The new SEC Network: What We Should Expect

The new SEC Network was announced with all the bells and whistles that greets every ESPN announcement.

The deal, which is thought to be worth billions of dollars to the SEC, was not discussed by ESPN CEO John Skipper or SEC Commissioner Mike Slive, but is thought to be worth a heck of a lot more than the current 15-year, $2.25bn deal signed between the conference and the network back in 2008.

The deal will be for 45 college football games, 100 men’s basketball games, and lots of other sports, plus 24-7 programming about the SEC and all the fun and games. We would love to ask the network to hire us as special director for a ‘Wild Girls of the SEC’ documentary, because we doubt it will go ahead.

For those of you in love with Verne and Gary, we doubt that the SEC will walk away from its deal with CBS, which currently shares rights to the big games with the SEC, and seems to get first choice on the ‘biggies’ throughout most of the season for the 3.30pm kick-off and a couple of night games, too. The SEC still needs CBS as its national cable carrier, and we doubt that people watching ABC all over America will want to see the likes of Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia and LSU week in, week out.

But here’s what we expect for this season, even before the SEC Network is launched in August 2014:

• Even more blanket SEC coverage on College Gameday. Last season, ESPN was almost ESECPN with the amount of coverage SEC schools were getting on College Gameday. The first three games of Gameday were involving SEC teams. Four games after that involved SEC teams – and we think the reason for that was the rise of Notre Dame, who frankly saved College Gameday from even bigger accusations of bias. Don’t get us wrong, we love the SEC coverage, but it was getting a little dull. Especially without any love for the USC Song Girls. We’ll put an outside bet on a SEC school getting the College Gameday ad, too – like Texas A&M did last year.
• The SEC to get a permanent spot on College Football Live: Watch College Football Live carefully, and the SEC is almost always heading up the headlines for Chris Fowler and Kirk Herbstreit. In fact, other schools should be honored to get a look-in. This coverage will get even MORE SEC-biased in 2014, because it becomes within ESPN’s interests (they own 100% of the SEC Network) to pitch SEC, SEC, SEC to non-SEC football fans (would you believe it, they exist folks!) – because they’ll need the customers. If you don’t believe us, remember how much Texas and the Longhorn Network was pitched prior to the 2013 season?
• Prepare to get hammered with ‘Buy The SEC Network’ Marketing: It won’t stop. If you love the SEC, you’re probably going to get it anyway, but by God, it’s going to get driven down your through. Chris Fowler and the gang should get special dividends from Disney for pitching the Network day in, day out. Because by God, they’ll do a lot of it

What we should expect after 2014:

• The schools will be a ton richer. Which will mean more money for weight rooms and for other athletics other than football. This is a good thing. Also expect some of the money to go into the general scholarship funds, which can only help the universities – particularly those that aren’t your Vanderbilts of this world.
• The ESPN exposure will mean even more great recruits come to play in the SEC. Thanks to ESPN, other conferences are going to be left in the dark. Unless their big teams have big former National Championship-winning SEC coaches, or have a lot of former players on their staff, like, you know, Ohio State.
  
• The SEC will continue to dominate. Don’t be surprised if the SEC wins National Championships year in, year out until either the Second Coming happens, or the powers-that-be- in college football start to change rules about non-conference scheduling, so we see better non-conference games for big SEC schools, which will bring it more into line with NCAA Basketball. This will be no bad thing.
• We eventually say goodbye to the CBS deal. Tradition may be one thing, but dollars is another. And CBS would quite happily forgo college football for The Masters, which at some point they are going to have to go for. ESPN will soon collect the top 3.30 game too, and we’ll have to go to one company to watch SEC football – and that’s exactly what ESPN will want you to do, because you’ll then pay for their channel.
• More Les Miles and Steve Spurrier. Which is no bad thing.
• More Wright Thompson. Which really, really, really is no bad thing.
• More shots of beautiful SEC co-eds. Which really, really, really, really, is no bad thing. At all.
• Paul Finebaum: The SEC’s most controversial talk-show host has just signed a contract with ESPN and the SEC Network. Some people have recommended he get a sports social media show with Skip Bayless and call it ‘Dislike’. Which is a little uncharitable. Anyways, you’re going to hear a lot of Auburn-baiting on national radio, folks.