Feb. 7, 2007

Article on the Sport Business Journal website.

I have watched from afar the last several months the criticism of many Mountain West Conference alumni, fans and local media leveled toward Commissioner Craig Thompson. While I left CSTV this past spring and I have no continued financial interest in its success, it is important to me that the CSTV/MWC partnership is a successful one. In my view, much of the criticism directed toward Thompson and the MWC is either inaccurate or unfair. Instead of criticism, Thompson deserves applause.

In 2004, when the MWC was faced with the ESPN negotiation, Thompson was tasked by the MWC presidents with "finding an alternative" to their ESPN arrangement. An alternative that fulfilled the following: 1) playing the majority of football games on Saturdays -- no Tuesdays or Wednesdays as ESPN was forcing upon them; 2) acceptable start times for men's basketball -- not the 10 p.m. local start times required by ESPN; 3) more games and more comprehensive coverage on television, broadband and other new media; and 4) more revenue.

We have started to see Thompson's vision come to light. In addition to the annual 40 percent rights fee increase he negotiated, the MWC had all 55 football games televised in 2006, including a package of eight games on Comcast-owned Versus, which has 72 million subscribers nationally. Also, by the time this basketball season is over there will have been over 130 men's and women's basketball telecasts, quadruple the number in any previous year. The MWC men's and women's Olympic sports also will receive unprecedented coverage this year. Thompson also negotiated for a first-of-its-kind, super regional network (The mtn.), devoted exclusively to one collegiate conference. This past summer CSTV and the MWC reached an agreement with Comcast, the No. 1 cable operator in the United States, to become a 50 percent equity partner in The mtn. and more recently, Cox Communications, the dominant cable provider in two key MWC markets, Las Vegas and San Diego, reached agreement to carry both The mtn. and CSTV.

Although The mtn. hasn't yet achieved the penetration levels Thompson or CSTV expects, let's remember the agreement has been in effect for less than seven months. Since it's a 14-year pact, there is plenty of time to achieve the broad distribution this kind of programming rightly deserves. Given the past history of other notable programming/distribution skirmishes, valuable programming will virtually always find its way on. Clearly, it's hard for distributors who serve the MWC markets like Comcast, Cox, Time Warner, DirecTV and Dish to argue they "don't need the programming" when it is among the highest-rated, most family-friendly local programming of any kind they can offer in these markets.

In the end, not only did Thompson find an alternative that offered the MWC significantly more remuneration but he also delivered the first of its kind sweeping media partnership, which is now being copied by other major conferences like the Big Ten and even the SEC. So rather than criticism, how about a New Year's resolution that supports boldness and innovation.