Alexander: Pac-12 pieces are falling away rapidly
The (realigned) world according to Jim:
• I wrote it Monday, and the web headline read thusly: “Are we really closer to the demise of the Pac-12?”
Well, that didn’t take long. I would have set the over/under at two weeks, minimum. …
• The crumbling continues. The Big Ten, which had already stolen USC and UCLA, was prepared to pounce on Oregon and Washington but wanted the Big 12 to stage another raid before it moved – so it wouldn’t, you know, seem predatory – but then decided it couldn’t wait. Friday morning, its membership approved official invitations to the Ducks and Huskies shortly after administrators from those schools informed their Pac-12 peers they would accept if offered. Meanwhile, Arizona is about to join Colorado in the Big 12, and it could have more company.
When opportunity arises, optics didn’t matter. …
• So here’s the scorecard as of Friday morning: USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington will comprise the Western flank of the Big Ten, which in 2024 will become the nation’s first true coast-to-coast conference. The Ducks and Huskies will take less in media rights money to join; the L.A. schools will receive full shares as first adopters. …
• Cal and Stanford might still be in the mix, but that’s more of a longshot and will depend on (a) the Big Ten’s appetite for going to an even 20 schools, and (b) whether any ACC schools will attempt to get out of their restrictive (through 2036) grant of rights contracts and become ripe for plucking. Florida State seems willing, considering the noises its administrators are making, and I’m sure their lawyers are already dreaming about those billable hours as we speak. …
• How (a) serious or (b) desperate is Florida State? Enough of either, or both, to approach JPMorgan Chase about exploring private equity funding to help finance its $150 million athletics budget. If that sounds familiar, the Pac-12 under Larry Scott attempted something similar in 2019, engaging the Raine Group investment firm “to work with the Conference on its media rights strategy, including opportunities to maximize the value of its full portfolio of media assets through strategic partnerships,” according to the conference’s release at the time.
You can see how well that turned out. …
• Meanwhile, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, Arizona applied to and was accepted by the Big 12, and Arizona State might head that way as well. If that happens, does Utah also bolt? That would enable it to rejoin its ancient geographic rival, Brigham Young, which begins Big 12 play this year. …
• Which brings up but one of the many mistakes made by Pac-12 commissioners Scott and George Kliavkoff – and, to be sure, the presidents and chancellors who enable(d) them – that led up to this seismic moment. Utah was mentioned in early 2010 as an expansion candidate for the then-Pac-10, but the idea of adding BYU as well was met with significant pushback from certain Pac-12 schools who apparently considered it a bad fit. (Translation: Too religious for a conference of public schools.) Instead it took Colorado first, then Utah, after the opportunity to eviscerate the Big 12 (Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Texas A&M) had passed it by. …
• The tipping point this time obviously was that Tuesday meeting of presidents, chancellors and ADs at which Kliavkoff laid out the media rights offer, a proposal from Apple TV+ that would have paid member schools around $20 million each at the outset, according to the Associated Press, and was laden with future incentives based on the number of subscriptions sold.
Kliavkoff totally, horrendously and fatally misread the direction in which sports TV was headed. His stance that time and patience were on the Pac-12’s side, as reiterated at football media day two weeks ago, was disastrous. …
• The magic number that would have been necessary to keep the conference together was no less than $31.7 million to match the Big 12 contract. It was also uncertain how much of a linear TV presence, if any, would exist – especially given that Apple TV+ tends to insist on exclusivity in its contracts.
• For comparison, consider the Apple TV+ deal with Major League Soccer, 10 years at $2.5 billion to broadcast all but a handful of FS1 matches and basically take the league’s teams off of any local broadcasts. Each franchise gets $8.62 million this year, the first of the contract, and that share goes down when San Diego’s expansion franchise comes into the league in 2025. …
• The prudent move now might be for Kliavkoff to dangle the Pac-12 remainders’ automatic bid to the 12-team College Football Playoff and seek a merger with the Mountain West. That still doesn’t solve the media rights revenue issue, though that Apple TV+ deal would look enticing to MWC schools who get a little more than $4 million a year each on a Fox/CBS contract that runs through 2025-26.
But would Apple TV+ now want to renegotiate, since the Pac-12 now is a shadow of what it was even a week ago? And could Kliavkoff move quickly enough to pull it off before his rapidly shrinking conference lost that automatic bid? He hasn’t shown that capability yet. …
• And if Cal and Stanford found no landing places elsewhere, would they be willing to hang with Wyoming, Utah State, UNLV, Fresno State and, yes, San Diego State for a measly $20 million a year? …
• The biggest winners, as you might imagine, are Fox (which owns Big Ten rights) and ESPN (SEC and ACC). Even with an embattled sports TV landscape, they televise the two most powerful conferences and share an interest in the Big 12, which responded to the loss of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC by bulking up with Group of Five schools before taking direct aim at the Pac-12. The networks have helped create a landscape where the glamour teams will dominate screens and streams every fall Saturday. …
• Remember when we suggested a promotion/relegation pyramid for college football two Augusts ago? That’s the direction in which this is heading.
jalexander@scng.com