Mountain West fans set to go tell it to The mtn

Fans are ticked, school administrators are frustrated, MWC officials are antsy, but the battle wages on.

Will CSTV be able to broker a deal with DishNetwork and DirecTV to get The mtn. up and running on the satellite?

Folks at the negotiating table hope so. There is a weekly CSTV conference call for updates, and Mountain West Conference athletic directors are receiving additional updates, as necessary.

But what was the fallout from the weekend?

Folks in TV land were not happy. Just how ticked off was BYU's administration when a promoted rebroadcast was pulled by CSTV?

After all, while it could be argued that BYU has struggled on the field and on the court in the two major sports of late, it is a fact the Cougars are the Mountain West's biggest TV draw. Research in 2001-02 showed five of ESPN's top-10 football games ever broadcast included the Cougars. The 2001 BYU-Hawaii game in Honolulu was, at that time, the most viewed ESPN2 game of all time.

It would not be good for folks at CSTV to upset BYU.

On BYU's campus Monday, I checked in to monitor the mood after the weekend when CSTV made BYU-TV pull its compressed-delayed rebroadcast of the Tulsa-BYU game on Saturday morning, after a published on-air guide promoted the event.

BYU athletic department spokesman Duff Tittle admitted frustration, a lot of frustration, over events of the weekend, but refused to describe BYU's administration as angry, mad or generally ticked off. Maybe they should have been, but they were not, said Tittle.

"We're looking at a short-term frustration that I believe, in time, will bring long-term benefits. It's just going to take some time, more time than many of us believed at the beginning of last week," Tittle said.

Up on the Hill, Utah athletic director Chris Hill expressed similar views to BYU administrators.

"I still have the expectation that they are going to work out a deal for the satellite folks. We're optimistic, but it's taking a little longer than many people anticipated," said Hill, who confirmed his office has fielded a lot of complaints.

"We've got a lot of people concerned."

To accusations that CSTV, half owned by cable giant Comcast, had a serious conflict of interest in negotiating with the satellite companies, their chief competitors, Tittle explained that is just not true.