As conferences across the nation brace for change, the Mid-American Conference solidified much of its own future by agreeing to a five-year, 100-appearance contract with ESPN to broadcast football and men's basketball.
The deal had been in the works since last fall and culminated just prior to the beginning of the college football season. It was driven in large part by Ohio director of athletics and MAC television committee chairman Thomas Boeh.
Mr. Boeh has done a great job along with (MAC commissioner) Rick Chryst as far as promoting our conference and as far as television and national exposure over the last three to four years
Ohio football coach Brian Knorr said.
The greatest growth will take place on the football side of programming where there will be a record number of MAC games (16) aired this season, 13 more than in 1998.
These are minimum appearances and there's nothing that says within the contract that if they want more games they can't have them Boeh said. If they want them
they'll pay. This is coming at a good time. We're beginning to make a real impact nationally.
While there is more growth in football than in basketball, the expansion of the Bracket Buster to 46 teams -
000-4
000 people
and they did as good a job as they could
to playing in front of 12
000-14
000 in an NBA Arena
Boeh said. It's one of the top attended finals in the country every year
