Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Michael Aresco Is the New Big East Commissioner

The Big East Conference means business in striving to become one of the nation's top four conferences. Not only did they add Boise State and Houston to put them on par with the Atlantic Coast Conference, but they have just hired Michael Aresco, Executive Vice President of Programming for CBS Sports, as their new Commissioner. 
Aresco joined CBS Sports as Vice President of Programming in August of 1996. He was promoted to Senior Vice President in 2000 and Executive Vice President in 2008. Aresco has been responsible for all college programming for both CBS Sports and CBS Sports Network. He oversaw the acquistition and management of CBS Sports college properties, including the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship, regular season college basketball and football, conference basketball championship games, football bowl games and miscellaneous programming.

This hire is very revealing as the Big East prepares to negotiate a new, yep, television contract. With deep ties already to television sports programming, there perhaps is no one better qualified than Aresco to generate a landmark
television deal for the conference.

In 2008, Aresco negotiated CBS's historic 15-year agreement to televise SEC football and basketball. He has reached numerous basketball agreements with the major collegiate conferences, including the Big Ten, ACC, Big East, Pac-10 and Big 12. In 2010, Aresco played a key role in securing the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship rights through 2024.

In 2004, Aresco was appointed by then-NCAA President Myles Brand to the Basketball Partnership, a select panel whose mission was to explore ways to improve and promote college basketball. He is a charter member of the Steering Committee of the Columbia University/New York City Chapter of the National Football Foundation and serves on the board of the National Sports Marketing Network. In 2003, Aresco received the All-American Football Foundation's Outstanding Television Sports Executive Award.

Aresco joined CBS Sports from ESPN, where he was responsible for overseeing the acquisition, scheduling and development of long-term strategies for ESPN and ESPN2. Earlier in his career at ESPN, Aresco was responsible for programming a wide variety of sports including college football, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, the College World Series, ATP and Davis Cup Tennis, Top Rank boxing, the Canadian Football League, billiards and wrestling. Aresco joined ESPN in 1984 as counsel and was named Assistant General Counsel in 1988 before moving to programming.

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