BYU Close to Joining Conference

[cpawstoney]

AP source: BYU, Big East end negotiations

egotiations between the Big East and Brigham Young have broken off and the school will not be joining the conference, a person familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press.

At issue are television rights. The person says BYU wanted to retain the rights to its home football games and the league could not agree to that.

The Big East had been talking to BYU about joining the league for weeks. But the school's desire to retain the TV rights to its home games did not come up until late in the discussions, the person said.

Negotiations between the league and school ended in the last 48 hours, the person said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...b4d082af50ad2d

[cpawstoney]

Report: BYU to Big East will not happen

One week after it was reported BYU was close to joining the Big East Conference in football, it now appears that deal is dead. According to the Associated Press, BYU will not join the Big East because it does not want to relinquish its television rights.

“I doubt BYU will happen,” a college football industry source told CBSSports.com. “They are being extremely unreasonable all of a sudden. This is one reason why they did not get into the Big 12. Their general counsel (lawyers) is a piece of work.”

http://www.abc4.com/sports/story/Rep...QqozkvHJQ.cspx

[cpawstoney]

BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe talks about Big East negotiations

Holmoe indicated that negotiations with the Big East started during mid-October, around the time when he decided to set the record straight regarding what negotiations BYU had had with the Big-12. Holmoe reaffirmed that BYU never had a Big-12 invitation.

We had very good discussions with the Big East — they were very respectful. ... We were able to go through a number of issues very quickly. … There were some uncertainties when it got to the end about some TV issues, and some other issues, but we felt that we were kind of at an impasse and that we weren't going to move any further."

On BYU's pursuit of future conference affiliation, "We're not out there hanging posters on conference doors. We're going to keep our eyes open and monitor this ever-changing landscape of college athletics."

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/7...otiations.html