YES Network To Televise ACC Basketball And Football Games

In years past, there has been a rather sizable television market on the Eastern seaboard left out of the ACC's regional sports network broadcasts of football and men's basketball games. This coverage gap forced many Boston College fans living in the greater New York City area to fire up their laptops and watch Eagles football and men's basketball games on ESPN3 or the ACC Digital Network.

Hopefully this deal goes a long way to fixing this:

The YES Network, the most-watched regional sports network in the country the past 10 years, has reached an agreement with FOX Sports Media Group by which YES will televise live Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) basketball and football games and Big East basketball games beginning this fall. As part of the deal, YES will televise up to 10 ACC football games and up to 23 men's ACC basketball games, as well as select women's basketball and Olympic sports.

Bigger picture, this is yet another move by Swofford and the ACC to solidify its position in the New York City market; one that both the ACC and Big Ten are fiercely fighting over for all of the New York City television sets (and invisible Rutgers fans). The Big Ten strengthened its presence on the East Coast with the additions of Rutgers and Maryland, but only after Swofford was able to land Delany's white whale, Notre Dame, for men's basketball, Olympic sports and five football games a year.

The two conferences will take their battle over TV share to the gridiron in the Yankee Stadium-based Pinstripe Bowl starting in 2014.

Also have to think that the ACC Men's Basketball Tournament at Madison Square Garden has become a fait accompli. In the same release, YES announced that they'll broadcast up to 10 Big East games -- less than half of the total ACC men's basketball games picked up -- despite the fact that two Big East schools are located in the greater NYC market and the conference's men's basketball tournament will be held at MSG.

HT: Backing The Pack