While it may not have the national exposure of the Big Ten or Atlantic Coast Conference, the Ivy League has slowly been creating more of a national broadcast presence than it has ever had.
Early last month, the Ivy League announced a three-year deal with Sirius Satellite Radio to broadcast a game of the week in both football and men's basketball.
This agreement will go side-by-side with the contracts already existing between the Ivy League and the YES Network, College Sports Television and local networks such as CN8.
YES broadcasts football and both men's and women's basketball. CSTV broadcasts some football and basketball, but also is a spot for championship events in sports like swimming and track.
Local networks, like Philadelphia's CN8, generally only show football and men's basketball.
The agreement with Sirius does not give the Ivy League any financial compensation, but does provide more exposure to the League and its teams.
In each season -- football and basketball -- each school will be shown at least once.
"We think this is going to be very successful," said Ivy League Executive Director Jeff Orleans.
He cited "an enormous amount of press" from the deal as well as a test run with Sirius from last year as evidence for his claim.
"We got great responses from alumni and fans" to the few games broadcast last year, Orleans added.
Orleans said that there have been talks with ESPN to try to get the league an even larger national audience, but the Ivy League presidents, who control athletic policies, were against a deal that would only promote specific matchups -- like Penn-Princeton in men's basketball or Yale-Harvard in football and not televise the rest of the schools as much.
ESPN, according to Orleans, wanted to negotiate on a school-by-school basis, rather than offering a league-wide contract.
Sirius also has agreements in place to broadcast college games from the Atlantic 10, Big West, Colonial Athletic Association, Horizon League, Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, Mid-American Conference, Missouri Valley Conference, Southern Conference, Sun Belt Conference, West Coast Conference, and Western Athletic Conference.
However, only the Southern and Sun Belt conferences have agreements in place with all their teams.
There are also deals with 28 teams from so-called "major" conferences, including Southern California, Texas, Michigan, UCLA and Syracuse.
