It’s a good listen and the guy basically says all of these things and goes into detail on the process.

Perhaps the most interesting thing that I took away from it was simply the timing of the negotiations. It was really smart and cutthroat of the big 12 to negotiate early. I’m not sure if they just got lucky on what happened with all of the streaming fallout, but it’s basically the worst time to try to negotiate something like this.

He also gave a nice look into the future. This is going to be something that all conferences are dealing with during the next media negotiations. If the premier conferences become the B1G and SEC, negotiating future TV deals is going to get more and more difficult for everyone else.

These companies are willing to shell out money for only the biggest products, but they have started cutting back on the lesser names. There isn’t as much spending as there used to be. So they are still going to pay a ton for the NFL, the NBA, and the best of college football. But everyone else is going to suffer.

Connection to SBJ: Andrew Marchand (NYP and writer of above article) and John Ourand (SBJ writer and interviewee mentioned) work very closely together and do a regular podcast.