not defending ESPN AT ALL, some of your assumptions/observations are accurate, but how do you know the deal CUSA walked away from was crappy? I know the details and it was quite good and long term would have been much much better than where they are now or the deal they took from CSTV that started the ball rolling downhill....... it was not all that different from the deal the AAC has now, adjusted for the time difference........... ESPN's "weakened" state is still a far distant first in the industry with little real competition from anyone else............the marketplace affecting ESPN is having the same effect on the other cable sports networks as well. The cable model is unraveling somewhat, but it affects everyone...... and while many board posters talk about streaming, there is little revenue there currently for sports.
There's more to a crappy deal than $$. There's always crowd killing early week MACtion. I'm sure the other courtiers were promising and delivered Saturday games at a comparable monetary offering. CUSA rolled the dice and lost, but it wasn't necessarily the wrong move. And if ESPN's deal was the better deal with money, then why did they sue CUSA for not giving them the opportunity to match the deal we took as part of their right of first refusal? Before you slip and slide around that, it is well documented, and ESPN won the case. They had to offer something substantially lower whether money, air time, primetime, something, in order to be chafed over not being allowed to counter a different deal. If they opened with the best deal they were going to make there is no case.