Ray Glier

Special for USA TODAY Sports

ATLANTA — The website getsecnetwork.com is the equivalent of a slightly agitated crowd of fans who are protesting. For now, they are merely carrying posters and behaving in a somewhat restrained fashion toward DirecTV and Comcast, companies that have not reached deals to carry the SEC Network when it launches Aug. 14.

But come Aug. 14, if DirecTV and Comcast have not signed on to carry the Southeastern Conference's new regional sports network because of the cost of the programming, the fans of Bulldogs, Tigers, Gators and the rest will not be happy. The fans will lose restraint and demands will become actions: They just might cancel their service.

Meanwhile, the roughly 70% of TV viewers inside the SEC's 11-state footprint who do not care much about college sports are on the verge of seeing their bills rise again, because of the SEC Network. There will be nothing they can do about it except drop their service. If enough SEC fans threaten, or actually cancel, Comcast and DirecTV, it might force the providers to carry the SEC Network, pay the carriage fee and pass the cost on to its customers. All of them.

It is the latest dust-up between regional sports networks and cable, satellite and telecommunications TV carriers, and follows controversies in Houston and Los Angeles. The Comcast regional sports affiliate in Houston was driven into bankruptcy court. DirecTV is balking at the asking price per subscriber for the Dodgers, which has left millions in the Los Angeles area without TV access to the baseball team.

Sports programming is the biggest reason TV bills have been rising nationally as professional leagues and major college conferences continue to pay higher and higher salaries to coaches, players and executives and improve their stadium infrastructures.

How much your TV bill will go up because of the SEC Network — a joint venture with ESPN and based out of ESPN's offices in Charlotte — is unknown.

"I absolutely object to any cost that I don't have a right to say yes or no to," said Kermit Hairston, a Stone Mountain, Ga., resident who works in real estate. "The only thing worse than having somebody's hand in your pocket is having somebody's hand in your pocket and you don't know it. My bill could go up in September and I wouldn't know why."

Andrew Sheppard, a restaurant worker from Columbia, S.C., said, "If the SEC fan wants the SEC Network, let them pay for it, don't make me pay for it. I went to school in Chapel Hill (North Carolina of the Atlantic Coast Conference). I don't care about SEC football."

DirecTV and Comcast almost certainly would face the loss of thousands of SEC fans if they choose not to carry the network.

ESPN connection

The SEC Network has a built-in advantage over the Pac-12 and Big Ten networks because it is owned by ESPN. Typically, regional sports networks have "third-tier programming," which means it selects games after national outlets such as CBS and ESPN.

The SEC Network, being owned by ESPN, was able to schedule a marquee game, Texas A&M vs. South Carolina, for the first week of the season. The SEC Network also is using nationally-known announcers Brent Musburger and Jesse Palmer, with former Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow as the face of the network lending more national appeal.

The SEC has led the country in football attendance for the last 16 years and claimed seven of the last eight Bowl Championship Series national titles. Since 2012, the SEC has won national championships in men's basketball, baseball, gymnastics, softball, track, swimming and diving, tennis, golf and equestrian. Those elite teams can only be seen on the SEC Network after Aug. 14.

DISH Network, which has 14 million subscribers, has signed up to carry the SEC Network, along with AT&T U-verse and Google Fiber. It remains to be seen how much the SEC is valued by the biggest players in sports television, DirecTV (20 million subscribers) and Comcast (22.6 million). It could get sticky.

"A lot of the households would assign a very low value to an SEC regional sports network," said Andrew Zimbalist, a professor of economics at Smith College and a noted sports economist. "There is a real structural question of how important it is for a cable distributor to carry this, particularly in light of the fact the bottom 70%-80% of income earners have had their wages stagnate over the last decade and cable bills keep going up and up and up.

"At some point, you hit a ceiling and you can't keep doing it."

War of words

DirecTV CEO Mike White once told Wall Street analysts on a conference call, according to Bloomberg, "If I could wave a wand, the first thing I would peel off is regional sports networks. The cost is just too high."

John Demming, a Comcast spokesman, would not comment on price other than to say Comcast was in negotiations with the SEC Network. "We're very optimistic we are going to have an agreement," Demming said.

Dan York, chief content officer for DirecTV, would not comment on the exact cost of carrying the SEC Network.

"We would certainly wish to carry the SEC Network sooner than later. Timing will depend on at what point do we feel we are getting a fair value proposition from Disney/ESPN to make it available," York said.

York, however, also said, "As popular as sports content is, the vast majority of consumers will not watch any national, regional or local sports network, yet the networks demand they pay a tax so that those who do want to watch it get access to it."

Parts of the negotiation between DirecTV and the SEC Network have become contentious because, as York said, the SEC Network wants to claim all of Texas as being in the "inner market" because of Texas A&M. York said it is an "absurd consumer proposition" that football fans in Austin should be considered in the "inner market" when Austin is the home of the University of Texas.

David Preschlack, head of affiliate sales for ESPN and Disney media networks, said the SEC Network is not a regional sports network but a brand strong enough to sell outside the South. Asked if that meant DirecTV, Comcast and DISH would be able to charge an "inner market" price around the country to all of their subscribers, Preschlack would not comment.

The SEC Network will not be available on pay-per-view or on a sports tier but will be sold as part of a provider's wide package of programming. Preschlack said, "The economics of the pay-per-view model just don't support the business we're looking to get into, which is the same for any other programming ESPN owns."

The getsecnetwork.com site, which was created by ESPN Interent Ventures, uses the word "demand" and has stoked fans' outrage toward the carriers. Preschlack said the wesite is standard operating procedure to gauge consumers' interest, but the site also encourages fans to switch to carriers of the SEC Network.

Could the SEC Network be one more line in the sand on rising cable, satellite and telecom TV bills?

"I think we've been in a bubble and there has been a lot of over-bidding, and these little fracases we're seeing are harbingers of sustained battles that will be happening," Zimbalist said.

"I got a call the other day from a staff person in Congress, and the House is going to look into this stuff. As reluctant as the U.S. Congress is to regulate in this day and age, it seems like this situation is inviting some regulation. It's not good for the consumers. These sports leagues have a lot of market power."