Yes, and if it were BTN that had such shared interests and financial ties with ESPN, it would also be an issue. Though you'd be right -- a lot fewer complaints in B1G country.Guy, you made a good point earlier that the SEC/ESPN also depend on college football outside of the SEC. That's true, but only to an extent. They don't need any of the other conferences to flourish, and indeed, can't be expected to expend any effort to that end. Absent any other parties with influence, they need only that the NCAA College Football landscape be alive so as to present an external prop with which its SEC teams can, on occasion, interact.Sustained success should be earned on the field, not to work at tipping the environment in their favor, and surely that's what they're trying to do, wielding the current interest and success of their football teams and the influence of ESPN as their weapons. I suppose time will tell how effectively they can actually accomplish this.