B1G Network's Dave Revsine Interview

Ted Glover of OTE recently talked to Dave Revsine of the Big Ten Network about the Pac-12/B1G partnership.

Here's what he had to say:

First off, thanks for sitting down with us again. Most of what we're going to talk about is on the field stuff, but Commissioner Jim Delany made some news off the field recently. He and Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott announced a sports partnership that has fans from both conferences excited. What's your impression of that deal?

I think it's brilliant. I didn't totally understand what it was going to be until I sat down with Commissioner Delany when he came into the office and explained, in so many words, that it's an alternative to expansion. It's a way to improve the reach of your conference, in terms of the scope of it. You become relevant in another area of the country, you increase the value of your TV package because you have some more appealing games, and you do this without sacrificing who you are. I didn't really get it until I sat down with him and talked about it, and it just reinforced my belief that he's a really brilliant commissioner. He really gets it on a lot of different levels, and this was an example of that.

With the Pac-12 partnership, Commissioner Delany has said that the 9 game conference schedule will be abandoned. Is that a good decision, or bad one?

I think it's a good decision. I always had hesitation with that, because the coaches I talked to were very concerned about the inequities of the years when you had five road games. With the schedules being made so far in advance, let's say you're playing five road games against teams that are better than you thought they'd be--there were worries about having an imbalance there. The football schedule is as much about who you play as who you don't play, and you also had schools that want to try to have seven home games, so it seemed like it was a combination of all these factors.

A guy like me, who's in the television business, would've supported it because we'd have better games. But when you look at it from the coaches perspective, in a system that already you're not going to play everybody, there was a randomness there that everybody accepts (the 8 game schedule) because there's no other way you're going to do it because you have a conference of this size. But to add in this other variable where there can be such a challenge in the differences of the schedules (between the schools) I don't think a lot of people thought it was a great idea.

So to me, (the Pac-12 partnership) is a really great alternative. You know that you're going to have nine really interesting games, and it's a way to accomplish all those other things he was talking about that a ninth conference game wouldn't have achieved.