As expected, the Atlantic Coast Conference and ABC/ESPN announced a new seven-year football contract — a deal that the Associated Press is reporting totals $258 million.

That's nearly twice what the league was making per year on its old football contract with ABC/ESPN. And the increase is also not a surprise, given that the ACC is adding Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College and a championship game (beginning in 2005) — which will air on ABC.

And, basically, it proved the league was right when it expanded in search of more television revenue.

You do the math — twice as much money divided 12 ways instead of nine ways is still a lot more money per school.

And, hey, if somebody else gets hurt along the way — like, say, the Big East — so what?

Of if somebody else like the Mountain West Conference gets hurt, well, I'm guessing nobody in ACC country is giving that a second thought. Actually, I'm guessing nobody in ACC country is giving that a first thought.

Read through the details of the new deal and you'll find that it includes "an increase to six Thursday appearances each year (up from three), resulting in a pre-eminent position for the ACC on Thursdays." And that's not good news for the MWC, which, up until now, has been, if not the pre-eminent, certainly a highly prominent player in ESPN's Thursday-night college football schedule.

It would seem that prominence will be somewhat less prominent in coming years.

What, exactly, this means for BYU, Utah and the rest of the MWC remains to be seen. But expect to see the league's games pushed into later time slots on ESPN or switched to ESPN2, where they'll take a back seat to the ACC for at least half the season.

That's just what we need, isn't it? Not only Thursday-night games but Thursday-night games that start late.

Which hurts on a couple of counts. For one thing, ABC/ESPN may not need, value or pay for the MWC as much anymore, which can't be good when the league's contract with the sports TV giant is renegotiated. For another, a league that's starving for attention will once again have to take a back seat to one of those Bowl Championship Series (gag) conferences.

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Gee, remember back when the "big boys" wouldn't play on any day other than Saturdays? The "mid-major" conferences stepped in — and now that they've proved that it can work, the BCS leagues aren't shy about taking this away, too.

Maybe the MWC can play on Tuesdays. But maybe the league will have to fight what's left of the Big East for the honor.

Can't wait to see the results of the negotiations between that league and ABC/ESPN. At least the MWC isn't alone in suffering at the hands of the "big boys."


E-mail: pierce@desnews.com

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