Contact does not allow counter offer.
What kind of contract only allows 1 offer per bidder?
The old contract gave ESPN the right to review and match an offer from another network. If that network were allowed to make a counter-offer after ESPN did its review and match, then the whole concept behind that review-and-match clause would be null, it would amount to a regular bidding situation, so obviously there could be no counter-offer.
Yeah, that just sucks. What if NBC would go higher, even if its not much? Now the Big East is locked in for 7 long years. The entire process stinks. And I can't believe Fox didn't even have an offer. Or CBS. Or Telemundo.
They would be better off going with sealed bids like governments do with contractors.
No doubt, if the Big East history of the last 2 years could be analogized to a battle with ESPN, then the battle ended in a 100-0 ESPN victory.
It wasn't that close because in every skirmish some of the be players were working for the opposition