BYU football: Takeaways from the Cougars’ Media Day

ESPN opts-in to contract with BYU football

The general sense earlier in the week was that BYU AD Tom Holmoe was going to announce something regarding the deal with ESPN at Media Day.

That’s exactly what happened.

ESPN will continue to televise BYU football through 2019. Basically, the network has first-dibs on all BYU home games and selects one game to be shown on BYUtv.

ESPN VP of Programming and Acquisitions, Nick Dawson, said in a press release: “BYU has played an important role in ESPN’s college football history, having aired its games for more than 32 years. Continuing the relationship for the 2019 season secures another top-notch program for our industry leading portfolio.”

The takeaways

Obviously, this is good news for BYU football (and fans). No conference affiliation means no conference payout. So having the ESPN deal in place at least gives the Cougars something.

Even with ESPN’s well-documented struggles, you’d rather be with them at this point. Hopefully when the major TV deals expire and conference realignment begins again, the Cougars will find themselves in a major conference. For now, they just have to win games.