SEC’S WEEKLY BIG TILT TO ABC IN ’24

The Southeastern Conference’s signature mid-afternoon Saturday game will move from CBS to ABC starting in 2024 as part of a new 10year contract with ESPN and the powerhouse football league announced Thursday.

The deal makes ESPN the exclusive media rights holder of SEC football and men’s basketball, and will end the conference’s relationship with CBS after three decades. CBS has been airing the league’s Saturday afternoon centerpiece game and football championship since 1996.

“The SEC has now, has had and will have a 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time broadcast network game. The change will be from CBS to ABC,” SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey told AP. “So that’s a point of consistency.”

The SEC championship game will also air on ABC.

The SEC and ESPN are already in the midst of a 20-year deal that includes a partnership on the SEC Network. The new deal will line up so both will end at the same time.

The difference in the new deal: The mid-afternoon game is less likely to be the SEC’s game of the week. For the first time, ESPN will be able to place SEC games in its Saturday prime-time slot, too.

“So Saturday night, prime time on ABC is the highest profile window, the biggest stage in terms of college football. And we love the fact that we can now bring the ABC platform into the mix, starting in 2024,” ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro told AP.

Sports Business Journal first reported a year ago the SEC and ESPN were moving toward a partnership. The deal would likely have been announced sooner if not for the pandemic.

The SEC’s contract with CBS was worth about $55 million per year to the conference.

Both Sankey and Pitaro declined to reveal financial terms, but Sports Business Journal reported the new deal will be worth more than $300 million annually — an amount confirmed to The AP by a person familiar with the agreement on condition of anonymity because the value of the contract is private.

There has been speculation the SEC could buy out part of the remaining three years of its current deal with CBS and hasten the move to ESPN. Asked about that possibility, Sankey said the SEC and its members “look forward to maintaining our strong relationship” with CBS.

Notable

Arkansas State coach Blake Anderson resigned to take over at Utah State. In seven years with Arkansas State, Anderson won 51 games and won consecutive Sun Belt titles in 2015 and ’16.

Boston College, which managed to escape the worst of the coronavirus outbreak and the schedule and roster shuffling that has affected so many other teams, is passing on the opportunity to play in a bowl so players can spend Christmas with their families.

Washington’s game at Oregon on Saturday was canceled because of COVID-19 cases in the Huskies’ program.