Big Ten Network given royal treatment

When I rolled out of bed Tuesday and punched in channel 786 on the Cox remote ... well, nothing happened.

But when I switched to channel 312, Rita Braver, the CBS News correspondent and University of Wisconsin alumna, was preparing to talk about how she broke up the John Walker spy ring.

The Big Ten Network was on the air. At least in regular definition.

OK, so it wasn't exactly Woody Hayes ripping the first-down marker into smithereens, or Bob Knight firing a chair across court so a little old lady who had purchased a standing-room ticket to the Purdue game could rest her weary feet. It was still gobs more interesting than watching Todd Christensen part his hair, Julio Iglesias-style, on channel 334.

Actually, I come here today in praise of The Mtn. For a few paragraphs, anyway.

When it was launched in 2006, it was the only network of its kind, one devoted solely to one college athletic conference and the games it plays. It is these networks that will join ESPN and their ilk in reshaping the landscape of college football.

No one can take that away from Mountain West Conference commissioner Craig Thompson or the MWC presidents who put him up to it because ESPN wanted the Mountain West to play football on Tuesday or Wednesday night instead of on Saturday afternoon, when Ohio State and Alabama play.

Still, one day I expect Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany to take all the credit. This guy casts a bigger shadow than Kirstie Alley. He generates more power than the ring on Green Lantern's finger. I'm convinced this is why Nebraska left the Big 12 to join the Big Delany. When he threatened to lift his ring finger and fire a destructive plasma bolt across the Nebraska plain, the Cornhuskers had no choice.

And yes, although he never will admit it, there must be times when Thompson wishes someone would vaporize The Mtn. from his resume.

The idea behind a network devoted to Colorado State vs. New Mexico volleyball matches might have been groundbreaking, especially to those who play volleyball at Colorado State and New Mexico. But Thompson and his board and their TV partners first should have asked the cable and satellite companies if they wanted in, too.

It took a long time for The Mtn. to get on the air in some of its own markets. That was one problem.

And when it did get on the air, a lot of people had to pay extra -- limiting its footprint, as Thompson likes to say. That was another problem.

If you are a DISH Network subscriber or one of the more than 200,000 Time Warner cable system viewers in San Diego County, you still can't get The Mtn. Well, at least there's surfing and the zoo.

The MWC website says its TV partnership has "resoundingly met the fundamental goals of more exposure, preferred start times and competition on select days of the week."

So resounding, in fact, that Brigham Young and Utah in 2007 hired attorneys to see if there were other options; one of these, it can be assumed, was kicking those TV partners to the curb like a piece of old exercise equipment.

The unbridled bliss with which Cox Las Vegas announced the addition of the Big Ten Network to its lineup was polar opposite to the contentious nature of its negotiations with The Mtn.

The news release should have come with heralds and trumpets and gold bossing.

"Good news on the football front for Southern Nevada," it began before going on to say the Big Ten Network carries 350 live sporting events, nearly all in high definition (at some point, anyway), that the network is the ultimate destination for Big Ten fans and alumni across the country, that it is available in more than 75 million homes across the United States and Canada, that it has agreements with more than 300 affiliates (including Time Warner Cable), that it can be used to slice bread, walk the dog and, in a pinch, open a can of beans.

I couldn't help but think back to when Air Force was making a run, and someone asked Kirk Herbstreit what he thought of the Falcons and Mountain West football in general.

"I don't know," the ESPN analyst and former Ohio State quarterback said. "I don't get that channel."

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352.