Big Ten creates a three-window Saturday on Fox, CBS, NBC

The Big Ten has swapped a four-letter network for a trio of three-letter channels. ESPN is out, and Fox, CBS, and NBC (PFT corporate overlord disclaimer) are in.

The deals were announced on Thursday. In a simulation of an NFL Sunday, Big Ten football will be televised on Fox at 12:00 p.m. ET, CBS at 3:30 p.m. ET, and NBC in the evening. The arrangement begins in 2023 and runs through the 2029 season.

The Big Ten and its teams will pocket, on average, $1 billion per year. The players will continue to receive zero dollars a year plus benefits, babe.

Sure, the players can now make money through the name, image, and likeness model that was forced on the NCAA and its member schools under the threat/promise of viable antitrust litigation. But the schools continue to hoard the ticket and TV revenue, with the players getting (at wholesale cost) an “education.” And they have no choice but to play college football for three years, since by rule they can’t enter the NFL draft. (As explained in Playmakers, the NFL and the NFL Players Association are complicit in the ability of pro football’s free farm system to get free labor.)

So while it’s a day to celebrate the fact that the Big Ten has finagled full and fair value for the content it will provide to Fox, CBS, and NBC from 2023 through the end of the decade, it’s also appropriate (if not required) to point out that the rising tide is lifting all boats — with the exception of those boats that people are actually tuning in to watch race.