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Monday, January 7, 2008
Dodds denies Thursday game unless it’s A&M;
NEW ORLEANS — Texas Athletic Director DeLoss Dodds strongly denied that the Longhorns will play a Thursday night football game next season, as asserted by an ESPN spokesman, unless it is the Texas A&M-Texas game on Thanksgiving.
“That’s not true,” Dodds said of the announcement by ESPN vice-president Chuck Gerber that his network has signed up Texas to a Thursday game. “We’ve been asked to play A&M on (Thanksgiving) Thursday, but have not given them an answer. But we’re not going to play a (different) Thursday game.”
Dodds said Monday afternoon there is no timeframe for a decision on moving the annual rivalry game between the Aggies and Longhorns back to Thanksgiving.
“But we’re not going to play a (different) Thursday game, period,” Dodds said, “unless it’s A&M. We’ve not talked to A&M about it.”
Dodds’ objections to moving any other game to a Thursday include general parking issues, problems with faculty parking, students’ classes and fan’s midweek travel plans. Dodds said he only deals with Dave Brown, ESPN’s vice president of programming and acquisitions.
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A playoff coming?
NEW ORLEANS — Sorry to get your hopes up, but there is at least a bit of movement toward the Plus One model, according to the SEC and ACC commissioners.
Don’t look for it any time soon, but ACC commissioner John Swofford said he sees “much more open-mindedness about a Plus one model than there was two years ago, considerably more. There is an interest about it.”
The earliest such a system could be implemented where the top four teams would be seeded and an extra, final game would be played after a 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3 matchup would be at the end of the 2010 season.
Fox network’s $350 million contract with three of the four BCS bowls — ABC owns the rights to the Rose Bowl — expires with the 2009 season. Fox does have an exclusive negotiating window with those bowls for a few months between mid-fall and January 2009.
Chuck Gerber, ESPN’s executive vice president for college sports, said Monday that his network would be interested in bidding for the BCS bowls. The BCS, it says here, would be remiss in not going to open bidding for the right to televise those bowls. The Rose Bowl’s contract with ABC runs through January 2014.
If a Plus One model was adopted before the end of that Rose Bowl agreement with ABC/ESPN, Gerber said his network would find a way to work around the existing contract.
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ESPN says Texas will play Thursday night game
The Longhorns have agreed to move one of their football games next season to Thursday night, an ESPN spokesman said Monday in New Orleans.
Chuck Gerber, executive vice president for college sports for ESPN, said that Texas and Southern Cal both have agreed to play Thursday night games next season — separate games, of course. USC’s Thursday night game will be against Oregon State.
But Gerber would not reveal which Texas game will be moved to a Thursday. ESPN officials said the network’s telecast schedule likely would be announced next month.
“I’m not going to tell you. You’ll have to wait,” said Gerber.
ESPN officials did make it clear that Texas’ Thursday night game would not be its season-opener (Aug. 30 against Florida Atlantic) or the Red River Rivalry against Oklahoma (Oct. 11 in Dallas). Gerber said that ESPN has asked Texas and OU to play on a Saturday night, “but they won’t do it.”
Asked if the Texas-Arkansas game (now set for Saturday, Sept. 13) could be moved, ESPN’s Josh Krulewitz said, “You never know.”
Gerber said that landing Texas in a Thursday slot is a real coup for the network. “It’s a big-time deal, absolutely, anytime you can get a school the quality of a USC or Texas to play on a Thursday.”
“Thursday has become ‘Monday Night Football’ for college sports,” he said.
