Not sure why but I’m prone to root for the former Pac teams. Rooting hard for the Beavers and Bears right now
pie-in-the-sky on line 3! Larry Scott calling on line 2! " Industry sources weren't sure which way forward the Pac-12 would take. They were sure almost unanimously that the new Pac-12 won't get much more than the current Mountain West deal, which is $45 million per year from current rights holders Fox and CBS. (TNT has a smaller deal for a handful of lower-echelon games.) The reconfigured Pac-12 is relying heavily on the former conference's IP address. The fancy marketing definition of IP is "brand value." Cut to the core, IP is basically a string of numbers separated by periods that carries an identity on the internet. Those six schools now own "pac12.com" and everything that comes with it, which is the issue. The old Pac-12 broke apart basically because Utah president Taylor Randall convinced his peers that the league was worth $50 million per school. They were brutally wrong. Will the new Pac-12 make the same mistake as the old Pac-12 in overvaluing itself?" https://www.cbssports.com/college-f...eal-on-check-list-for-re-imagined-conference/ so then, about 55M/year to the MWC from Fox, CBS, and TNT. And that's for linear TV. Media isn't going to be fooled by the Pac-X brand. They know the product they'll be selling and what the market(s) will be. A rebooted PAC with MWC teams + OSU/WSU isn't going to get triple what the MWC got. FOX & CBS could choose which games to broadcast and they didn't show Utah St. vs New Mexico; they showed San Diego St. vs Boise St. They showed the marque names in the MWC and that was worth 55M/year. so, say the cache of the Pac-12 + the addition of OSU/WSU increase a linear TV offer by 30%. That would put the package in the 70-75M range. With 8 schools in the conference, that puts the per school payout around 9M/year as far as some imaginary streaming deal riding to the rescue: the reality is when the Pac-12 was looking for a media contract, the most they could get (from Apple IIRC) was about 15M/year. Yeah, there was some elevator clauses to increase that amount if the audience hit certain targets, but those targets were a joke....they would never be reached; never. But before you look at that 15M/year number and say aha!, keep in mind the context. That was when the Pac-12 had Oregon and Washington; Colorado, Deion & the Denver market; ASU and the Phoenix market; Cal & Stanford and the Bay area market; Utah and the SLC market. AND, that was when the old Pac-12, with all those advantages the new Pac-X won't have, could not land a linear TV deal. So the streaming media partner could take all the premier games for themselves. All that and the ceiling for the Pac-12, and the former 12 teams, was capped at 15M/year in other words, the main bucket of money, whether it comes from linear TV or streaming will be from a contract to show all of the premier games. If the Pac-X gets a 60M/year linear TV deal, the linear TV partners will get the best games. A streaming partner, picking up the scraps, isn't going to pay a premium price. If it's FOX & CBS as primary partners again, they will demand the best games. If it's Apple or Amazon as primary partners, they will demand the best games the AAC media deal is the best among group-of-5 conferences and it's about 83M year. MWC around 55M/year. But 11 of the AAC's teams are in the South; Texas, Florida, New Orleans, Memphis, the Carolinas. That's the hotbed of college football fandom, guaranteed to draw eyes to the product. Oregon-Washington-Norhern Cal-Idaho....the football enthusiasm in those places isn't like Texas or Florida. In order for the Pac-X to land media deals of 15m/year per school with 8 schools they'd have to leverage a deal of 120M/year. That's 50% more than the current AAC deal (which run thru 2031-32). That would be 2.2 times larger than the current MWC deal. Ain't happening on line 3....pie-in-the-sky still holding
https://bleacherreport.com/articles...-leave-wcc-amid-conference-realignment-rumors Report: Gonzaga, Pac-12 in 'Serious' Talks Amid Conference Realignment Rumors
If they're looking to have a decent football conference, what would be the point of adding Gonzaga? Honestly, Montana and Montana St would make more sense...
There obviously is value in adding one of the top basketball schools. Won't the conference get $ from when Gonzaga advances in the tournament each year?
about 2M per game in March Madness. If the Pax-X negotiates a media deal for football where each school earns 10M/year (maybe more; maybe less?), then Gonzaga would have to advance to the final-4 each year in order for the conference to break even. And this assumes that Gonzaga has agreed to give every penny of that pay-out to the conference. They might be keeping some for themselves having Gonzaga within the conference for basketball might make for a slight upward bump in any media deal, but it won't be by much ************************************************************* and the AAC apparently is pushing back on the rumors of the Pac-X raiding some of their teams:
yeah...that's looking like it would have been the best option for OSU/WSU. Actually, maybe the best option was to NOT have signed that scheduling deal with the MWC that contained such heavily punitive clauses for stealing MWC teams if it's true that no AAC teams are interested in the Pac-X, the only option for the Pac-X may be paying thu the nose to add two more MWC teams
Utah State is in. And now is sounds like because of Utah State leaving for the PAC, UNLV has changed its mind about staying in the MWC and is looking at its options again.
UNLV would be a great addition. I don't really see the point of Utah State but if it's just to get to an 8th member then whatever - that's fine.
Knowing what we know now yes it was probably better to have not signed the deal. Was total chaos at the time with huge pressure to get opponents scheduled. Also a lot has changed such as breakdown of other MWC negotiations that was not known back then. Also didnt even know there would be any pac12 settlement. Really don't think OSU or WSU has made many bad moves the last few years, most of their situation is just the reality of being the smaller rural school in two smaller states.
the chaos was the collapse of the Pac-12 was in the first week of August, 2023. It was 4 months later when the scheduling agreement was made. Obviously, there was a little bit of urgency at that time, but the 2024 season was 9 months away. They had those 4 months to consider options and plan for the best way forward. And frankly, the MWC was about the only viable option. There was plenty of talk about the terms of that scheduling agreement at the time it was announced. Primarily about how the Pac-2 had painted themselves into a very expensive corner if they wanted to keep the Pac-12 brand alive. A 25-30M exit fee for MWC teams was widely viewed as insanely excessive, especially considering that the MWC only had ONE season left on the media deal after the one year scheduling agreement as far as 'bad moves', the 3 biggest supporters of Larry Scott were the presidents of ASU, OSU, WSU....and he was the Typhoid Larry for the Pac-12. I'd also point at OSU's decision to renovate Reser, the result being a reduction in capacity from 45,700 to 35,600. Reducing stadium capacity by 10,000 is the wrong direction for a program wanting to join a Power-4 conference ************************************************** something else as well: 23 years ago, in 2001, Oregon made a commitment to expanding their brand. And this was before Phil Knight's money started to flow into facilities. That was the year of the Joey Harrington billboard in NYC. That was a few years before Oregon started having dozens of uniform combinations. The Oregon AD made the conscious decision to ramp up branding and raise the UofO's profile. I mean, is there a more recognizable mascot than the Oregon Duck? and at the time, and for 15-20 years afterward, OSU fans and officials, and sometimes even the coaches, ridiculed Oregon's branding efforts. That dismissal was parroted by Dwight Jaynes and Canzano. "Style over substance" was the refrain coming out of Corvallis and the printing presses at the Oregonian. The criticism was coming hot and heavy. Over and over and over. Oregon was all "flash" while OSU did things "the right way". maybe, just maybe, if OSU had spent a lot less time pissing on Oregon's branding efforts, and more time working on their own, they wouldn't be in the situation they are
