Dan Beebe Email States FOX/ESPN Working Against NBC and Comcast

Many feel the beginning of this year's college football season was over-shadowed by the explosion of conference realignment.  One reason for the recent realignment was the money involved with signed contracts between conferences and TV broadcast partners such as ABC-ESPN, CBS, NBC, and FOX for college football TV 1st and 2nd tier rights.

On April 13th 2011, the Big 12 Conference announced it had agreed to a new 13 year agreement with FOX Sports for it's 2nd tier football rights. 

The Big 12 and Fox Sports announced a 13-year deal Wednesday that officials say will ensure the long-term stability of every member of the league. The deal, which starts with the 2012 football season, will pay the league about $90 million a year when averaged over the length of the contract.

In addition, the Big 12 also has a deal with ABC-ESPN running through 2015-16 that will pay about $65 million a year.

This would mean that ABC-ESPN would continue to hold the conference's 1st tier rights and "partner" with FOX Sports in broadcasting all of the conference's upcoming college football contests for the next several seasons.

Less than a month later on May 3rd 2011, the then Pac-10 conference announced it had reached it's own deal with once again, ABC-ESPN and FOX.

The Pacific-10 Conference will start its own network on cable television in 2012, but will also sell most of its marquee football and basketball games to Fox and ESPN for about $3 billion over 12 years, more than quadrupling what the two companies have been paying.

It is the richest conference deal. The Pac-10, which is expected to announce the agreements Wednesday, is following the media model of the Big Ten Conference, which in 2007 created its own network and negotiated a 10-year, $1 billion deal with ESPN.

But a critical difference between the conferences’ deals is that the Pac-10 will retain full ownership of its network. Fox Cable Networks owns 49 percent of the Big Ten channel. 

With ABC-ESPN and FOX securing TV deals with two different conferences in less than a month time, were they working together to control the market?  

In an email obtained though a FOIA request from then Big 12 Conference Commissioner Dan Beebe to Big 12 athletic directors dated May 4th 2011, that does in fact appear to be the case.  Here in this email, Commissioner Beebe explains to conference athletic directors the significance of the deal as it relates to the Big 12, certain talking points for athletic staff to take up, and lets slip the fact that ABC-ESPN and FOX are seemingly working together to "keep NBC/Comcast from getting a significant stake in college athletics".

We find it comical that former Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe thought his conference could "generate per member revenue comparable to its peer conferences" in the future.

Also, remember this past summer ABC-ESPN and FOX were negotiating together to shuffle games onto the University of Texas' new Longhorn Network which was operated by ESPN.   Berry Tramel wrote this article in July about the troubling nature of the discussions:

The Longhorn Network is getting another game for its stash of content. Fox has allowed ESPN to move one of Texas’ conference games to the Longhorn Network.

The blame for this lies at the feet of ESPN and Fox Sports Net. ESPN hatched this idea, trying to build subscribers to the network and recoup its $300 million commitment. But Fox had to sign off. Fox owns the cable rights to Big 12 football; except for one game a year per school, which will almost always be against a rumdum opponent, ABC/ESPN and Fox own the rights to the games.

If a game is going to be on cable television, it’s going to be on Fox Sports Net, or FSN has to grant a waiver. FSN granted a waiver for the Longhorn Network.

FSN had its reasons. Sources say Fox in 2012 wants to move at least one game to big Fox — its over-the-air network, which televises the NFL and Major League Baseball. Big Fox long has been mentioned as a possible destination for Big 12 football; heck, I’ve been mentioning it myself for years. The Big 12 on Big Fox is an idea whose time has come.

Also last Sunday night, we released this email from Texas A&M Athletic Director Bill Byrne from a rough draft of his Wednesday Weekly letters to fans that was then edited out about how ABC-ESPN and FOX were delaying the release of the 2011 Big 12 Conference football schedule due to their discussions of moving games to be aired on the Longhorn Network:

It's becoming easier to see that those discussions may have been easier than once believed if ABC-ESPN and FOX were really working together to obtain the TV rights of all conferences as the Dan Beebe email suggests.

But more importantly, what does it say for the current and future state of college football and athletics as a whole if ABC-ESPN has teamed up with FOX to drive NBC/Comcast and perhaps even CBS out of the market?

That's for smarter people than us to speculate and comment on. 

Special thanks to @spadilly for his attainment of the documents.