Two months before the Big Ten Conference is set to launch its 24-hour sports channel, league officials are taking heat over their negotiating tactics.
Last week James E. Delany, the conference’s commissioner, got into a spat with Comcast, the country’s largest cable-television provider, over the fees the Big Ten wants to charge companies to carry the network.
Then on Monday, Rep. John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce, which regulates the telecommunications industry, sent a sharply worded letter to Mr. Delany expressing concerns about the public’s access to the channel.