Now that BYU's discussions with the Big East have been reported to be over, several media reports are trying to make sense of it and to place "blame". First of all, blame would assume that there was a desired outcome to begin with, but then should it not materialize, it would point the finger of fault at the offending unmet stipulation.
And in this case, I have read several times that BYU's offense was in seeking to maintain TV rights to its home games. "No other college team in a conference has been able to get this," they mock. Well, perhaps we should point out that it has probably never previously, in any conference realignment discussions been a point of negotiation. BYU is one of only two schools that have ever had its own TV deal. Ever. The other being Notre Dame. And you can be sure that if Notre Dame were to join a conference, they would look to keep their existing TV deal at as a guaranteed minimum and to top it off with the additional TV revenue from conference road games.
In that context, it doesn't seem unreasonable that a team would want to at least maintain its current standard of living (revenue and exposure) as it joins a conference. In that context, it also seems rather naive to use the argument that no other team in college football has kept their home TV rights within a conference... no other team has ever been in a position to even try.
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