure of the new Big Ten channel.

‘We’ve talked about (making an ACC network) for quite some time but we’re not ready to go down that road,’ Finn said. ‘This is something that is relatively new and to some extent experimental. It is very possible other conferences will follow (if the Big Ten succeeds).’

Hedlund said there is no doubt in his mind other conferences besides the Mountain West and the Big Ten will form their own television networks because it gives them the freedom to make their own television schedules.

‘We may be the first to launch a network and the Big Ten may be the second, but there will be others that follow,’ Hedlund said.

Published on August 30, 2006 at 12:00 pm