Morning Briefing August 15, 2012
College Athletics
As the Big East prepares to negotiate a television contract that could make or break the conference, it has chosen a man who has been part of some of the biggest media rights deals in college sports to be its new commissioner.
The Big East on Tuesday hired CBS executive vice president Mike Aresco as it continues to rebuild from a tumultuous year of defections.
Aresco has been a vice president in charge of programming for CBS since 1996. He’s handled the network’s contract negotiations with the NCAA for the rights to the men’s basketball tournament, and negotiated CBS’s 15-year deal with the Southeastern Conference.
A Connecticut native who resides in Southport, Conn., Aresco worked for ESPN for 12 years before his long run at CBS. He has never worked for a conference or university, but his experience lies in the field where the Big East needs the most help.
LSU coach Les Miles declined to close the door completely on the possibility, however remote, of Tyrann Mathieu playing football for the Tigers in 2013.
“Tyrann can be a student at LSU,” Miles said after practice, adding that he is “not in any way speculating” about whether Mathieu could conceivably play for the Tigers again. “He will not be on this football team this year — I guarantee that’s a fact. So I have no idea beyond that.”
Mathieu was dismissed from the LSU team last Friday for what reportedly was the latest of several failed drug tests.
If Mathieu joined a program at the FCS level, the second tier of Division I, he could play this season before becoming eligible for the 2013 NFL draft.
Attorneys for Penn State’s ousted president said they have been making plans to rebut what they view as inaccuracies in a school-sanctioned report that concluded he concealed child sex-abuse allegations.
Graham Spanier’s lawyer said that the legal team intended to meet with reporters in Philadelphia early next week. Peter Vaira now says there won’t be a news conference next week, but says one may be scheduled in the future.
Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher has undergone arthroscopic surgery on his left knee and still hopes to be ready for the season opener.
The Bears said that Urlacher had an arthroscopic procedure on Tuesday morning to help relieve swelling in the knee and was back at training camp by 10 a.m. He missed the offseason training program after spraining the medial collateral ligament and partially spraining the posterior cruciate ligament in the final game last season against Minnesota.
New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson met with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in New York to discuss matters concerning both the team and the league.
The meeting came amid a backdrop of lawsuits filed by current and former Saints players who’ve challenged the findings of the NFL’s bounty investigation. Benson also has hired the firm of former FBI director Louis Freeh to investigate the accuracy of the league’s bounty probe.
The National Hockey League Players’ Association made its first proposal in the latest round of collective bargaining talks with the NHL.
The union said its proposal to the league includes a smaller percentage of revenues for players and an expanded revenue sharing program to help struggling teams.
Donald Fehr, the executive director of the NHL Players’ Association, said the proposal could “stabilize the industry.”
Fehr said players are set to surrender as much as $465 million in revenue under the proposal if the league continues to grow at an average rate. He said that number could balloon to $800 million if the league grows at the same rate it has over the last two seasons.
— The Associated Press