ESPN today officially obtained the rights to the four BCS games currently airing on Fox in a four-year deal estimated at $125M annually. Now ABC/ESPN will pretty much own the college football bowl season. And the path to a college football playoff just became that much more difficult.

I'll have to do some research on this, but have we ever seen a player who is one of the lowest paid players in his sport win an MVP award? It happened today when Boston Red Sox 2B Dustin Pedroia won the AL MVP award.

Pedroia, last year's AL Rookie of the year, beat out the likes of A-Rod ($28M per season) to win the award. Pedroia made a paltry $457,000 for his MVP season.

First Yankee Stadium, now Texas Stadium. Thirty-five years of Texas Stadium memories will be available for online auction starting November 17, 2008 - December 6, 2008. 500 lots of Texas Stadium's most memorable artifacts will be up for auction. If you're a Dallas Cowboys fan, click here to get in on the auction.

Dallas Maverick owner Mark Cuban is one of my favorite owners in all of sports. He's innovative, creative and he brings a tremendous amount of passion and energy to any project he is affiliated with.

Our conversation on Sports Business Radio is one of my favorite conversations since we launched our show in 2004.

If you missed my conversation with MLS Commissioner Don Garber, it is now available for ON DEMAND listening.

Click here to hear audio of our conversation.

Make sure to join us this weekend as I go one-on-one with MLS Commissioner Don Garber. Garber has been MLS Commissioner since 1999 after spending 16 years in the NFL's league office where he focused primarily on international relations for the league.

The end of the year is fast approaching and our team at Sports Business Radio is compiling its top 20 sports business stories of 2008. We'll unveil stories 20-11 the weekend of December 20-21 and we'll unveil stories 10-1 the weekend of December 27-28.

Good show planned for you this weekend. Gerald Myers, the Athletic Director of Texas Tech, joins us on this weekend's edition of Sports Business Radio. The Red Raiders are currently ranked 2nd in the BCS standings and propelled themselves into the college football BCS championship conversation with a win over top ranked Texas last weekend.

Merritt Paulson is a mover and shaker. He used to work for the NBA league office in New York and his father is Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson - so he's had some pretty good exposure to some pretty impressive business minds.

What do the New York Knicks and Oakland Raiders have in common? Both franchises have the highest team payrolls in the NBA and NFL respectively, yet both franchises have been dismal on the court/field of play.

USA Today unveiled its list of NFL team payrolls for this season and we learned that the pitiful Oakland Raiders have the highest payroll in the NFL at over $152M.