Pete Thamel explains Big Ten's complicated issues involving former commissioner Kevin Warren, new TV deal

ESPN’s Pete Thamel talked about the Big Ten’s new television deal but as it stands, it contains three different networks. That’s thanks in part to former Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren, who did some positive and negative things for the conference.

“Let’s start with the TV contract,” Thamel said on McElroy and Cubelic. “Every TV contract is its own different, complicated billion dollar beast. And this one is particularly tricky because it’s with three different networks. So inherently there’s going to be some complications that come with it. 

“Combine that with the fact that the Big Ten Network and FOX actually owns the rights, and these are effectively sub-licensing agreements that come with it that makes it all complicated.” 

Thamel also revealed while these deals were agreed to in principle, the fine details weren’t ironed out.

“Luckily, there’s people much smarter than us. They get paid a lot more money than us to figure you don’t have to figure all this stuff out,” Thamel said. “Three months from kickoff, the important details from the deal have not been finalized. They were obviously generally agreed to back in August, I believe. And from there, now you have to figure out the details and figure out the long form stuff and there are some glaring issues in the long form stuff and some money that’s moved around.

“It’s made a lot of campus leaders and there’s some things that have upset high profile coaches and people kind of kind of spoke out about it in the article on ESPN yesterday.”

Thamel went on to explain the positives and negatives of the TV deal as it stands right now. But it always comes back to the financials.

“So there’s the TV side that says of course, we do a $380 million primetime deal,” Thamel said. “Everybody should have to play primetime. And then there’s campuses that say, of course, we’ve had these historic tolerances, we should continue to have these historic tolerances. And then there’s Big Ten people who say, ‘Well, of course, we didn’t just do this deal in the dark and not tell people about it.’

“So somewhere along the way, there were missteps and communication that led us where we are. NBC didn’t know until around February or March that there was this issue with the schools and it’s not certain when those schools realized that they were going to have to play those games that they never have to play.”

One of the big findings from schools was the fact they’ll have to pay back nearly $40 million to Fox because Warren delivered the Big Ten Championship Game to NBC in 2026 without the full authority to do so, according to Thamel.

The other games in question are the primetime games on the road in certain spots. Weather and travel becomes a big factor when it comes to NBC forcing primetime games where they normally wouldn’t be in the Big Ten.

“If you’re Michigan or Ohio State, if you play a road game the week before ‘The Game,’ you’re going to be home at midnight from that game,” Thamel said. “You’re going to play in a little bit better weather (maybe) and travel becomes more of a factor in a year when you have the two West Coast teams coming in. There’s going to be a monetary adjustment unless something changes radically to that NBC deal and it’s a matter of how much.”