Campus Clips: ACC Digital Network Expands Distribution; Big Ten Scheduling Could Have Big Impact on FCS Budgets

Compiled by Brandon Costa, Senior Editor, Sports Video Group

The ACC Digital Network announced several strategic partnerships to distribute video content, greatly expanding its reach and allowing fans to follow their teams through a multitude of platforms. The new partners, combined with the established content destinations of YouTube, theACC.com, and hundreds of local newspaper and media sites make the ACC Digital Network content available across more than 300 million devices.

For the first time, fans will be able to access the ACC Digital Network’s live and on-demand programming through connected TVs, Blu-ray players, mobile and tablet video services on major wireless carriers, and internet delivered programming packages.

New partners include: USATODAY Sports Digital Properties, Synacor, Sony BRAVIA Televisions and Blu-ray players, MobiTV, Roku, Sky Angel Faith Everywhere, Dailymotion, and blinkx .

Each of these services will deliver the ACC Digital Network’s daily news and highlights from all the league’s sponsored sports, including football, basketball, baseball, soccer and lacrosse…

…Big Ten schools have agreed to stop scheduling FCS (Football Championship Subdivision) opponents, which is causing a stir among those FCS institutions. Such a move by the Big Ten will have a very negative effect on the FCS schools that count on those paychecks for their annual budgets.

“I would tell you the loss of the Big Ten schools will be devastating, to UNI and to a lot of our peers,” Northern Iowa athletic director Troy Dannen said to the Cedar Rapids Gazette. “Not just because we wouldn’t play Iowa and have the guarantee, if you think this will stop at the Big Ten … I look at things happening in the equity leagues in fives, and so I have to believe this might lead to additional dominoes.”

Dannen guessed that if the Big Ten elects to eliminate FCS games from the schedule, the league would not require the members to buy out their current contracts. Northern Iowa collected $950,000 in guarantees from games with Iowa and Wisconsin in 2012. Iowa, for example, already has scheduled games against Northern Iowa in 2014 and 2018, as well as future home openers against Missouri State (2013), Illinois State (2015) and North Dakota State (2016)…

…According to the Washington Post’s John Feinstein, the group that has come to be known as college basketball’s “Catholic 7” will eventually grow to 12 – perhaps not all of them Catholic – when they formally begin play as a conference. The man who has been charged with piecing together the new league is Georgetown President John J. DeGioia, a job handed to him, according to those who know, in large part because of a lack of interest on the part of the presidents of St. John’s, Villanova, Seton Hall, DePaul, Marquette, and Providence…

…Washington State University Athletics and IMG College, the multi-media rights holder for Cougar Athletics, jointly announced the appointment of Matt Almond as General Manager, Washington State IMG Sports Marketing…

…The Big South Conference has added Monmouth University as an associate member in football. Monmouth will begin competing in the Big South in 2014 and will be eligible for the League’s championship and automatic bid to the FCS Playoffs upon entry.