The Big Ten Network: Deathknell for ESPN Gameplan and Full Court

It's coming, and plenty of Big Ten alumni and fans around the country are going to be ticked.

In case you haven't heard, the Big Ten conference will launch its own network next August. This channel will include a slate of 35 football games, 105 men's basketball games and other Olympic and women's sports. For the '07 football season, each team will appear exclusively on the network at least twice, replacing the ESPN+ telecasts that are now carried by local affiliates and the ESPN Gameplan.

And, of course, pretty much no one will be able to see the games. At least ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 will continue to air, in all likelyhood, the three best matchups each week.

So, if you are a Big Ten fan and refugee of one of its eight footprint states, the days of paying $99 to your cable operator for the plethora of games offered on ESPN Gameplan appears to be over. And the prospects for cable operators picking up the network don't seem great. Kevin O'Malley, a TV adviser to the Big Ten and other conferences, said:

“What happens with cable operators outside the eight states is up in the air,” he said in a telephone interview. “They didn't take a flier on this or predicate their decision on the outer markets.”

The picture is no rosier for the men's basketball season, either. In short, after this season, those ESPN + telecasts provided on the ESPN Full Court product are toast.

What's a displaced Big Ten die-hard to do? There are three strategies. The first is to get a dish. DirecTV will carry the channel wherever you reside in these fair United States. The second strategy is keep your cable service and hope. It's unknown which, if any, cable operators will sign on to carry the channel. But I for one am not holding my breath with BrightHouse's Florida operation, which has dragged its feet on both ESPNU and the NFL Network.

The third strategy? Go to Google Maps. Find the nearest sports bar. There are worse places to spend a fall Saturday afternoon.

On the surface, it's hard to understand why the Big Ten would want to seemingly reduce its exposure not only around the country, but in terms of over-the-air telecasts now carried by ESPN +. The answer, I'm sure, lies in the dollar figure Fox laid out for the conference to add the network to DirecTV's lineup.