A little hesitant to bring this up on the baseball board, but, those of you who haven't been following all the Longhorn Network saga, but are baseball fans, might want to check out what the VP of programming for the sips network said during his now infamous interview on ESPN Austin:

http://kznx-am.tritondigitalmedia.com/includes/news_items/6/2813/davebrown6311.mp3

It's a fairly long segnment, some of which isn't very interesting, but, as it relates to baseball, there is an interesting discussion where a caller, who is a Texas baseball season ticket holder, asks if they will televise any road games. The TV guys answer is that, not in the first year, but in the 2nd year, they hope to televise some road games and some Big XII conference championships.

I'm not sure what kind of response DeLoss will get when he approaches Byrne and says, "Hey, Bill, since you haven't been able to set up a conference network, we'd like to televise our baseball games with you in College Station, and to cover the part of the baseball tournament that Fox doesn't pick up. Sound good?"

No way the LHN is going to show up at Olsen and broadcast any games and I don't think Fox Sports is going to let them broadcast the Big 12 tournament either. What is going on with the high school games and the second live football broadcast is going to give some of the other Big 12 school some teeth when it comes to the minor sports showing up from their field on LHN.

Baylor baseball counts on Texas fans to drive in to gave them a gate and they will never say yes to games in Waco being on LHN and costing them money. It is the same for baseball in Norman and Stillwater or at Rice, unless Texas or Texas A&M is coming to town, they are not going to have fans showing up and they are not going to kill their gate. Kansas State volleyball and women's basketball are going to say the same thing and that is going to go down the line in whatever sport Mizzo or Iowa State looks at as being affected by their home games being on the LHN.

I am kind of an optimist on the new Big 12 Baseball Coverage. Once the Astros use their new network I think that Fox Sports is going to have a window to show more college baseball and they might actually do it since they will have no Rockets or Astros taking up the FoxHouston channel.

Another interesting development that actually matters to baseball fans is CBS Sports HD internet broadcast which you can find here http://conferenceusa.cstv.com/genrel/071811aaa.html. This technology is the future of college baseball since you will get a better feed with little cost to the schools (like TAMU).

Now as far as the LHN itself, I honestly think baseball is the only thing it has going for it since they will show 40+ home games live in a sport that fans will actually watch.

www.aggiebaseball.net

IIRC, all of the SEC tournament baseball games were on TV.

this also plays into the recruiting angle. It will be interesting to see which baseball games are selected for replay/rerun (during the filler time) on the network

for example, if the LHN shows up in Waco to televise a game and the horns win a close, exciting game. Look for that game to show up in overnight rerun for a while. If the bears win, expect the tape to be lost. So every time a recruit watches a replay/rerun game on the LHN (vs. Baylor baseball), he always sees the horns win.

If the LHN had been in place last season, how many times do you think Stripling's 3-hit shutout at DF would have been shown in replay?

The LHN, at this point, doesn't concern me. They'll have very few live events and even the biggest sip fan will grow tired of reruns of the Horns volleyball win over Iowa State. The Mack Brown call in show can only be interesting so many times. I look for the LHN to show repeats of historic football games...a lot.

The Big Ten Network struggles to fill 24-hours a day of decent programming and they've got 11, soon to be 12, teams to choose from. Golf, track, swimming and softball stuff just won't be interesting to the Average Joe, Texas State graduate, t-shirt fan.