Big East hires CBS VP Aresco as commissioner

The Big East has found their conference commissioner. Today, the league announced it has hired CBS Sports programming vice-president Mike Aresco as commissioner to run and hopefully, save the league. Aresco has been with CBS for 16 years and was in charge of all sports programming on CBS and CBS Sports Network. He will reportedly make $1 million in this role.

The hire of Mike Aresco has been met with much positivity. By hiring a television executive, the Big East is demonstrating it clearly realizes the role television plays in the conference movement and bringing someone on board with tremendous knowledge of television, rather than hiring someone with a background in basketball or football.

This move may not save the league, but the Big East went in the right direction with this hire. They are about to begin negotiating a new television contract and having a competitive TV deal in step 1 for the Big East to keep itself viable. Having a television executive in charge of that is the right move.

The Big East hasn’t done a heck of a lot right in recent years, but they did a great job here. As I said earlier, it may not save the league, but hiring a guy like Mike Aresco is the right thing to do.