NCAA Football Connecticut Basketball

I thought Shelley Smith of ESPN did an even-handed job when she broke the news that the University of Connecticut women's basketball team committed a recruiting violation by taking Maya Moore on a tour of ESPN. UConn coach Geno Auriemma does not agree with me.

Auriemma said this on his weekly radio show:

"It's a story that has been rehashed by ESPN to serve its own purposes. ... Shelley Smith came up to talk to me to do a story on [Tennessee women's basketball coach] Pat Summitt and my relationship with her, why the series was canceled, and I flat out said, 'Go ask her. I didn't cancel it.' I didn't want to be involved in [that] story.

"And [Smith's] response was, 'OK, we're going to [report the violation].' ... What purpose does that serve? It's already been discussed and dealt with [last summer]. It's typical: 'Let's drum up some interest before the NCAA Tournament starts and hope these two meet in the finals so we can get boffo ratings' at the expense of Maya Moore."

The notion that this was done "at the expense of Maya Moore" strikes me as rather silly. No one is saying Moore did anything that any high school basketball player wouldn't do: She was offered a tour of ESPN and she accepted. What makes the story interesting is that it was Summitt, Auriemma's arch rival, who reported the tour to the NCAA. If Auriemma doesn't think that's newsworthy, he's wrong.

Shelley Smith of ESPN.com is reporting that the University of Connecticut women's basketball team committed a recruiting violation by taking Maya Moore on a tour of ESPN.

The violation was brought to the NCAA's attention by UConn's arch rival, Tennessee, and Tennessee's conference, the SEC. Moore was heavily recruited by both schools and is now a star freshman at UConn.

ESPN acknowledges that it agreed to UConn's request to give Moore and her mother a tour. ESPN's headquarters in Bristol are located approximately 45 miles from UConn's campus. ESPN released a statement today saying, "To avoid future incidents, our tour policy will now prohibit high school athletes from receiving tours at the request of a college or university athletic official."

The tour was considered an impermissible benefit, although UConn says it did not receive any NCAA penalty for it. Tennessee had previously accused former UConn players of giving Moore car rides in violation of NCAA rules; the NCAA dismissed those accusations.

It's no secret that UConn coach Geno Auriemma and Tennessee coach Pat Summitt hate each other, and it's safe to say this won't do anything to change that. But it will add another layer of intrigue if UConn and Tennessee play each other in the NCAA Tournament.

UConn center Hasheem Thabeet had seven blocks and was the player of the game in last night's win over Syracuse. He's a dominant defensive presence in the middle, ranking 16th in the nation in shot block percentage.

But never has the 7-foot-3 Thabeet looked like a bigger big man than he did in his post-game interview on ESPN last night:

Seriously, Allen Hopkins of ESPN could barely reach his microphone up to Thabeet's mouth. Can't the Worldwide Leader afford a footstool?

Last month the Big East website moved from being hosted by CSTV to JumpTV. This was part of its new deal with JumpTV to produce the Big East's new multiplatform broadband environment. The offerings include.

-- A branded broadband video channel (http://www.BIGEAST.tv), which will offer annual, monthly and seasonal championship packages along with game-of-the-week football contests
-- An official photo store
-- An official mobile store including mobile alerts
-- Online auctions

Of course, the broadband offerings are actually quite limited on BigEast.tv. Oh, sure you can get field hockey, swimming and soccer, but is anyone really going to pay the $79.95 annual subscription fee for that and being able to watch the weekly conference propaganda show on a computer?

The thing people will want is the football and (especially) the basketball content. Well, that is a little trickier.

An interesting piece talking about the Big East revenue distributions (via Big East Basketball Report).

While the Atlantic Coast Conference recently awarded its 12 schools an average of $10.85 million for the tax year ending June 30, 2006, the Big East awarded its eight full members an average of $5,842,599.

The Big East average has fallen for the last three years. For the July 1, 2003, to June 30, 2004, reporting period, when Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College were still members, the average was $6,794,029.

After the ACC's raid, six Big East schools (including BC, but not Tech nor Miami) received full football-basketball share averages of $6,445,968.
...
Overall, the Big East's total revenue went from $74,800,951 in 2003-04 to $62,641,685 in '04-05 to $75,411,511 in '05-06. So over the tumultuous three-year period, the league's revenue increased - but only $610,560 in a healthy sports atmosphere.

Some of the fluctuation, though, had to do with television and radio rights fees earned by the league. In 2003-04, the Big East made $25,910,626 in fees. In '04-05, after the defections, it dropped to $15,349,543 before rebounding to $19,225,441 this past reporting period.

There was never any doubt that for the first few years after the revised Big East, that the football revenues from TV would be down. The first year after everything that happened was simply about trying to remain part of the BCS coalition.

It could be argued that only a few of the football schools took significant revenue hits in the first couple of years. Half the football schools were coming into a new conference.