Navy AD Chet Gladchuk said that the academy will "honor all of its contracts with CBS Sports" even though it is becoming a football-only member of the former Big East in '15, according to Bill Wagner of the Annapolis CAPITAL. The deal will "ensure the Navy football program continues to receive the same level of revenue and exposure it has developed during a recent unprecedented run of national success." CBS Sports Network will "retain rights to all Naval Academy home football games held at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium through 2017." The broadcast net also will "retain rights to Navy’s home games with Notre Dame as well as the Army-Navy game through 2018." Gladchuk said that one of the "conditions of Navy’s membership involved the level of television coverage." Gladchuk said, “Basically, our deal with the Big East stated that under no circumstances would Navy lose ground in terms of television revenue or exposure." Meanwhile, Wagner noted ESPN will televise "all of Navy’s away games" as part of its new deal with the former Big East. That marks an "increase in exposure for Navy, which could never be certain whether its road games would be televised or not." It is "unclear how revenue derived from the ESPN contract will be shared now that CBS is retaining the rights to all Navy home games along with the selected rivalry games" (Annapolis CAPITAL, 3/20).
TROPIC THUNDER: In Honolulu, Ferd Lewis noted the Hawaii football team "stands to gain visibility, but likely little cash from a new TV agreement announced Wednesday" between ESPN and the Mountain West Conference. The MWC is "expected to receive" about $18M in combined revenue from its ESPN and CBS deals. UH officials have said that under terms of their membership agreement with the conference, the school "will not share in revenues" until the football shares of the other 11 members each exceed $2.3M, "the worth of UH's local TV and pay-per-view package, annually." The other members are "expected to average" about $1.5M each annually, "depending upon bonuses, from the combined deals with ESPN and CBS." UH officials also said that the school will "not receive the $300,000 bonus for conference-controlled games that air on designated national networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN and ESPN2) or the $200,000 bonus for Saturday games on those outlets" (HONOLULU STAR-ADVERTISER, 3/21).
