Ohio State Football: Is the Big Ten in trouble over media deal?

When Kevin Warren was still the Big Ten Commissioner, he presided over a huge new television deal. That deal was reported to be worth over $1 billion and would give NBC and CBS rights to Big Ten games, along with current Big Ten partner FOX. That would mean more money for the Ohio State football program and everyone else in the league.

Apparently, that deal is not all that it seems to be. Warren left his post to be the President of the Chicago Bears. he didn’t finish all of the work that needed to be done to finish these contracts according to a piece by ESPN. Not only that, but teams have to pay back a significant amount of money.

According to the piece, teams have to pay back $65 million to FOX because of lost football game inventory in the 2020 season and due to Warren giving NBC the Big Ten Championship Game despite not actually having the authority to do so. That definitely made administrators angry.

The Ohio State football program is also doing the league a solid. We already told you about their first NBC game against Michigan State. That game is a home night game in mid-November, which is much later than the Buckeyes normally have night games.

The Buckeyes did this to help minimize any losses through the NBC deal that are currently being worked through. I don’t know why programs have such a big issue playing night games that late in the season, but that’s a whole other discussion.

NBC and the Big Ten both say they expect any issues to get resolved fairly quickly. But with tens of millions of dollars still in flux, things aren’t exactly going smoothly. Would I say that the conference is in trouble over the deal? Not quite. Some programs are certainly not going to be happy with all that has happened though.