Big Ten Network: A napkin and an idea that persevered, prospered and thrives today
From a breaking point to building a brand and a historic debut, the Big Ten Network turns 15 years old this week.
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Big Ten Network: A napkin and an idea that persevered, prospered and thrives today
by Scott Dochterman, The Athletic
On a sandy-white beach with nothing but a panoramic view of the aqua-blue seawater, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, his wife, Kitty, and Fox Sports senior vice president Larry Jones saddled up next to one another staring at the breathtaking scenery.
It was an Orange Bowl function at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Fla., and Fox had acquired the rights to air that game for the upcoming season. Kitty had fallen asleep, while Delany and Jones — two New Jersey natives -- began a conversation about a shared enterprise.
“What do you think about the idea of a network?” Delany asked Jones.
“I really like that idea,” Jones responded. “We can bring distribution and finance.”
“I can bring a grant of rights, and we both market,” Delany said.
Using a blanket to shield their notes from the sand, Delany and Jones mapped out the foundation for the Big Ten Network on hotel napkins. The co-owned enterprise between the Big Ten (then 51 percent) and Fox (then 49 percent) debuted Aug. 30, 2007, from brand-new studios in downtown Chicago. It’s easy to forget 15 years later that the network that changed college sports was anything but preordained.
It was radical and risky; it threatened the status quo and challenged the Worldwide Leader in Sports. It required absolute buy-in from the Big Ten's 11 institutions and steadfast discipline during a yearlong distribution conflict with the nation's largest cable operators.
Yet it persevered. It prospered. It thrives today. It spawned similar league networks for the ACC, SEC and Pac-12. And the network that launched in 2007 remains as viable as ever. Here is the first part of a three-story series on BTN's humble beginnings.
A breaking point
BTN's origins coincide with the dot.com industry flourishing in the mid-1990s. Delany received interest from fledgling companies about new platforms having an impact on sports television. When the bubble burst, the ideas were put on hold until Delany thought about the next phase in 2004.
The Big Ten totaled about 9 percent of ESPN's college sports inventory, Delany's research showed, and he wanted to commence early but "fruitful" negotiations with ESPN's leadership. A meeting was set up with Delany accompanied by Illinois athletics director Ron Guenther, Big Ten attorney Jonathan Barrett and Penn State president Graham Spanier opposite ESPN's hierarchy of George Bodenheimer, John Wildhack, John Skipper and others.
After multiple meetings, including one infamous encounter with executive vice president of programming Mark Shapiro, Delany felt the organizations were at an impasse. The only alteration in ESPN's position toward the Big Ten was to use the consumer price index, which ended the negotiations. Delany said it "was an insult."
"We weren't willing to really engage seriously from that kind of position," said Delany, the Big Ten commissioner from 1989 to 2020. "So, they suggested, 'Well, you better think carefully about this because maybe it won't be here. And then we said, 'Well if it's not here, it's not here. Let's move on. And so that was the precipitating moment.'"
"While we hadn't thought about networks, we had thought about the possibility of exploring it. Had ESPN come in with a really significant offer -- I don't know what that would have been -- but something you could negotiate from, I'm sure we would have pursued that at that time. Because they were the worldwide leader and have a lot of different platforms."
Shapiro told Delany forming a new network "would be a roll of the dice." Delany responded, "Consider them rolled."
Delany took the news to the Big Ten's presidents and chancellors and said it was time to seriously explore an independent network. Some campus leaders weren't interested in getting involved in the television business. Others liked the idea of using a proposed network as negotiating leverage.
"I said, 'No, this is not really leverage,'" Delany said. "It can be played as leverage, but I want us to seriously explore the possibility of establishing a network with a strategic partner. I think if somebody could do it, I think we could. But I'm not doing it because I want to do it. I want to do it because you want to do it."
Other concerns bubbled up. Distribution costs associated with syndication had cut several men's basketball games from television to where it was untenable in some areas.
"In Indiana and Purdue, they were furious," said Mark Rudner, the Big Ten's former senior associate commissioner who handled scheduling and television administration. "It used to be that those games were carried locally in Indianapolis and syndicated throughout the state. But there were fewer games because it just was costing too much to produce these games, and the revenue associated with televising them wasn't equal to that. It was chaos."
Delany saw there were multiple ways to start a network. The New York Yankees launched YES in 2002, and the NFL debuted its league-owned channel in 2003. Cable companies like Comcast had successful arrangements in Chicago with pro teams other than the Bears. League- and team-owned channels struggled with distribution. Joint partnerships with cable companies intrigued Delany though a network-owned channel was less desirable.
Comcast and Time Warner engaged Delany in negotiations, but the revenue potential didn't meet his projections.
"I was bullish, not overly optimistic," Delany said. "ESPN's position was, to quote Mark Shapiro, 'There was no more beachfront property available; that ship had sailed.' I didn't believe that. I also didn't believe we had the expertise or the capital to assure us financially, nor did we have the leverage in distribution. I thought what we had was population, the brand, the content. We didn't have an offer from somebody who would wholly own it; nor did we want to be wholly owned. We wanted to be the Big Ten Network. So that was sort of the default situation."
At that time, FOX was barely a decade into changing sports in its own way. In 1994, it uprooted the NFL universe by outbidding CBS for NFL rights. It later acquired Major League Baseball and signed a deal to televise all Bowl Championship Series games (except the Rose Bowl) from 2006 through 2010. Its college football presence was awkward with its NFL talent trying to evaluate major bowl games, but it was willing to take another step forward.
In early 2006, Delany and Jones met for a round of golf at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples. They instantly hit it off. Both were "reformed and recovering lawyers," Delany said. The next day, they met for lunch, then joined one another on the beach.
"We did have a napkin," Delany said. "And we did map out in general, on that napkin, how the programming might look in a football season, in the spring Olympic season and in a basketball season. We were going from maybe a couple hundred games under the ESPN/CBS umbrella to the potential of a network that would be operating 24/7/365."
"How we could do this, and how we could get us the FOX distribution arm?" Jones said. "The most important thing in trying to start a network is distribution and how the economics could work. We kind of shook hands and said, 'Let's see if we can start this.'"
In the months that followed, Delany, Rudner, Jones, FOX Sports president Bob Thompson and others hammered out the details. FOX accommodated every Big Ten demand. The presidents were against alcohol and gambling advertising; FOX agreed. Big Ten officials wanted an equal number of televised women's and men's sports. That was no problem. The league owned 51 percent of the equity, and FOX assumed the financial losses that were assured in the beginning.
Delany sought out John Fahey of National Geographic, which partnered with FOX on a channel. The branding was for National Geographic, not FOX. That was the same conclusion Delany and FOX representatives had for the Big Ten Network.
"The whole idea was about the Big Ten brand, not the FOX brand, and that was from day one," Jones said. "That was always the case."
ESPN officials came back to Delany late in the process to persuade him to drop the network plans and renegotiate the syndicated rights. He declined. They resumed talks about primary events with up to 41 football games airing on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 and 60 men's basketball games on the ESPN family of networks each year.
On June 21, 2006, Delany and Big Ten officials announced a 10-year media-rights agreement with ABC/ESPN and the creation of the Big Ten Network in August 2007.
Building the Brand
Mark Silverman built the type of resume that made him an attractive candidate for high-level television administration jobs. After receiving an economics degree from UCLA, Silverman added master's degree from Michigan. Silverman held business and executive positions at ABC and The Walt Disney Co.
He was two years into his run as the senior vice president and general manager for ABC Cable Networks Group when David Rone, a friend from Disney who had moved to FOX, approached him about BTN. Silverman met with Thompson, who ran FOX's regional sports networks.
"I was skeptical," Silverman said, "and I was surprised when they told me that it was going to be 40 football games and 100 basketball games and at least a couple of games from every school. I said, 'We're putting Michigan and Ohio State games on this network?' Like at least two if not more. I'm like, 'Wow, you know what? I think this thing is going to work.'"
With his initial apprehension dissipated, Silverman flew from Los Angeles to Chicago and met with Delany. Silverman grew up outside New York City, and their backgrounds meshed.
"I'd seen him on TV. I thought he was like an intimidating guy," Silverman said. "But then we talked, he's just so smart, but I loved how aggressive he was. And he definitely looked a couple steps ahead of everybody else."
"He's just a delightful, smart, creative guy," Delany said. "It doesn't take long in an interview or checking with people to understand that."
Silverman, who then was 41, accepted the role as Big Ten Network president in December 2006. A month later, Silverman hired TV veteran Leon Schweir as executive producer. In March 2007, Ohio State communications executive Elizabeth Conlisk came aboard as vice president of communications. That trio formed BTN's administrative backbone.
Employee No. 5 was Michael Calderon, a West Lafayette, Indiana native whose family was close with longtime Purdue men's basketball coach Gene Keady. Calderon worked in Chicago for nine years with Sporting News Radio, then left to join a private equity firm. He missed his time with sports and saw the network as a second chance. After Silverman was hired, Calderon was brought aboard as director of new media.
"I was 100 percent confident it was going to be successful, which I was probably an extreme minority at that time," said Calderon, now BTN's senior vice president for programming and digital media. "But I knew I wanted to work there and be a part of it."
As the seats were filling on the BTN bus, one chair remained vacant, and it was perhaps the most important. The network needed a public face.
Northwestern graduate and Chicago native Dave Revsine was in his 10th year as an ESPN jack-of-all-trades. He was a "SportsCenter" host, conducted play-by-play duties for college basketball and hosted studio shows ranging from the World Cup to "College GameNight" to ESPN Radio's "College GameDay."
"I had a pretty good decade-plus there and had a contract coming up," Revsine said. "They kind of made me a really good offer in terms of the years to stay. But I just felt like financially, it wasn't quite where I wanted it to be. I just felt like I at least needed to see what else was out there. Our oldest was going into kindergarten. I felt like if there was a time to move, that this was the time before she began school. So I kind of let it be known that I was available, and the Big Ten Network very quickly approached me."
Revsine scheduled an interview with Schweir but had no intention of taking the job.
"My sole purpose of coming to Chicago was to get a job offer that I could then dangle in front of ESPN and use that to leverage my position there," Revsine said. "We were really happy there and liked living there and had no intentions of leaving."
That changed in one meeting. Schweir pitched the network as a destination for Big Ten sports. He told Revsine he was their guy, and they weren't interested in anyone else. He would be the face of the network with play-by-play duties on basketball and studio host duties for football and on signature shows.
"Where in the hell did this come from?" Revsine asked himself in the interview. "You're kind of just blown away by the whole thing and really enthused. I would say in 10 minutes of this meeting, I went from thinking I could get an offer out of these guys to, 'Wow, this would be a really cool job. I think I'd really like this.' And oh, by the way, I'm from Chicago. And oh, by the way, I went to a Big Ten school, and I love college sports. And it just feels like a perfect fit for me."
The network had temporary offices on Michigan Avenue as its headquarters was under construction. Revsine had a flight back to Bristol a few hours later. He walked a few blocks to Water Tower Place, went into the women's shoe section of a department store to remain inconspicuous and called his wife, Michele.
"I said to her, 'I know this sounds weird, but I actually think this would be a really great job. And I think I want it depending on what the offer is,'" Revsine said. "And I'll never forget this response. She said to me, 'That was not the plan.'"
Schweir and Revsine scheduled another meeting to talk with Silverman and Delany. Revsine had reservations about the network's commitment to journalism, which was important to him.
"(Delany) said to me, 'If people are going elsewhere for their Big Ten news, then we have failed,'" Revsine said. "If there was a bad story in the Big Ten, how would we cover it? 'We're going to cover it because that's your job.'"
Delany's response and Silverman's vision sold Revsine. To both Delany and Silverman, Revsine fit very criterion for what they wanted in a lead anchor.
“When I’m thinking for our voice, it’s smart, Midwest, knows the Big Ten, credible, has a gravitas as a reporter, and he checked every box that I was looking for,” Silverman said. “The beauty of it was he wasn’t a big person yet on ESPN.”
“What do you want the Big Ten Network to be?’” Delany said. “(Silverman) gave me the greatest answer and used one word. He said it’s smart. I said, I couldn’t agree more. Not bells and whistles, not yelling, screaming, just smart. Because I think that’s what the Big Ten is. Great universities, great research, great commitment to the public, and Revsine personified that.”
Revsine let his family know he was in Chicago but said he was covering an “Outside the Lines” feature for ESPN and planned to stay through the weekend. His father had dealt with leukemia for 14 years but had grown more ill. The day after Revsine’s interview, his father developed a fever and was taken to Northwestern hospital. Three days later, Revsine received a job offer. He returned to Chicago, told his mother and wanted to tell his father, who was in a sedated state.
“It was like a bad soap opera; my dad is sitting there dying,” Revsine said. “I told him, and unfortunately, he died four or five days later.”
On May 30, 2007 -- three months before the launch -- BTN announced Revsine as its lead studio host. In the weeks that followed, the network surrounded him with talent who became synonymous with its coverage. Studio analysts Gerry DiNardo and Howard Griffith signed on, as did anchors Rick Pizzo and Mike Hall. All four remain with BTN 15 years later.
Distribution Nightmare
With the HD studio under construction and the major talent hired, distribution remained the biggest hurdle. FOX's partial ownership of DirecTV guaranteed BTN early access. Some small cable companies also signed on to BTN that summer. But from Independence Day through the launch, the questions piled about which cable companies would carry BTN.
“I asked Jim and Mark every conceivable question other than are we going to be on the air?” Revsine said. “It’s funny, the distribution issue kind of became a public issue maybe a week or so after I agreed to the job. So there really had been no coverage of it at all, that I was aware of. Then all of the sudden, it just exploded.”
“Was I frustrated and concerned? I was,” Delany said. “But I’m the one that brought it to their attention. And therefore, it was my responsibility to get into the foxhole and fight through those things.”
Delany and Silverman crisscrossed the Midwest, meeting with editorial boards trying to stoke publicity and put pressure on cable operators who had little interest in negotiating. The sticking point was obvious: BTN officials wanted the network to appear on expanded basic cable, which would amount to $1.10 per customer. Cable officials wanted to place it on a sports tier at $0.10 per subscriber. It resulted in an impasse.
“I had to play off of Jim,” Silverman said. “I’m always thinking you don’t want to be too aggressive. Jim sometimes would go very aggressive, and I tried to be softer.”
“(Silverman) didn’t fatigue. He had a lot of energy,” Delany said. “I was working as hard as I could. We had people running the Big Ten … and Mark was running a network as well as running a campaign. That was a political campaign.”
Each school's athletics director and coaches had to write letters and drum up support for the network through media or meetings with elected representatives at the state and federal levels.
“I’m a football coach,” said Barry Alvarez, Wisconsin’s football coach from 1990 to 2005 and athletics director from 2005 to 2021. “I really didn’t understand TV that much. But Jim explained why BTN being put on basic cable was so important.”
“I remember the Fox guys would tell us, ‘Listen, this is what happens when you try to launch new cable channels. This is the process,’” Rudner said. “It really wasn’t that unusual. ‘Just trust us, it’ll work out.’”
By August, Silverman and Delany tried desperately to get the region's major cable companies - Comcast, Time Warner, Charter and Mediacom -- to negotiate, but they all held firm. In late August, the network was set to debut, and none of them had signed on. Even attempts at congressional mediation fell through.
Concurrent with the lobbying efforts, Big Ten and BTN staff juggled major tasks entering the fall s the network forged ahead for its ceremonial kickoff planned for Thursday, August 30, 2007.
"That time is such a blur," Calderon said. “Our focus was on, ‘Let’s just get the nuts and bolts correct, and let’s launch a high-quality network in all HD.’ At the time, no network was all HD.”
“There were some late nights working well past midnight, trying to figure out well, ‘How many volleyball matches should there be? How do you program the Olympic sports?’” Rudner said. “Track and field is pretty historic in the conference, and yet, how do you show it? How do you promote it? You didn’t have anything to model it after.”
“I remember (former Chicago Tribune writer) Teddy Greenstein asking me what my first words were going to be. And my response was, ‘I don’t even know if I’m getting the first words,’” Revsine said. “We hadn’t really planned that out at that point. We got off the call, and Mark (Silverman) looked at me. He’s like, ‘You’re going to have the first word.’”
As Revsine prepared for the first sentence on a new network, he called the league office to run down the Big Ten's number of teams and sports. He rarely uses a teleprompter but fed his notes through one to ensure every word came out perfectly.
At 7 p.m. ET on August 30, Revsine sat in front of the camera and read these words: "Eleven schools, 252 varsity teams and one great network to carry all of it. Welcome to the Big Ten Network, your ultimate source for Big Ten sports."
There were watch parties on each of the Big Ten's 11 campuses. It was a special moment for the leadership.
“I’ll never forget flipping the switch,” Silverman said. “We were at this Japanese restaurant in our building in Chicago, and we created this switch with a bowling ball and a lever that I think Francois (McGillicuddy, current BTN president) still has in his office. Bob Thompson and Jim Delany, and I hold back the lever, and Dave Revsine went online.”
The night went off swimmingly. The following day, Ohio State beat West Virginia 1-0 in men's soccer in the first live event aired on BTN. Dish Network soon signed on, and the network picked up 30 million subscribers in its first 30 days, which became a major talking point.
“It was great, but we owned a piece of DirecTV at the time,” Silverman said. “We played that up, but in reality, it was sort of a shrug.”
Fox’s financial backing ensured BTN could keep afloat before it secured full distribution.
“The finances were good; the distribution was not great,” Delany said. “But we hung in there together until those were achieved. And to be honest with you, I think a lot of people, a lot of consultants, a lot of others didn’t think that this was going to happen. I wasn’t overly optimistic that it would. But I couldn’t see why we wouldn’t try to do this especially when we had a partner like Fox willing to get into the foxhole with us.”
Pressure mounted from all directions, especially during basketball season. BTN aired more than half of the league's men's basketball games, which formerly aired on local channels through syndication. Fans lashed out at school officials, Big Ten officials, cable operators and TV executives. It came to a head on Feb. 25, 2008 when Michigan State men's coach Tom Izzo said, "I think (BTN) has been a PR nightmare. And, I think it has hurt all of us."
“There was a lot of pressure on Jim,” Rudner said. “There was a lot of pressure on our athletic directors, and it was the ADs really who took the bullets from their fan base. And they stood tall, and they kept with the program. It was Izzo in the first year who said something to the effect of BTN is a disaster. And that was hard. That was a tough moment.”
Traditional basketball areas were the most inflamed. The previous season, every Cockeye men's basketball game was televised. In 2007-08, BTN aired 25 of Cockeye's 32 games. Likewise, Indiana had every men's basketball game available through syndication.
“All those local affiliates are upset so they are piling on,” Silverman said. “They’d broadcast the news, and it’s a slanted view because, ‘We used to bring you these games. Now they’re on Big Ten Network. They took them away from us, and you can’t get it.’
“These elderly women come up to our table. ‘Excuse us. Are you guys with the Big Ten Network?’ We said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘You guys should all be ashamed of yourselves.’ These 80-year-old women were like, ‘We used to watch IU hoops and you took it away from us.’ That was what we had to deal with that first year.”
The clouds parted by early summer. Comcast became the first major cable company to sign on June 19. Silverman said he let out a giant exhale and thought the rest would join the fray in short order. But it took nearly two more months of negotiation.
Finally, on Aug. 22, Mediacom agreed to terms. Charter did five days later. BTN and Time Warner reached an agreement that week, but it was not yet signed. With the season kicking off on Aug. 30 and Time Warner airing throughout southern Ohio, the race was on to televise the Buckeyes' home opener with Youngstown State. The negotiation lasted until minutes before kickoff, and BTN still didn't have a signed agreement.
"It's the Ohio State game, Season 2 for BTN, 2008. But we've agreed," Silverman said. "Honestly, I don't trust them after what we've been dealing with. But we've been working all night; we just agreed. They're supposed to be sending us a faxed copy. I haven't gotten it yet. I know (Ohio State is) kicking off in a half-hour, and I'm like, 'Let's just give them the benefit.'"
BTN flipped the switch that day and the network was distributed fully within the league's eight-state footprint.
“I always thought it would happen. I just thought it would not take a full year,” Silverman said. “I think it was by far the most difficult time in my career, but then afterwards, it’s the greatest accomplishment. They kind of go together.”
Historic Debut
No story documenting the Big Ten's first season could leave out its first weekend of football action. On Sept. 1, 2007, four games appeared at noon ET on BTN and its overflow channels. The primary game involved No. 5 Michigan and two-time defending FCS champion Appalachian State in Ann Arbor. The Wolverines were the highest-ranked Big Ten squad.
“We used our pick selections to heavy-up early in the season to get the big guys,” Silverman said. “What typically Fox and ESPN do is you want to save your good picks for later in the year. You don’t identify the games, but you save them for November. We didn’t do that because we wanted to get out of the cage with the big brands.”
Airing four games at once created logistical challenges for network officials, but the presentation appeared first class. The lead crew in Ann Arbor included longtime Major League Baseball announcer Thom Brennaman, analyst Charles Davis and production assistant-turned-sideline reporter Charissa Thompson. Brennaman and Davis famously called the Boise State-Oklahoma shocker in the Fiesta Bowl eight months earlier.
“You get lucky with a game,” Silverman said. “But then, Charles Davis is the No. 2 announcer for CBS and NFL. Charissa Thompson is a major star. She’s doing Amazon. She’s doing Fox. Brennaman did big-time Fox games for years. We’re a fledgling network to kind of pull that together. A great announcer team to cover a great game that no one expected to unfold.”
At halftime, the Wolverines trailed 28-17, and Michigan coach Lloyd Carr skipped a halftime interview with Thompson. As the game unfolded, other networks called and asked to take the live feed, which BTN officials refused.
“I think as we kind of got deep into the third quarter, you got this sense of, ‘Man, this isn’t looking good.’ These guys are hanging with them, and it is not unreasonable to think that Michigan could lose this game,’” Revsine said. “From my vantage point, I saw it as a disaster. I mean, it was the worst possible thing that could happen.”
With 15 seconds left and Appalachian State leading by two points, Michigan quarterback Chad Henne connected with Mario Manningham on a 46-yard pass to put the ball on the Appalachian State 20-yard line. Michigan called timeout with six seconds left to set up a 37-yard field-goal attempt.
Instead of Michigan pulling out an ugly victory, it turned into an instant classic. Brennaman’s call sealed its status: “Good snap. Good hold. And the kick is blocked! Appalachian State has stunned the college football world. One of the greatest upsets in sports history!”
“This isn’t really happening, is it? This is like a fairy tale,” Rudner said. “The first game on BTN involving the winningest program in history playing App State. We were watching the game, and when the kid lined up to kick the field goal, and it got blocked, it was like, ‘Oh, my God.’”
ESPN asked BTN officials to exceed the allotted replay time. Silverman agreed as long as the BTN logo aired with the highlights. The studio talent, Silverman, Schweir and others went to dinner at midnight afterward.
Though the result was embarrassing, it was positive for the network. Within a week, Dish Network signed on to BTN.
“Part of the narrative of Comcast and some of these other companies was there are not going to be big games there,” Revsine said. “Nothing important is going to happen on the Big Ten Network. And so why do you want this network that’s going to give you second-tier games? Then in the very first window of the very first day, you end up with one of the most significant upsets in the history of college football.”
by Scott Dochterman, The Athletic
On a sandy-white beach with nothing but a panoramic view of the aqua-blue seawater, Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, his wife, Kitty, and Fox Sports senior vice president Larry Jones saddled up next to one another staring at the breathtaking scenery.
It was an Orange Bowl function at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Fla., and Fox had acquired the rights to air that game for the upcoming season. Kitty had fallen asleep, while Delany and Jones — two New Jersey natives -- began a conversation about a shared enterprise.
“What do you think about the idea of a network?” Delany asked Jones.
“I really like that idea,” Jones responded. “We can bring distribution and finance.”
“I can bring a grant of rights, and we both market,” Delany said.
Using a blanket to shield their notes from the sand, Delany and Jones mapped out the foundation for the Big Ten Network on hotel napkins. The co-owned enterprise between the Big Ten (then 51 percent) and Fox (then 49 percent) debuted Aug. 30, 2007, from brand-new studios in downtown Chicago. It’s easy to forget 15 years later that the network that changed college sports was anything but preordained.
It was radical and risky; it threatened the status quo and challenged the Worldwide Leader in Sports. It required absolute buy-in from the Big Ten's 11 institutions and steadfast discipline during a yearlong distribution conflict with the nation's largest cable operators.
Yet it persevered. It prospered. It thrives today. It spawned similar league networks for the ACC, SEC and Pac-12. And the network that launched in 2007 remains as viable as ever. Here is the first part of a three-story series on BTN's humble beginnings.
A breaking point
BTN's origins coincide with the dot.com industry flourishing in the mid-1990s. Delany received interest from fledgling companies about new platforms having an impact on sports television. When the bubble burst, the ideas were put on hold until Delany thought about the next phase in 2004.
The Big Ten totaled about 9 percent of ESPN's college sports inventory, Delany's research showed, and he wanted to commence early but "fruitful" negotiations with ESPN's leadership. A meeting was set up with Delany accompanied by Illinois athletics director Ron Guenther, Big Ten attorney Jonathan Barrett and Penn State president Graham Spanier opposite ESPN's hierarchy of George Bodenheimer, John Wildhack, John Skipper and others.
After multiple meetings, including one infamous encounter with executive vice president of programming Mark Shapiro, Delany felt the organizations were at an impasse. The only alteration in ESPN's position toward the Big Ten was to use the consumer price index, which ended the negotiations. Delany said it "was an insult."
"We weren't willing to really engage seriously from that kind of position," said Delany, the Big Ten commissioner from 1989 to 2020. "So, they suggested, 'Well, you better think carefully about this because maybe it won't be here. And then we said, 'Well if it's not here, it's not here. Let's move on. And so that was the precipitating moment.'"
"While we hadn't thought about networks, we had thought about the possibility of exploring it. Had ESPN come in with a really significant offer -- I don't know what that would have been -- but something you could negotiate from, I'm sure we would have pursued that at that time. Because they were the worldwide leader and have a lot of different platforms."
Shapiro told Delany forming a new network "would be a roll of the dice." Delany responded, "Consider them rolled."
Delany took the news to the Big Ten's presidents and chancellors and said it was time to seriously explore an independent network. Some campus leaders weren't interested in getting involved in the television business. Others liked the idea of using a proposed network as negotiating leverage.
"I said, 'No, this is not really leverage,'" Delany said. "It can be played as leverage, but I want us to seriously explore the possibility of establishing a network with a strategic partner. I think if somebody could do it, I think we could. But I'm not doing it because I want to do it. I want to do it because you want to do it."
Other concerns bubbled up. Distribution costs associated with syndication had cut several men's basketball games from television to where it was untenable in some areas.
"In Indiana and Purdue, they were furious," said Mark Rudner, the Big Ten's former senior associate commissioner who handled scheduling and television administration. "It used to be that those games were carried locally in Indianapolis and syndicated throughout the state. But there were fewer games because it just was costing too much to produce these games, and the revenue associated with televising them wasn't equal to that. It was chaos."
Delany saw there were multiple ways to start a network. The New York Yankees launched YES in 2002, and the NFL debuted its league-owned channel in 2003. Cable companies like Comcast had successful arrangements in Chicago with pro teams other than the Bears. League- and team-owned channels struggled with distribution. Joint partnerships with cable companies intrigued Delany though a network-owned channel was less desirable.
Comcast and Time Warner engaged Delany in negotiations, but the revenue potential didn't meet his projections.
"I was bullish, not overly optimistic," Delany said. "ESPN's position was, to quote Mark Shapiro, 'There was no more beachfront property available; that ship had sailed.' I didn't believe that. I also didn't believe we had the expertise or the capital to assure us financially, nor did we have the leverage in distribution. I thought what we had was population, the brand, the content. We didn't have an offer from somebody who would wholly own it; nor did we want to be wholly owned. We wanted to be the Big Ten Network. So that was sort of the default situation."
At that time, FOX was barely a decade into changing sports in its own way. In 1994, it uprooted the NFL universe by outbidding CBS for NFL rights. It later acquired Major League Baseball and signed a deal to televise all Bowl Championship Series games (except the Rose Bowl) from 2006 through 2010. Its college football presence was awkward with its NFL talent trying to evaluate major bowl games, but it was willing to take another step forward.
In early 2006, Delany and Jones met for a round of golf at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples. They instantly hit it off. Both were "reformed and recovering lawyers," Delany said. The next day, they met for lunch, then joined one another on the beach.
"We did have a napkin," Delany said. "And we did map out in general, on that napkin, how the programming might look in a football season, in the spring Olympic season and in a basketball season. We were going from maybe a couple hundred games under the ESPN/CBS umbrella to the potential of a network that would be operating 24/7/365."
"How we could do this, and how we could get us the FOX distribution arm?" Jones said. "The most important thing in trying to start a network is distribution and how the economics could work. We kind of shook hands and said, 'Let's see if we can start this.'"
In the months that followed, Delany, Rudner, Jones, FOX Sports president Bob Thompson and others hammered out the details. FOX accommodated every Big Ten demand. The presidents were against alcohol and gambling advertising; FOX agreed. Big Ten officials wanted an equal number of televised women's and men's sports. That was no problem. The league owned 51 percent of the equity, and FOX assumed the financial losses that were assured in the beginning.
Delany sought out John Fahey of National Geographic, which partnered with FOX on a channel. The branding was for National Geographic, not FOX. That was the same conclusion Delany and FOX representatives had for the Big Ten Network.
"The whole idea was about the Big Ten brand, not the FOX brand, and that was from day one," Jones said. "That was always the case."
ESPN officials came back to Delany late in the process to persuade him to drop the network plans and renegotiate the syndicated rights. He declined. They resumed talks about primary events with up to 41 football games airing on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 and 60 men's basketball games on the ESPN family of networks each year.
On June 21, 2006, Delany and Big Ten officials announced a 10-year media-rights agreement with ABC/ESPN and the creation of the Big Ten Network in August 2007.
Building the Brand
Mark Silverman built the type of resume that made him an attractive candidate for high-level television administration jobs. After receiving an economics degree from UCLA, Silverman added master's degree from Michigan. Silverman held business and executive positions at ABC and The Walt Disney Co.
He was two years into his run as the senior vice president and general manager for ABC Cable Networks Group when David Rone, a friend from Disney who had moved to FOX, approached him about BTN. Silverman met with Thompson, who ran FOX's regional sports networks.
"I was skeptical," Silverman said, "and I was surprised when they told me that it was going to be 40 football games and 100 basketball games and at least a couple of games from every school. I said, 'We're putting Michigan and Ohio State games on this network?' Like at least two if not more. I'm like, 'Wow, you know what? I think this thing is going to work.'"
With his initial apprehension dissipated, Silverman flew from Los Angeles to Chicago and met with Delany. Silverman grew up outside New York City, and their backgrounds meshed.
"I'd seen him on TV. I thought he was like an intimidating guy," Silverman said. "But then we talked, he's just so smart, but I loved how aggressive he was. And he definitely looked a couple steps ahead of everybody else."
"He's just a delightful, smart, creative guy," Delany said. "It doesn't take long in an interview or checking with people to understand that."
Silverman, who then was 41, accepted the role as Big Ten Network president in December 2006. A month later, Silverman hired TV veteran Leon Schweir as executive producer. In March 2007, Ohio State communications executive Elizabeth Conlisk came aboard as vice president of communications. That trio formed BTN's administrative backbone.
Employee No. 5 was Michael Calderon, a West Lafayette, Indiana native whose family was close with longtime Purdue men's basketball coach Gene Keady. Calderon worked in Chicago for nine years with Sporting News Radio, then left to join a private equity firm. He missed his time with sports and saw the network as a second chance. After Silverman was hired, Calderon was brought aboard as director of new media.
"I was 100 percent confident it was going to be successful, which I was probably an extreme minority at that time," said Calderon, now BTN's senior vice president for programming and digital media. "But I knew I wanted to work there and be a part of it."
As the seats were filling on the BTN bus, one chair remained vacant, and it was perhaps the most important. The network needed a public face.
Northwestern graduate and Chicago native Dave Revsine was in his 10th year as an ESPN jack-of-all-trades. He was a "SportsCenter" host, conducted play-by-play duties for college basketball and hosted studio shows ranging from the World Cup to "College GameNight" to ESPN Radio's "College GameDay."
"I had a pretty good decade-plus there and had a contract coming up," Revsine said. "They kind of made me a really good offer in terms of the years to stay. But I just felt like financially, it wasn't quite where I wanted it to be. I just felt like I at least needed to see what else was out there. Our oldest was going into kindergarten. I felt like if there was a time to move, that this was the time before she began school. So I kind of let it be known that I was available, and the Big Ten Network very quickly approached me."
Revsine scheduled an interview with Schweir but had no intention of taking the job.
"My sole purpose of coming to Chicago was to get a job offer that I could then dangle in front of ESPN and use that to leverage my position there," Revsine said. "We were really happy there and liked living there and had no intentions of leaving."
That changed in one meeting. Schweir pitched the network as a destination for Big Ten sports. He told Revsine he was their guy, and they weren't interested in anyone else. He would be the face of the network with play-by-play duties on basketball and studio host duties for football and on signature shows.
"Where in the hell did this come from?" Revsine asked himself in the interview. "You're kind of just blown away by the whole thing and really enthused. I would say in 10 minutes of this meeting, I went from thinking I could get an offer out of these guys to, 'Wow, this would be a really cool job. I think I'd really like this.' And oh, by the way, I'm from Chicago. And oh, by the way, I went to a Big Ten school, and I love college sports. And it just feels like a perfect fit for me."
The network had temporary offices on Michigan Avenue as its headquarters was under construction. Revsine had a flight back to Bristol a few hours later. He walked a few blocks to Water Tower Place, went into the women's shoe section of a department store to remain inconspicuous and called his wife, Michele.
"I said to her, 'I know this sounds weird, but I actually think this would be a really great job. And I think I want it depending on what the offer is,'" Revsine said. "And I'll never forget this response. She said to me, 'That was not the plan.'"
Schweir and Revsine scheduled another meeting to talk with Silverman and Delany. Revsine had reservations about the network's commitment to journalism, which was important to him.
"(Delany) said to me, 'If people are going elsewhere for their Big Ten news, then we have failed,'" Revsine said. "If there was a bad story in the Big Ten, how would we cover it? 'We're going to cover it because that's your job.'"
Delany's response and Silverman's vision sold Revsine. To both Delany and Silverman, Revsine fit very criterion for what they wanted in a lead anchor.
“When I’m thinking for our voice, it’s smart, Midwest, knows the Big Ten, credible, has a gravitas as a reporter, and he checked every box that I was looking for,” Silverman said. “The beauty of it was he wasn’t a big person yet on ESPN.”
“What do you want the Big Ten Network to be?’” Delany said. “(Silverman) gave me the greatest answer and used one word. He said it’s smart. I said, I couldn’t agree more. Not bells and whistles, not yelling, screaming, just smart. Because I think that’s what the Big Ten is. Great universities, great research, great commitment to the public, and Revsine personified that.”
Revsine let his family know he was in Chicago but said he was covering an “Outside the Lines” feature for ESPN and planned to stay through the weekend. His father had dealt with leukemia for 14 years but had grown more ill. The day after Revsine’s interview, his father developed a fever and was taken to Northwestern hospital. Three days later, Revsine received a job offer. He returned to Chicago, told his mother and wanted to tell his father, who was in a sedated state.
“It was like a bad soap opera; my dad is sitting there dying,” Revsine said. “I told him, and unfortunately, he died four or five days later.”
On May 30, 2007 -- three months before the launch -- BTN announced Revsine as its lead studio host. In the weeks that followed, the network surrounded him with talent who became synonymous with its coverage. Studio analysts Gerry DiNardo and Howard Griffith signed on, as did anchors Rick Pizzo and Mike Hall. All four remain with BTN 15 years later.
Distribution Nightmare
With the HD studio under construction and the major talent hired, distribution remained the biggest hurdle. FOX's partial ownership of DirecTV guaranteed BTN early access. Some small cable companies also signed on to BTN that summer. But from Independence Day through the launch, the questions piled about which cable companies would carry BTN.
“I asked Jim and Mark every conceivable question other than are we going to be on the air?” Revsine said. “It’s funny, the distribution issue kind of became a public issue maybe a week or so after I agreed to the job. So there really had been no coverage of it at all, that I was aware of. Then all of the sudden, it just exploded.”
“Was I frustrated and concerned? I was,” Delany said. “But I’m the one that brought it to their attention. And therefore, it was my responsibility to get into the foxhole and fight through those things.”
Delany and Silverman crisscrossed the Midwest, meeting with editorial boards trying to stoke publicity and put pressure on cable operators who had little interest in negotiating. The sticking point was obvious: BTN officials wanted the network to appear on expanded basic cable, which would amount to $1.10 per customer. Cable officials wanted to place it on a sports tier at $0.10 per subscriber. It resulted in an impasse.
“I had to play off of Jim,” Silverman said. “I’m always thinking you don’t want to be too aggressive. Jim sometimes would go very aggressive, and I tried to be softer.”
“(Silverman) didn’t fatigue. He had a lot of energy,” Delany said. “I was working as hard as I could. We had people running the Big Ten … and Mark was running a network as well as running a campaign. That was a political campaign.”
Each school's athletics director and coaches had to write letters and drum up support for the network through media or meetings with elected representatives at the state and federal levels.
“I’m a football coach,” said Barry Alvarez, Wisconsin’s football coach from 1990 to 2005 and athletics director from 2005 to 2021. “I really didn’t understand TV that much. But Jim explained why BTN being put on basic cable was so important.”
“I remember the Fox guys would tell us, ‘Listen, this is what happens when you try to launch new cable channels. This is the process,’” Rudner said. “It really wasn’t that unusual. ‘Just trust us, it’ll work out.’”
By August, Silverman and Delany tried desperately to get the region's major cable companies - Comcast, Time Warner, Charter and Mediacom -- to negotiate, but they all held firm. In late August, the network was set to debut, and none of them had signed on. Even attempts at congressional mediation fell through.
Concurrent with the lobbying efforts, Big Ten and BTN staff juggled major tasks entering the fall s the network forged ahead for its ceremonial kickoff planned for Thursday, August 30, 2007.
"That time is such a blur," Calderon said. “Our focus was on, ‘Let’s just get the nuts and bolts correct, and let’s launch a high-quality network in all HD.’ At the time, no network was all HD.”
“There were some late nights working well past midnight, trying to figure out well, ‘How many volleyball matches should there be? How do you program the Olympic sports?’” Rudner said. “Track and field is pretty historic in the conference, and yet, how do you show it? How do you promote it? You didn’t have anything to model it after.”
“I remember (former Chicago Tribune writer) Teddy Greenstein asking me what my first words were going to be. And my response was, ‘I don’t even know if I’m getting the first words,’” Revsine said. “We hadn’t really planned that out at that point. We got off the call, and Mark (Silverman) looked at me. He’s like, ‘You’re going to have the first word.’”
As Revsine prepared for the first sentence on a new network, he called the league office to run down the Big Ten's number of teams and sports. He rarely uses a teleprompter but fed his notes through one to ensure every word came out perfectly.
At 7 p.m. ET on August 30, Revsine sat in front of the camera and read these words: "Eleven schools, 252 varsity teams and one great network to carry all of it. Welcome to the Big Ten Network, your ultimate source for Big Ten sports."
There were watch parties on each of the Big Ten's 11 campuses. It was a special moment for the leadership.
“I’ll never forget flipping the switch,” Silverman said. “We were at this Japanese restaurant in our building in Chicago, and we created this switch with a bowling ball and a lever that I think Francois (McGillicuddy, current BTN president) still has in his office. Bob Thompson and Jim Delany, and I hold back the lever, and Dave Revsine went online.”
The night went off swimmingly. The following day, Ohio State beat West Virginia 1-0 in men's soccer in the first live event aired on BTN. Dish Network soon signed on, and the network picked up 30 million subscribers in its first 30 days, which became a major talking point.
“It was great, but we owned a piece of DirecTV at the time,” Silverman said. “We played that up, but in reality, it was sort of a shrug.”
Fox’s financial backing ensured BTN could keep afloat before it secured full distribution.
“The finances were good; the distribution was not great,” Delany said. “But we hung in there together until those were achieved. And to be honest with you, I think a lot of people, a lot of consultants, a lot of others didn’t think that this was going to happen. I wasn’t overly optimistic that it would. But I couldn’t see why we wouldn’t try to do this especially when we had a partner like Fox willing to get into the foxhole with us.”
Pressure mounted from all directions, especially during basketball season. BTN aired more than half of the league's men's basketball games, which formerly aired on local channels through syndication. Fans lashed out at school officials, Big Ten officials, cable operators and TV executives. It came to a head on Feb. 25, 2008 when Michigan State men's coach Tom Izzo said, "I think (BTN) has been a PR nightmare. And, I think it has hurt all of us."
“There was a lot of pressure on Jim,” Rudner said. “There was a lot of pressure on our athletic directors, and it was the ADs really who took the bullets from their fan base. And they stood tall, and they kept with the program. It was Izzo in the first year who said something to the effect of BTN is a disaster. And that was hard. That was a tough moment.”
Traditional basketball areas were the most inflamed. The previous season, every Cockeye men's basketball game was televised. In 2007-08, BTN aired 25 of Cockeye's 32 games. Likewise, Indiana had every men's basketball game available through syndication.
“All those local affiliates are upset so they are piling on,” Silverman said. “They’d broadcast the news, and it’s a slanted view because, ‘We used to bring you these games. Now they’re on Big Ten Network. They took them away from us, and you can’t get it.’
“These elderly women come up to our table. ‘Excuse us. Are you guys with the Big Ten Network?’ We said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘You guys should all be ashamed of yourselves.’ These 80-year-old women were like, ‘We used to watch IU hoops and you took it away from us.’ That was what we had to deal with that first year.”
The clouds parted by early summer. Comcast became the first major cable company to sign on June 19. Silverman said he let out a giant exhale and thought the rest would join the fray in short order. But it took nearly two more months of negotiation.
Finally, on Aug. 22, Mediacom agreed to terms. Charter did five days later. BTN and Time Warner reached an agreement that week, but it was not yet signed. With the season kicking off on Aug. 30 and Time Warner airing throughout southern Ohio, the race was on to televise the Buckeyes' home opener with Youngstown State. The negotiation lasted until minutes before kickoff, and BTN still didn't have a signed agreement.
"It's the Ohio State game, Season 2 for BTN, 2008. But we've agreed," Silverman said. "Honestly, I don't trust them after what we've been dealing with. But we've been working all night; we just agreed. They're supposed to be sending us a faxed copy. I haven't gotten it yet. I know (Ohio State is) kicking off in a half-hour, and I'm like, 'Let's just give them the benefit.'"
BTN flipped the switch that day and the network was distributed fully within the league's eight-state footprint.
“I always thought it would happen. I just thought it would not take a full year,” Silverman said. “I think it was by far the most difficult time in my career, but then afterwards, it’s the greatest accomplishment. They kind of go together.”
Historic Debut
No story documenting the Big Ten's first season could leave out its first weekend of football action. On Sept. 1, 2007, four games appeared at noon ET on BTN and its overflow channels. The primary game involved No. 5 Michigan and two-time defending FCS champion Appalachian State in Ann Arbor. The Wolverines were the highest-ranked Big Ten squad.
“We used our pick selections to heavy-up early in the season to get the big guys,” Silverman said. “What typically Fox and ESPN do is you want to save your good picks for later in the year. You don’t identify the games, but you save them for November. We didn’t do that because we wanted to get out of the cage with the big brands.”
Airing four games at once created logistical challenges for network officials, but the presentation appeared first class. The lead crew in Ann Arbor included longtime Major League Baseball announcer Thom Brennaman, analyst Charles Davis and production assistant-turned-sideline reporter Charissa Thompson. Brennaman and Davis famously called the Boise State-Oklahoma shocker in the Fiesta Bowl eight months earlier.
“You get lucky with a game,” Silverman said. “But then, Charles Davis is the No. 2 announcer for CBS and NFL. Charissa Thompson is a major star. She’s doing Amazon. She’s doing Fox. Brennaman did big-time Fox games for years. We’re a fledgling network to kind of pull that together. A great announcer team to cover a great game that no one expected to unfold.”
At halftime, the Wolverines trailed 28-17, and Michigan coach Lloyd Carr skipped a halftime interview with Thompson. As the game unfolded, other networks called and asked to take the live feed, which BTN officials refused.
“I think as we kind of got deep into the third quarter, you got this sense of, ‘Man, this isn’t looking good.’ These guys are hanging with them, and it is not unreasonable to think that Michigan could lose this game,’” Revsine said. “From my vantage point, I saw it as a disaster. I mean, it was the worst possible thing that could happen.”
With 15 seconds left and Appalachian State leading by two points, Michigan quarterback Chad Henne connected with Mario Manningham on a 46-yard pass to put the ball on the Appalachian State 20-yard line. Michigan called timeout with six seconds left to set up a 37-yard field-goal attempt.
Instead of Michigan pulling out an ugly victory, it turned into an instant classic. Brennaman’s call sealed its status: “Good snap. Good hold. And the kick is blocked! Appalachian State has stunned the college football world. One of the greatest upsets in sports history!”
“This isn’t really happening, is it? This is like a fairy tale,” Rudner said. “The first game on BTN involving the winningest program in history playing App State. We were watching the game, and when the kid lined up to kick the field goal, and it got blocked, it was like, ‘Oh, my God.’”
ESPN asked BTN officials to exceed the allotted replay time. Silverman agreed as long as the BTN logo aired with the highlights. The studio talent, Silverman, Schweir and others went to dinner at midnight afterward.
Though the result was embarrassing, it was positive for the network. Within a week, Dish Network signed on to BTN.
“Part of the narrative of Comcast and some of these other companies was there are not going to be big games there,” Revsine said. “Nothing important is going to happen on the Big Ten Network. And so why do you want this network that’s going to give you second-tier games? Then in the very first window of the very first day, you end up with one of the most significant upsets in the history of college football.”
