Just wanted to revisit this post. Hockey in no way benefits from this arrangement. If anything, its importance in the ESPN portfolio has been significantly diminished ever since the Worldwide Leader lost NHL rights. If the NCAA were so effective in strong-arming ESPN to place its championships on stations reaching the most households, the NCAA would in fact dictate those terms. They would stipulate that the hockey playoffs be aired on ESPN2, which reaches the same number of households as ESPN.
But they don't. And that's why three of today's NCAAH games are on ESPNU (reaching only 75% of those with access to ESPN & ESPN2), while the other three games are relegated to online streaming via ESPN3. None of them are on ESPN2, which will instead air Sports Science, Competitive Cheerleading, and Dance Competitions from 12:30 pm to 5:30 pm, followed by a Roberto Clemente documentary (best suited for ESPN Classic) and Mexican League soccer.
The NCAA has no control over this whatsoever, and they're not making ESPN televise anything. All of this is an ESPN power play. They wanted all NCAA programming under their umbrella regardless of its low appeal, not because they have any plans to truly market it, but rather to ensure their competitors don't get a chance to do so.
As for the NCAA "bending the WWL over", that's preposterous. Remember that when the NCAA and ESPN reached this latest deal, there were no other competitive outlets for the NCAA to bring their programming to. As I noted in my earlier post, FOX, NBC/Comcast and CBS were still getting their shit in order to either launch or re-brand certain station properties as all-sports. So if, as you state, the NCAA made any threats or leverage plays (which I doubt), they were hollow and empty. ESPN knew it, and so did the NCAA. It would have been the easiest bluff on the planet to call. "OK. Go ahead, take your programming elsewhere and see (a) the paltry number of eyeballs it stands to get, (b) how unappealing such limited exposure will be to sponsors, and (.c) how much less cash these other networks will pay for the privilege. Maybe the History Channel or MTV will be interested."
ESPN couldn't get away with that today, now that two of their competitors are up & running and with FOX on the verge of doing so. They're all hungry for content and unafraid of any bidding wars, evidenced by the $600 million FOX is paying the new Big East for non-football content. Those bidding wars simply didn't exist before because ESPN was smart enough, and ruthless enough, to force the NCAA into a longer-term commitment before any other competitor was ready to ante up and start airing content.
