The ACC ended its spring meetings on Wednesday in Amelia Island, Fla., without announcing a new basic television contract to follow the various deals that will expire at the end of the 2010-11 school year.

Even so, the end game almost certainly will include a pact with ESPN to be
the ACC's primary carrier.

The New York Times reports that a lawyer for the U.S. Marshals Service, who also worked part time as a statistician for Fox Sports, improperly used federal vehicles and deputies to escort him and announcers like Joe Buck and Troy Aikman to sporting events.

FOX Sports' telecast of Florida's 24-14 victory over Oklahoma on Thursday night in the Bowl Championship Series title game drew a a 15.8 household rating and was seen by an estimated 26.8 million people — 16 percent more than watched last year's BCS game, according Nielsen Media Research.

It was FOX's highest-rated of three BCS games. The most-viewed national championship game, dating to 1991, was Texas' Rose Bowl victory over Southern Cal in 2006, with a 21.7 rating and 35.6 million viewers.

This year's Rose, in which USC defeated Penn State on ABC, was second among this year's bowl games, seen by 20.6 million people. FOX's coverage of Texas' win over Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl was third this year with 17.1 million viewers. The viewership for the Rose and Fiesta increased 8 and 40 percent, respectively, over last year's figures.

The Orange Bowl, in which Virginia Tech defeated Cincinnati on FOX, experienced a decline of  22 percent — to 9.3 million viewers. It was the sixth-highest-rated bowl game this year, following the BCS game, the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Capital One bowls.

Carolina Hurricanes fans who subscribe to a satellite TV service have to get used to the idea that they won't find live game coverage on the FOX Sports South channel. DirecTV and Dish kick FS Carolinas coverage of the Canes and Bobcats to an alternate channel.

In terms of TV ratings, the Orange Bowl did little to bolster the case for the ACC's current national relevance in college football, while the Meineke Bowl showed it has a good thing going.

FOX Sports' telecast of Virginia Tech's 20-7 victory over Cincinnati on Jan. 1 drew a 6.1 rating nationally — reportedly the lowest ever for a Bowl Championship Series game — and only a 3.6 in the Raleigh-Durham market. (Not sure why, but the Charlotte figure was a hefty 8.9, among the highest local ratings, according to FOX. There was no ACC basketball game that day.)

ESPN's telecast of West Virginia's 31-30 victory over North Carolina, in front of a packed house at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte on Dec. 27, drew a 4.5 nationally, a 10.2 in Raleigh-Durham and a 10.5 in Charlotte, the highest in that market for an ESPN or ESPN2 bowl game since the sports network began keeping records in 2001. (The 10.2 here was second only to UNC's 16-10 victory over Auburn in the 2001 Peach Bowl.)

Nevertheless, Stewart Mandel writes for SI.com, the ratings don't paint a picture of health for the BCS system. 

Apparently, New England Sports Network viewers who were watching Boston College's upset of North Carolina on Sunday were switched to the Duke-Virginia Tech basketball game with less than a minute left in the UNC-BC game. Here's a brief report about the mixup from the Boston Globe:

With 1:26 to play, NESN lost its feed of the game. The feed came from Fox Sports, and Fox mistakenly switched NESN to the Duke-Virginia Tech game (commercials were shown locally). The correct feed returned with about five seconds to play. NESN public relations manager Gary Roy apologized and said the network was looking into the problem.

FOX Sports South produces the "ACC Sunday Night Hoops" games, but they are distributed by FOX in Los Angeles through the network's master control facility in Houston. FOX is trying to determine what caused the problem.

The Globe story on the game:

http://www.boston.com/sports/colleges/mens_basketball/articles/2009/01/05/one_to_remember/

Sorry, President-elect Obama, but it's hard to imagine a college football playoff system even coming up for serious negotiations for several more years now that ESPN has won the rights to televise the Bowl Championship Series from 2011-14.

Fox, which paid $320 million for the rights to televise BCS games from 2007-10, chose not to match ESPN's unspecified offer for those games — and didn't sound exactly pleased with the outcome.

"Even with today’s vast economic uncertainties, Fox Sports made a very competitive bid to keep broadcasting BCS games free to every home in America, one that included a substantial rights fee increase, and certainly as much as any over-the-air network could responsibly risk," the television network said in a statement released this afternoon. "Unfortunately, the University presidents and BCS commissioners were not satisfied, and they’ve decided to take their jewel events to pay television."

In an interview later with The News & Observer, Fox spokesman Lou D'Ermilio made clear that it came down to a difference between "how much they were looking for and how much we could bring in with a single revenue stream." He explained that Fox, as an over-the-air network, relies strictly on advertising revenue, while ESPN is paid both by advertisers and cable and satellite TV providers, "so they can tap both resources to bid on a property like this."

ESPN would not comment on any BCS agreement, but e-mailed a retort for Fox to The Associated Press: “We remind everyone that ESPN is distributed on expanded basic, a product enjoyed by 98 million homes that offers the best entertainment buy in America and that already carries many championship caliber sports events,” spokesman Mike Soltys wrote.

The switch isn't exactly bad news to many viewers who felt as if Fox's coverage of the games showed its ignorance of college football. TV critic Molly Willow of The Columbus Dispatch called Fox's coverage of last season's BCS title game, in which LSU defeated Ohio State, "the TV equivalent of giving Buckeye Nation a paper cut — a big one — and pouring a Gatorade bucket of lemon juice on it."

Getting back to a playoff system, President-elect Obama, in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes," said he's use his influence to push for one. If it were up to him, eight teams would play over three rounds to settle the national champion.

“You could trim back on the regular season," Obama was quoted as saying. "I don’t know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this. So, I’m going to throw my weight around a little bit. I think it’s the right thing to do.”

That was enough to prompt a response from ACC Commissioner John Swofford, the BCS coordinator.

“First of all, I want to congratulate newly elected President Obama, and I am glad he has a passion for college football like so many other Americans,” Swofford said in a statement. “For now, our constituencies — and I know he understands constituencies — have settled on the current BCS system, which the majority believe is the best system yet to determine a national champion while also maintaining the college football regular season as the best and most meaningful in sports.”

By "majority," is Swofford referring to most college football fans in general or most college presidents and bowl game executives?