2023 is the final season of the SEC on CBS, the end of a long, fruitful relationship for both parties. Next fall, SEC football will exclusively air on ESPN’s platforms, including the ballyhooed 3:30 p.m. ET game that was the crown jewel of CBS college football programming for the last two-plus decades.
Over at Yahoo! Sports, Ross Dellenger wrote about the SEC on CBS, including details of the split between the two parties back in 2019 (with ESPN announcing its deal with the SEC in late 2020).
Notably, Dellenger reports that the relationship between the SEC and CBS began to deteriorate a decade ago when Missouri and Texas A&M joined the conference. While ESPN agreed to pay the two new schools the same as the previous 12 schools on a pro rata basis, CBS did not.
While CBS owned rights to the No. 1 football game each week — as well as two doubleheaders a year — ESPN owned all other SEC games. When the league expanded, ESPN paid what is described as “pro-rata,” increasing distribution from 12 units to 14 to account for the two new schools.
CBS declined to do the same.
We’ve seen the phrase “pro rata” come up over the last year when talking about the Big 12’s expansion plans in the aftermath of its new media rights deals with ESPN and Fox. Essentially, it means that the overall pie would grow in proportion to the number of teams added. For instance, if you’ve got eight teams splitting $200 million and making $25 million, if two more teams are added, they’d also get $25 million, increasing the overall amount of the pool to $250 million. Without a pro rata clause, the ten teams would split the $200 million, cutting each share down to $20 million.
In the case of the SEC, the final contract the conference signed with CBS was for $825 million over 15 years or $55 million per season. With 12 schools, that’s a distribution of around $4.5 million per year. With 14 schools, it slides to around $3.9 million. Increasing the contract on a pro rata basis would have cost CBS under $10 million per season, which it declined to do.
The decision grated on officials, including ex-SEC Comissioner Mike Slive, former Florida president Bernie Machen, and former Texas A&M and Missouri president R. Bowen Loftin.
Despite multiple attempts from Slive, the network refused to distribute an extra two units. The issue became a years-long tussle between Slive and SEC presidents against the network. It served as the first real fissure between the parties — one that widened as time passed.
“Every time this contract came up in conversation, there wasn’t much love for CBS,” said R. Bowen Loftin, the former Texas A&M and Missouri president who is now retired. “They did us no favors. I felt, and we all felt, they owed us something.”
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“The $55 million is burned in my brain. It never went up,” said Machen, who presided then over the SEC presidents and chaired the league’s media rights committee. “They just dug their heels in. They would not move. I don’t know why. We thought CBS would fold. We thought they would get competitive. We thought at the end of the contract they’d fear losing us and it would bump.”
Over the course of several years, Slive and the SEC made a series of short-term ultimatums to CBS. “We’d say, ‘OK, you’re not going to get away with this small amount much longer!’ and we’d push another two or three years,” Machen recalled.
While CBS never caved on the pro rata clause, it eventually did give in on exclusivity of the 3:30 p.m. ET window, allowing SEC Network to air a game at the same time.
Eventually, both parties moved on. The SEC inked its landmark deal with ESPN that will pay an estimated $3 billion over ten years ($300 million per season). CBS moved on to the Big Ten, paying an estimated $350 million per year on a seven-year pact. But while CBS will feature the Big Ten in its marquee 3:30 p.m. ET slot from next fall on, it no longer has the top pick each week, and will instead rotate with Fox and NBC.
