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Athens, GA (Dec 4, 2007) - Michael L. Aresco was named Senior Vice President, Programming, CBS Sports in June 2000. This is his profile as published by CBS Sports.

Michael L. Aresco joined CBS Sports as Vice President, Programming, in August 1996. He is responsible for managing the division's college sports properties, including contract negotiations and future acquisitions for the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship, regular season college basketball and football and bowl games. He is also responsible for administering the Network's various NCAA properties including internet, marketing, radio, licensing, publishing and outdoor programming. He is also the liaison to CSTV, CBS's college cable sports network.

Aresco was instrumental in the CBS Television Network's landmark agreement with the NCAA granting CBS exclusive rights to the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship through 2013. In addition, he played a key role in the Network's contract extensions with the Southeastern (SEC) and Big Ten conferences. Aresco also reached a multi-year agreement that expanded CBS Sports' Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) basketball coverage and he has negotiated several agreements with Direct TV to show NCAA Tournament games on an out-of-market basis. He also played a key role in negotiating the marketing agreement that coincided with the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship deal. He also reached multi-year agreements granting CBS exclusive rights to televise the Army-Navy and Notre-Dame-Navy football games as well as the Sun and Gator Bowls.

In 2004, he was appointed by NCAA President Myles Brand to the Basketball Partnership, a select panel whose mission is to explore ways to improve and promote college basketball. Members include Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany and former Big East Commissioner Dave Gavitt.

He has been a guest lecturer at the Tisch Center for Sports Management at NYU and a guest speaker at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Aresco has also been a delegate to the Spruce Meadows Changing Fortunes Round Table, an annual gathering of prominent worldwide business leaders in Calgary, Canada.

Aresco joined CBS Sports from ESPN where he was responsible for overseeing the acquisition, scheduling and development of long-term strategies for all of ESPN and ESPN2's college sports properties. Aresco also was responsible for programming a wide variety of sports properties, including college football, ATP and Davis Cup tennis, boxing, the Racing Across America Series, rodeo and yachting. He was the architect of ESPN's Thursday night college football series and was instrumental in developing "Bowl Week." He joined ESPN in 1984 and was named Assistant General Counsel in 1988 before moving to the ESPN programming department.

Aresco is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Tufts University (B.A., magna cum laude, history); the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts (M.A., international relations), where he held a John Moors Cabot Fellowship, and the University of Connecticut Law School (J.D.). In 2003, he was the recipient of the All-American Football Foundation's Outstanding Television Sports Executive Award. In 2007, he was honored as the Middlesex (Connecticut) County Chamber of Commerce Role Model of the Year. He was born in Middletown, Conn. and lives in New York City with his wife, Sharon and son Brett. Another son, Matthew, is a producer for the Versus Cable Television Network.

Photograph courtesy of CBS Sports.