Blame me for being on an Evita kick, but I thought that quote would perfectly describe this action. So here's the deal, Fox Sports essentially renewed and expanded exclusive media rights for the Big West Conference that will be shown on the three Southern California regional channels: Fox Sports West, Fox Sports Prime Ticket and Fox Sports San Diego. Starting next season, Fox Sports will be showing a minimum of 32 games per season, including 12 SDSU basketball games. In addition to the televised broadcasts, starting this November, the BWC will launch the free-to-access video online (similar to what BigWest.TV has now, only I think the production quality will be better since it is Fox Sports, details weren't clear).
What we can get out of this: y'all better thank SDSU for this deal, because they were the main attraction of this deal. That being said, any team has a possibility of usurping the Aztecs on a televised broadcast. This also puts huge pressure on Time Warner Cable to get their act together in San Diego. Currently, unless I'm behind on details, Time Warner still does not get FSSD which means that there will be many 'Tec fans without access to the games (a quick statistic out of a Google search puts 1-in-7 adults in San Diego have a degree from SDSU).
Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket cover almost all of Southern California, Central California, Hawaii and Southern Nevada. What this means is that Davis and Boise will be essentially left out of this deal, though Davis can probably work something out with the cable companies up there and Boise will probably work with the Big West and 24/7 Sports (the local channel up there) to continue broadcasting all their games.
My biggest question of this deal, how much money is the Big West getting out of this? It probably isn't much more than what they're getting right now, but maybe it has been renegotiated to throw in the two new schools. No matter, the league still wins because they are getting good quality, increased exposure.
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