Jim Delany spoke to the media at the Big 11 meetings today. No real rush on things is his claim. Meanwhile another reporter, Dave Birkett of AnnArbor.com tweeted some potentially interesting tidbits:

This: Delany on #NotreDame: “It chooses to be an independent in football and be a member of the Big East. That’s it’s destiny.”

This: Delany: Biggest factors driving expansion are population shift south and Big Ten Network.

And This: “the competitive aspects … the educational fit … and also it would have to be fiscally sound.”

All of which when more of it is disseminated in a less disjointed manner will then be proceeded to be parsed and dissected to within an nanometer of its being.

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I admit to being surprised by the new ACC TV deal that has apparently went down.

The back-and-forth bidding, which reached its final stages last week at the league’s spring meetings in Amelia Island, Fla., drove up ESPN’s rights fee from initial projections of about $120 million a year to $155 million, sources said, providing the ACC with more than double the revenue it was receiving from its previous football and basketball contracts.

ESPN’s increase was in response to an unexpectedly strong pursuit by Fox Sports and sources familiar with the negotiations say the bidding was neck-and-neck last week.

The ACC broke from its spring meetings without announcing a new deal, and the conference said a formal contract had not been finalized. But industry sources pegged a pending deal with ESPN at $1.86 billion over 12 years .

That annual figure of $155 million dwarfs the average of $67 million the league was getting from its previous media deals…

I’ve been thinking about it for the last 24 hours because there’s a lot to it.

One of the things I noted is that like the Big East deal with ESPN, it is all encompassing. In other words it appears to give up all rights including digital and mobile platform. That’s a significant difference from the SEC and Big 10 deals with ESPN that allows those conferences greater control over other and future revenue streams.

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