With Conference USA’s unveiling of its new television package, the questions left are (a) will it improve the league’s visibility, and (b) just how bad will the financial hit be?
In answer to the former question: perhaps. In the latter, the hit may be worse than expected for the league’s 14 schools.
Those schools braced for a serious reduction in TV revenue. For example, the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk reported that Old Dominion’s anticipated yearly TV revenue would drop to $6 million, and that ODU anticipated its share would drop $600,000 to $700,000.
But figures bandied about Wednesday put the value of the new contracts at less than $7 million over two years — or less than $3.