In North Dakota, Brad Schlossman reported North Dakota, Denver, Colorado College, Nebraska-Omaha, Minnesota-Duluth and Miami (Ohio) will "break away" from the WCHA college hockey conference and "start a new hockey league in 2013-14." There have "already been discussions with members of the new league and television executives about getting games nationally televised on Versus," which would "give UND a greater range of exposure than the current deal with Fox College Sports and DirecTV." Schlossman noted Colorado College "currently is a television partner with CBS College Sports," while Denver has games on Root Sports Rocky Mountain (GRAND FORKS HERALD, 7/10).
GOING YARD: MLB.com has generated more than 1.7 million views of video clips relating to Derek Jeter's 3,000th career hit. The site additionally saw 79.2 million wireless page views on Saturday, the day Jeter hit the milestone, a figure 43% over its daily wireless traffic average thus far this season. And the site logged a one-day site-record 1.6 million unique mobile visitors on Saturday, a total driven heavily by interest in Jeter (Eric Fisher, SportsBusiness Journal).
BOLD IS BEAUTIFUL: In Minneapolis, Jim Souhan wrote former Twins manager Tom Kelly's "stint as Bert Blyleven's fill-in" on FS North's Twins broadcasts has "proved that fearlessness and knowledge are the two prerequisites for outstanding broadcasting analysts." During Sunday's Twins-White Sox game, Kelly "provided a baseball education rather than cheerleading" (Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE, 7/11).
SURF'S UP: Fuel TV yesterday announced a media partnership with IMG to broadcast the finals of the '11 Nike U.S. Open of Surfing. The deal will see Fuel TV televise three-and-a-half hours of live surf, skate and BMX competition Aug. 7. It will be the first time Fuel TV or any other network has shown the finals of the U.S. Open live. The deal was negotiated by Fuel TV VP/Ad Sales Peter Vesey and IMG Senior VP & Dir of Action Sports James Leitz. Terms of the agreement were not available (Tripp Mickle, SportsBusiness Journal).
