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Big Ten at Ten 7.17.2012: What does $80 Million buy?

By Jesse Collins
PASADENA, CA - JANUARY 02: Chip Kelly: [silently to himself] "Think about how good we'll be with all that extra, 'scouting' we can do with that money!"
PASADENA, CA - JANUARY 02: Chip Kelly: [silently to himself] "Think about how good we'll be with all that extra, 'scouting' we can do with that money!"

While preparing the links last night, I asked my wife a simple question, "What could you buy for $80 Million?" She kind of looked at me with this slight annoyance in her face (mostly because she was actually doing something important and I asked a really dumb question) and answered, "you could buy a lot of stuff." Well, fair enough, you could buy a lot of stuff. For example, with $80 Million, you could buy 173 bottles of the Most Expensive Scotch Whisky at auction, the Cire Perdue. Of course, that is the only bottle that can claim the $460,000 price tag, but this is kind of getting a handle on the ridiculous nature of that number and how much you'd have left over. While we are all acting like Northwestern grads, with $80 Million, you could purchase 10 Maybach Exeleros (apparently the most expensive car in the world... this might be a good time that I just took the first google entry after typing, "Most expensive ____ in the world") , 7 Patek Philippe Super Complication Watches, a submersible yacht, or the digital rights to the Rose Bowl.

Ed Note: Don't forget to check out Part I of Ted's Non-Con Breakdown: Four and Out

There it is! The actual point of this little exercise in exorbitant spending is that details are emerging in the latest ESPN Rose Bowl deal with the numbers of the new longterm deal reaching $80 Million per year. While most of you are just yawning thinking that's chump change in bowl numbers, let me just stop you there. According to the Sports Business Daily, the deal is a cool $50 Million increase from the current digital rights deal and will secure funding and profits for the parties involved. Why did Delany care about the Rose Bowl? Was it just the Granddaddy of them all? Was it the picturesque landscape and historic stadium? No, it was the dollar signs.

Let's have Michael Smith and John Ourand tell it exactly how this will work (from the same Sports Business Daily article):

The Rose, Orange and Champions are considered "contract bowls" because they have contracts with conference partners and those big five conferences are protecting their revenue from those games.

By doing separate TV deals for those three bowls, the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC guarantee that a significant portion of TV revenue will flow directly into their coffers and won't have to be shared with the other conferences.

Yikes! So basically the rich get richer while the other conferences wonder what just happened. Note, the Big East is getting jobbed here as the second-tier bowl conference it is. I don't have much more to add here because that's just a huge sum of money. With estimates for playoff revenue being absolutely insane, it's starting to be pretty clear how this all works. Glad we're in the good conference. Like always, it's all about the Benjamins.

Links after the jump.

Team Links:

Conference Links:

  • This is probably more Penn State-centric, but it's more news at this point. Anyhow, James Carville says suspending Penn State Football is a dumb idea.
  • ESPN ranks the QB's in the Big Ten. Taylor Martinez is fourth everyone... We really need some upgrades at this position.
  • The Omaha World Herald ranks the Big Ten Non-Con slate.

Look, it's a water bottle running. Why not? Enjoy your Tuesday