MORGANTOWN - What the Big 12 offered West Virginia four years ago was help in fighting two battles.
The first was against finances. College sports is a spend-to-win business, and cash didn't flow to members in the Big East like it does in the Big 12.
The other was against attendance. NCAA attendance figures have been sliding while television ratings soar. Every penny that goes into a fan's Saturday in the fall adds up to build a big number. More and more people found a flat-screen television, expansive replays, smaller crowds and a shorter commute to the couch to be more reasonable.
But schedule Baylor, TCU and Oklahoma at home one year and Texas, Oklahoma State and Kansas State at home the next and that solves some attendance issues. WVU needed that because television is that powerful.
The popularity of college football and basketball on television led to leagues inking lucrative television contracts, including the Big 12's 13-year, $2.6 billion deal with ESPN and Fox. The SEC, Big Ten and Pac-12 have their own money-printing networks. These arrangements and the paychecks are so significant that they basically stopped conference realignment and will keep it quiet for the next several years.
But there is a problem, if not at the present, then not too far off in the horizon.
ESPN has lost millions of subscribers as it deals with rising costs for programming. Fox has been cutting staff at its regional networks, Fox Sports 1 has had to alter its news operation, and there are whispers of additional changes to the roles of writers moving forward.
Those are serious concerns for the networks and for the college conferences, but we haven't even covered the larger issue: People are moving away from cable altogether and choosing streaming services, smaller cable bills or some other alternative. It's bound to add up sooner or later.
If these sports networks are feeling a financial crunch, it will affect the next round of contract negotiations. The Big 12's deal has 10 more years, and the money is guaranteed, but if this recent trend continues at times during or throughout the 10 years, imagine the predicament the networks will be in when the time to renew or walk away arrives.
"I know our partners are very concerned about it," Big 12 Commissioner Bob Bowlsby said. "It hasn't had an immediate impact upon us, but it will in future negotiations."
Bowlsby is a smart man, smart enough to tell half the story there. Networks are concerned, but the conferences ought to be, too. If those networks choose to renew at a diminished figure - not necessarily lower but not quite as high as the passing of time might suggest - or to walk away, imagine the situation in which the leagues will find themselves.
Nielsen reported in July ESPN lost 3.2 million subscribers in about a year. That's arresting because, according to the Wall Street Journal, ESPN has lost more than 7 million subscribers in the past four years. Lose viewers, lose sponsors, lose income, lose expenditures. It reads more like the rule than the exception, and Disney, the network's parent company, kindly asked ESPN to manage its expenses better.
Whether coincidence or not, some top-shelf talent has left the Worldwide Leader. Far more money is spent on programming and production, and the network's new deal with the NBA reportedly more than tripled the old guarantee to $1.47 billion.
Add that to ESPN's other annual business: $1.9 billion to the NFL for one game a week, the Monday Night Football broadcast; $700 million to Major League Baseball; $608 million for the College Football Playoff; and varying large sums to the Big 12, SEC, Pac-12 and ACC for football and basketball.
One urge is to wring hands over the present and the future. Another is to step back and assess the situation. The Big 12, in concert with its television partners, is involved in both.
"Predicting the future of TV and digital formats and the Internet is kind of like herding cats - nobody really knows where it's going and what the end result will be," said Tim Allen, the Big 12's senior associate commissioner who works with television contracts. "I don't think anybody in the cable industry is really in a panic mode at his point."
One explanation is that the numbers and what they mean can vary depending on the perception. Cutting costs in one area can help a business maintain spending in another area. Losing 7 million subscribers stings, but ESPN has more than 90 million out there still, and there are differing opinions about what number grows next.
"As your universe shrinks, you know you have a more dedicated viewership," Allen said. "If you lose 7 million people who no longer want the channel, those are people who weren't going to watch it anyway. The idea that, 'Hey, they've lost 7 million customers, this trend will go on and they'll continue to lose subscribers,' it never made sense to me. Maybe all the people who are going to cut the cord already did it. Maybe there isn't another great loss like we've seen the last few years."
And maybe nobody truly knows what happens next, which is the curiosity among conference and broadcast executives.
"I think there's a larger question there, and that is, 'Is cable TV the delivery system of predominance in the years ahead?' " Bowlsby said.
Probably not, and the swaths of cable-cutters serve as proof. It wasn't long ago when big televisions were the rage. Now people want to watch games on their phones, tablets and laptops. Digital access is that popular and important now. There isn't a more cherished sports commodity than an NFL game. Yahoo! will stream one for free online this season. Internet providers are hurrying to solve buffering issues in streaming technology but also working to market and monetize authentication services that let people link their cable provider over an Internet connection and watch a game remotely.
Kickoffs and tip times were once indisputable appointments, but the rise of DVRs have calmed people down and built a hunger for on-demand programming. The HBO Go and Showtime Anytime models have fans clamoring for previously recorded games to be available at their convenience - and a service like that with a subscription fee attached would pay a lot of bills at ESPN or Fox.
"There are probably two schools of thought," Allen said. "Are they going to be conservative in order to keep their costs down, or are they going to be aggressive to keep the programming they need to hold on to the subscribers that they have? A lot of people believe it's probably going to be the latter."