Aay-Cee-Cee Media Daze Day Two: Swofford, Coaches, And Agents, Oh, My!

((HT: WRALSportsfan.com))

Here's the Commissioner, John Swofford, discussing everything under the ACC sun...


And WRAL's Jeff Gravely caught up with as many coaches as he could in a 1:30 package
Turns out, the number is five...


Odds and ends until Brother Wilkie writes his post-mortems...

Georgia Tech head coach Paul Johnson suspended DE Robert Hall for one game as a result of the battery charge against his girlfriend in June.

The pre-season poll came out...

Virginia Tech earned 50 of a possible 98 votes from media members attending the league's two-day preseason media event to win it all this year. Florida State was the choice in the league's Atlantic Division and was second to the Hokies with 26.

Seminoles quarterback Christian Ponder was picked preseason player of the year- as long as he doesn't lead with his throwing shoulder to make a tackle.

The Hokies were chosen to win the Coastal Division, followed by Miami, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Duke and Virginia.

Following the Seminoles in the Atlantic were Clemson, Boston College, North Carolina State, Wake Forest and Maryland.

The championship game is December 4th in Charlotte.

Over at NC State, Russell Wilson had season-ending knee surgery and head coach Tom O'Brien doesn't expect the QB to return after this year.

Your Tax Dollars At Work: A BCS Hearing

With all the other stuff going on where your tax dollars are being sent so the gub'ment can spend money without your okey-dokey, guess what they're spending it on now...?

A committee meeting on the BCS...

Like there isn't anything else important going on...
Unfortunately, it had to be covered. When your Congress calls, you have to show.
But look at it this way...those of you that don't like the BCS as it stands today will agree with Congressman Barton- "it's like Comma-nism..."

No, none of us can get our money back on this one, either.

((HT: Deseret News/Lee Davidson))

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, told big colleges and football bowl executives that their sworn testimony before Congress on Friday finally and truthfully made clear why they oppose a playoff system, and why teams like the undefeated University of Utah were excluded from last year's Bowl Championship Series championship game.

"It's about money," he said. "It's not about athleticism on the field."
Then he gave the BCS some advise: "You should either change your name to BES, for Bowl Exhibition System, or just drop the 'C' and call it the BS system. It's not about determining the championship on the field."

Barton is sponsoring a bill that would prohibit calling any game a football national championship if it is not determined by a playoff system. "It's about truth in advertising," he said. About the current BCS, he said it is a bit "like communism. You can't fix it…. Sooner or later, you're going to have to try a new model."
Bobby Rush, D-Ill., chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, seconded the assertion and said, "It seems to me we have a championship series that is not really a championship series. It is a misnomer."

There's more to the piece, but those of us at OSG HQ got physically ill.
Barton is just hot about the Big 12 schools getting jobbed in the process. We imagine Senator Hatch of Utah is just as hot, and just as full of hot air.

There's a simple solution to all of this... vote them all out and start over.
Oh, you thought we had a solution for the BCS...?
Nah, it's flawed.

And when was the last time you saw a conservatively-ideological Congressman chapped about the free-enterprise system...?
Dig in to it more here at C-SPAN, if you're trying to stay awake...

ACC+IMG= Not As Much $$$ As the SEC...

Looks like the ACC waited a year too late to negotiate their new deal...
But, they're going to do it, anyway...

John Ourand and Michael Smith from Sports Business Daily educate us this way...

The Atlantic Coast Conference is set to hire IMG Sports Media’s Barry Frank to handle its next media rights negotiations, according to several informed sources.

The two sides could sign a deal as early as this week. Frank’s ties to ACC Commissioner John Swofford go back to last year’s BCS negotiations when Frank was the BCS media consultant and Swofford was beginning his term as BCS coordinator.

The ACC also considered Wasserman Media Group’s Dean Jordan, who pitched the conference for the business in the middle of last month.

The ACC’s media rights expire after the 2010-11 season, and the conference is hoping to continue the trend that’s seen the SEC and BCS score huge rights-fee increases. Last year, the SEC signed deals with ESPN and CBS guaranteeing the conference an average of more than $200 million a year for the next 15 years.

Given the ongoing recession, most college media executives expect the ACC to begin taking bids next spring, hoping for a healthier economy. The incumbent rights holders, ESPN and Raycom Sports, are expected to make significant offers. There’s a chance another bidder, like a Versus, could enter the negotiations or the conference could look into forming its own channel, à la the Big Ten Network. But several college media executives say an ACC channel is unlikely. As part of its current seven-year deal, the ACC’s football rights belong to ESPN and its basketball rights to Raycom. Combined, those contracts generate about $73 million in annual revenue for the conference.

Raycom re-sells the basketball rights annually to various networks, like ESPN, CBS and Fox Sports Net, while also syndicating games to local over-the-air broadcasters in the ACC’s footprint.

CBS and ABC each pay Raycom $250,000 per ACC appearance, while ESPN pays about $150,000. The number of ACC appearances vary each year by network, but CBS and ABC each buy about five annually, Fox Sports Net and other regional nets buy about 35 to 40 and and ESPN’s networks may take as many as 35 to 45. Raycom broadcasts about 40 itself.

In this next round of negotiations, ESPN is expected to make a bid for the basketball rights directly to the ACC, bypassing Raycom. Raycom, meanwhile, has been seeking a cable partner, such as Comcast or Time Warner, to take to the negotiating table.

ESPN is less likely to go after the local broadcast syndication rights because of conflicts it would have in some ACC markets that also cover SEC teams, insiders say. ESPN holds the SEC’s syndication rights.

At an industry conference last fall, Frank said that during BCS bidding, ESPN assured him that it would make a competitive bid for the ACC. At the time, Frank was not under contract to handle the ACC’s media rights, but he clearly expected that he would be.

“One of the things we did, candidly, is take [ESPN’s] pulse,” he said. “Is ESPN going to treat us fairly? And the answer was, ‘You have our word that we will.’ We accept that. And we accept that they will make a fair and equitable deal. … What equals fair is the precedents they have set already with, for instance, the SEC deal. You look at that as a benchmark.”

While those of us at OSG HQ don't quite see the deal that the Southeastern Conference got, we look forward to seeing all the dollar signs that Raycom, the four-letter, and the Versus are going to throw around at the benchmark...

So Much For The Fens...ACC Looking Elsewhere...

The Atlantic Coast Conference was supposed to hold the 2009 Baseball Championships at Fenway Park in Boston ((pictured, thanks getty images))... that would have been cool.

But now, not so much...

From the ACC directly... ahem... quote...

"Fenway Sports Group announced today that due to an in-house scheduling error, it will be unable to host the 2009 ACC Baseball Championship.

"We sincerely apologize for the error that resulted in Fenway Park being unavailable to host the 2009 ACC Baseball Championship," said Mike Dee, President of Fenway Sports Group. "The Atlantic Coast Conference and its baseball championship are very important to us and we are truly sorry for this situation."

In the immediate future, the ACC will look to secure a new venue to host the 2009 championship. Further information on the 2009 event will be released directly by the conference office as soon as it's available.

"It's disappointing that this scheduling error has resulted in the upcoming championship not being played at Fenway Park, but we look forward to being at Fenway in 2010," said ACC Commissioner John Swofford. "In terms of this year's event, we are moving swiftly to find a quality venue to host one of our premier conference championships."

Although the originally-scheduled 2009 championship is not able to be played in Fenway, the ACC and FSG have agreed to terms to bring the 2010 ACC Baseball Championship to Boston and Fenway Park.

"We look forward to bringing ACC baseball to Fenway and will do everything possible to make 2010 a great success," said Dee.

What do you want to bet:

A) Davis Whitfield, the ACC's Grand-Exalted-Poobah-of-Championships will not be getting any rest any time in the near future...

B) Re-read the Swofford quote... heads will roll over this...
"Heads will roll, I tell you..."

C) What do you wanna guess that the Olympic Center in Cary, North Carolina becomes the emergency-default location for 2009...?

This had been decided after the 2006 championships, for those of you who had lost touch on these proceedings... and it took the Fenway Group until NOW ((???!!!)) to realize there was a scheduling conflict...???

Nine months beforehand...???

Makes perfect sense...
What...??? Did Jack Roush schedule a party or something...???