The negotiations are under way for a new contract to broadcast the BCS bowls and rumor has it ABC/ESPN is making the bidding interesting over rival and current rights holder FOX.  This is good news to all fans of college football.

Fox doing the BCS  has been a curiosity. Fox does no college football throughout the course of the year on a national level, yet they are the network of the BCS.  That's sort of like skipping dinner and just eating dessert.  Fox's coverage has been adequate, but certainly can't be as good as a network like ABC/ESPN that runs a full schedule of college football. 

It's obvious that Fox wants the rights because of the potential ad revenue. With a regular base of college football advertisers and the production teams already in place, getting the rights seems to be a huge priority for ABC/ESPN.  In fact, having the BCS games would be much more advantageous to either ABC/ESPN or CBS simply because it enhances what they already have both with advertisers and with viewers.

I'd put ABC/ESPN's stable of announcers including Mike Patrick, Ron Franklin and even Brent Musberger over anyone Fox puts out there (like you, Thom.)
ABC/ESPN also has some pretty talented analysts and their studio teams are better on college football than anything Fox has rolled out.

Here's hoping the Mouse pulls it off.