If someone from the B12 and ESPN got together and ran some numbers, perhaps Texas could even be convinced to change their mind (not likely, but at least possible).
Right now, there are 13,721,870 TV households in the B12 footprint and 102,088,870 TV households outside the B12 footprint. Even using VERY conservative estimates, That would result in over $21.5 Million in revenue per school per year for a potential B12 network. I realize you have to take out operating expenses and ESPN's share of the profit and those are the things I have no idea about so I have no way to estimate them. But the numbers at least seem worth looking into.
If you add UCF and Cincinnati there would be 25,808,540 TV households in the B12 footprint and 90,002,200 TV households outside the B12 footprint. Using the same conservative assumptions, that would result in $25.3 million in revenue per school. That's right, adding UCF and Cincinnati adds at least $3.8 million per school to a potential B12 network, even though you are splitting it among more schools. And looking at those numbers it seems likely that most schools would make more Tier 3 money from a conference network than selling their Tier 3 rights individually.
Again, it all depends on how much of that money goes toward the network operating expenses and ESPN's share of the profit.
