Appreciate your diligent work on this topic, John. I find it so fascinating...and yet, with a deep sigh I remember thinking not that long ago: gosh, this CFB product is so great--and unlike the NFL, it's not all business, all money! I wonder how long it will last? Got my answer, I guess...
No question he blew it, but perhaps not for the reasons everyone believes.
Personally, I think insisting upon an equal share and ignoring USC's request for more money to account for the value of their market was a mistake.
I also wonder what the current Commissioner (George) could possibly have been thinking in ignoring that issue? Perhaps he was lied to by USC, but my guess is this was no dark secret.
By the way, are you from Ashland? Years ago, I lived there and your name rings a bell.
Unfortunately, Dolly is not related to me, at least as far as I know.
We moved to Ashland in 1973 from Montana and I graduated from the High School in 75 and SOU in 79.
My memory is you earned an Education Degree in the late 60's or early 70's and we met through a mutual friend or maybe a family member. This would have been in the late 70's or early 80's as I left Ashland in '84.
Given my age, my memory is not good on some details, so who knows.
The equal share of TV revenue topic isn’t a George decision, that is a vote among the university presidents. I can easily imagine none of them wanting to take a haircut for UCLA to get more given their pathetic football history, and probably not USC either. Because then you’d also have Oregon, Washington, and potentially even the Bay Area schools saying they also deserved more based on their market size, which would increase the haircuts drastically for OSU, WSU, CU, UU, and UA.
It may not be a George decision, but it is clearly a George issue to navigate.
Not saying he didn't and as you point out, his hands may have been tied, but given the environment we are operating in, I somehow question that.
I just think he missed the issue or trusted USC and UCLA, if in fact they did lie to him. He is impressive, but he has zero experience in college athletics, no long-term relationship with any of the players and is learning on the job.
The SEC hired an assistant AD with 15 years experience as a head AD at another school or assistant at the SEC.
The Big 10 hired a guy with no college experience, but brought him on the heels of a great AD who set things up well.
When I heard about George's hire, I shuddered as he was the second hire in a row by this Conference with no real experience in this particular highly specialized area.
If he can keep the remaining conference members together long term and add a couple of schools, this might work out well and he will deserve a lions' share of the credit.
Yes, I’m not defending them, it was pretty short sighted. Although from all I’ve read, the L.A. schools had probably already decided to bolt, knowing that there just wasn’t ever going to be a mathematical way for them to get what they could in the B1G.
At this point I just wish whatever is going to happens happens. It is kinda funny. The Big 12 talking heads on the net can't decide from one day to the next if they are the fish or the worm. My wish is the Pac 12 takes San Diego State and UNLV (or Fresno State) and merges with the Big 12. Strength in numbers and if the poachers come knocking again in the future at least they will not be wiped off the map if they lose some teams.
Seems like this gives you lots of teams but also totally drops the amount of money each team gets. That is really what the battle lines are about. Getting the most $$$ possible. Right now it looks like the ten teams left in the Pac might get the most by standing as a group and adding one or two other big market teams. More like Baylor or Houston or something like that. Then fighting for an 8 or 12 team playoff that has a ton of open spaces that you can hopefully earn your way into. Like John said, that can get helped if we have an annual ACC-Pac champ game to bolster the argument.
It's a great point, but using that argument, where does that leave Utah?
30th market, size wise, isolated with no real national following. From a numbers point of view, they bring nothing to the Conference and based upon what some are saying in Dallas, would bring very little to the Big 12 in terms of TV revenue.
The reality is SMU has much greater potential than Utah or many other schools. I wouldn't get too locked in on the Fort Worth columnist's view that SMU has a small part of the market.
SMU has been recruiting well lately in the Metroplex and their crowd size and local interest is starting to grow somewhat.
In the past, when in the right setting, they not only succeeded, they excelled. Of course, they cheated, but so did the entire SW Conference in that era.
Unless those programs agree to take less money because of the prestige of being in a P5 conference and if it’s more money than they’d get from remaining in their existing G5 conference.
UO and UW hold the keys to the future of the PAC - even more than ESPN. If they are willing to sign a new GOR binding them to the conference for a longer term then I don't think anyone will leave. Money in the B12 shouldn't be better than a PAC 10 that has UO, UW, Stanford and Utah. There are a lot of alumni from those schools that live in SoCal and will watch games - SC and UCLA don't control that entire market. But iF UO and UW want to keep their options open and refuse to sign a new GOR then all bets are off and the conference will likely fold.
I've been trying to sort that out too, because it is obvious they aren't watching USC and UCLA there very much, based upon the ratings of those 2 teams last year.
Oregon was the tenth most watched college football team in 2021, ahead of either LA school. Mainly because the LA schools have sucked. You have to go all the way to the 30s to see a few other Pac 12 schools (Utah, UCLA, USC).
The Bay Area schools and Washington are capable of drawing big tv ratings when they are competitive. That seems to be the problem though, the PAC (with the exception of Oregon and Utah) have been dismal in football.
If we're being honest, Oregon's #10 spot was greatly influenced by just one game; Ohio State, which was the 8th most-watched game of the regular season. Of the 7.73 million viewers that game drew, how many were watching for Oregon vs those watching for Ohio St? When estimating, consider that Oregon played in only one other game all season that was in the Top 41, that being the Utah game, which drew 4.82 million viewers (#28 most watched regular season game). Meanwhile, Ohio State played in six other games on that Top 41 list, including the most-watched game of the entire regular season (Michigan).
Not trying to be argumentative that Oregon can't draw viewers on its own, they obviously have some brand appeal that extends beyond the state. But there are a lot of things to consider that can't be fully extrapolated from one single list, and little details like that are what the networks look at when they determine how much a program is worth to them.
If you remove the Ohio State game, Oregon still averaged 2.1 million for the other 11 games, which would still have placed them in 14th place nationally, without adjusting by removing the most watched games of the 13 teams that would be ahead of them.
That's more than Texas A&M, competitive with University of Texas and the best in the Conference.
I wouldn't remove the Utah game because it is not unusual for Oregon to draw 4 million. In fact, Oregon has had 8 games with 4 million or more in the last 5 years, tops in the Conference.
Andy Staples in The Athletic did a deeper dive into this and tried to remove as many potential outliers as he could, and ranked by who drew more than 1 million viewers the most times since 2015 (excluding 2020). By his criteria, Oregon was #4 among schools that were not part of the future Big Ten/SEC or Notre Dame. 1 thru 3 were Clemson, Florida St and Washington, respectively. A surprising #6 was Washington St.
There's also a lot of other factors we can't really extrapolate based on the data provided in those links. The time slot and network can influence viewership no matter who the two teams playing are. A game on ESPN at 3:30pm ET is going to draw more viewers than the exact same teams playing on ESPN+ at the same time, or on the main ESPN at 10:30pm.
That part is where I have real concerns about making a deal right now with ESPN, with no additional bidders involved and no leverage to use to try and get as many of your games in more optimal channels and time slots as you can. That the Pac schools are going to get a lot less money is pretty much guaranteed no matter what happens. But they need to hold the line on visibility of their games, or it will make it hard for even their best programs to recruit.
I've never read such delusion. The ACC GOR is iron clad for the next 14 years. ESPN has NO incentive to change their contract with the ACC...NONE. There will be no alliance with the PAC10. ESPN is not going to give the PAC10 $30M per school in a new deal. So. Cal is gone with USC. Quit being such snobs and idiots and let WA, OR, AZ, UT go to the Big 12. Play in a much less isolated corner of the world. The new contract in the Big 12 will pay over $50M per university per year. And they can be the third behind the SEC and B1G. And additional money is coming with the expansion of the CFP, which oh, by the way, the PAC12 botched with the goofy non-contractual "alliance" with the B1G and ACC. Let the adults get things done, PAC10. You're as dead as disco.
Fresno State has a huge television market which they cover from Bakersfield all the way up to Sacramento. Makes so much sense to get them in the Pac 12!
Well I think the pac 12 be called pacific coast conference. Try to bring BSU BYU and SD state for football and add team Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s for all sports.
@John Canzano Would love to hear what your former Fox exec thinks the new BIG XII TV deal will look like, especially compared to a potential PAC 10 deal.
Correct. My question is if the PAC 10 TV deal is estimated to be ~$300 million, what would a new Big XII TV deal be? I assume lower (at least per school) or the four corner schools would have left already.
While I like some of the potential match ups with a Pac 12-ACC "alliance" some others won't be all that intriguing. Oregon State-Wake Forest. Washington State Syracuse. Cal-Pitt. But, the marquis match ups might make it all palatable.
This season, Oregon State plays Boise State, Fresno State and Montana State in non-conference games. I'll take a game vs. Wake Forest. You're right, tho. The justification is in the dollars that ESPN will invest because it wants Clemson vs. Utah and Oregon vs. Miami.
Everyone has been referencing a “partnership” or “alliance” with the ACC as a potential outcome to all this - is it crazy to think that a full-blown merger with the ACC could be possible? I know this would let all the ACC schools out of their grant of rights and could allow the SEC or Big10 to poach a few teams of their liking; however the remaining PAC and ACC tv markets would make for quite the media rights deal (I believe 10 of the top 30 markets nationwide). I’ve also read that the SEC and Big10 have at least said that they are planning to hold steady with the number of teams in each league. How true that is remains anyone’s guess.
In a full-blown merger with the ACC, I don’t think people should be too quick to dismiss the idea of Tiering schools. The reality is that schools like Oregon State (and I’m a Beav), Washington State, Wake Forest, Boston College, etc. don’t bring as much value to the conference as other schools might. By taking a smaller share of an ACC PAC media deal, it would allow the critical schools to collect media revenue that might get them closer to what the Big10 and SEC schools are getting, which may curb their desire to bolt for “greener pastures”. I have to think that the Beavs share (albeit reduced) of an ACC PAC media deal would be immensely more palatable than being relegated to the Mountain West and getting $2 million annually in media revenue.
A merger would be interesting and I don't blame you for thinking it... but if you merged them... the ACC members could opt out of their media deal and Clemson/Miami may try to go to the Big Ten. ESPN would not want that.
Appreciate your diligent work on this topic, John. I find it so fascinating...and yet, with a deep sigh I remember thinking not that long ago: gosh, this CFB product is so great--and unlike the NFL, it's not all business, all money! I wonder how long it will last? Got my answer, I guess...
I think a lot of us are lamenting the loss of what we knew was college football.
And the Larry Scott stink still permeates college athletics.
No question he blew it, but perhaps not for the reasons everyone believes.
Personally, I think insisting upon an equal share and ignoring USC's request for more money to account for the value of their market was a mistake.
I also wonder what the current Commissioner (George) could possibly have been thinking in ignoring that issue? Perhaps he was lied to by USC, but my guess is this was no dark secret.
By the way, are you from Ashland? Years ago, I lived there and your name rings a bell.
I knew a lovely young lady named Dolly Bird, years ago in Ashland.
Unfortunately, Dolly is not related to me, at least as far as I know.
We moved to Ashland in 1973 from Montana and I graduated from the High School in 75 and SOU in 79.
My memory is you earned an Education Degree in the late 60's or early 70's and we met through a mutual friend or maybe a family member. This would have been in the late 70's or early 80's as I left Ashland in '84.
Given my age, my memory is not good on some details, so who knows.
The equal share of TV revenue topic isn’t a George decision, that is a vote among the university presidents. I can easily imagine none of them wanting to take a haircut for UCLA to get more given their pathetic football history, and probably not USC either. Because then you’d also have Oregon, Washington, and potentially even the Bay Area schools saying they also deserved more based on their market size, which would increase the haircuts drastically for OSU, WSU, CU, UU, and UA.
It may not be a George decision, but it is clearly a George issue to navigate.
Not saying he didn't and as you point out, his hands may have been tied, but given the environment we are operating in, I somehow question that.
I just think he missed the issue or trusted USC and UCLA, if in fact they did lie to him. He is impressive, but he has zero experience in college athletics, no long-term relationship with any of the players and is learning on the job.
The SEC hired an assistant AD with 15 years experience as a head AD at another school or assistant at the SEC.
The Big 10 hired a guy with no college experience, but brought him on the heels of a great AD who set things up well.
When I heard about George's hire, I shuddered as he was the second hire in a row by this Conference with no real experience in this particular highly specialized area.
If he can keep the remaining conference members together long term and add a couple of schools, this might work out well and he will deserve a lions' share of the credit.
How'd that work out for those university presidents? Maybe they ought to stick to academics...
Yes, I’m not defending them, it was pretty short sighted. Although from all I’ve read, the L.A. schools had probably already decided to bolt, knowing that there just wasn’t ever going to be a mathematical way for them to get what they could in the B1G.
Fair enough, but the revenue equality was decided back in 2011. I highly doubt either LA school was considering a move then.
Good point, but they had no leverage then.
They wanted more money, but the Pac 12 financial deal was the best one of any of the Conferences.
At this point I just wish whatever is going to happens happens. It is kinda funny. The Big 12 talking heads on the net can't decide from one day to the next if they are the fish or the worm. My wish is the Pac 12 takes San Diego State and UNLV (or Fresno State) and merges with the Big 12. Strength in numbers and if the poachers come knocking again in the future at least they will not be wiped off the map if they lose some teams.
Seems like this gives you lots of teams but also totally drops the amount of money each team gets. That is really what the battle lines are about. Getting the most $$$ possible. Right now it looks like the ten teams left in the Pac might get the most by standing as a group and adding one or two other big market teams. More like Baylor or Houston or something like that. Then fighting for an 8 or 12 team playoff that has a ton of open spaces that you can hopefully earn your way into. Like John said, that can get helped if we have an annual ACC-Pac champ game to bolster the argument.
You can only take on additional programs (SMU, SDSU, etc) if you can justify their media revenue.
It's a great point, but using that argument, where does that leave Utah?
30th market, size wise, isolated with no real national following. From a numbers point of view, they bring nothing to the Conference and based upon what some are saying in Dallas, would bring very little to the Big 12 in terms of TV revenue.
The reality is SMU has much greater potential than Utah or many other schools. I wouldn't get too locked in on the Fort Worth columnist's view that SMU has a small part of the market.
SMU has been recruiting well lately in the Metroplex and their crowd size and local interest is starting to grow somewhat.
In the past, when in the right setting, they not only succeeded, they excelled. Of course, they cheated, but so did the entire SW Conference in that era.
Unless those programs agree to take less money because of the prestige of being in a P5 conference and if it’s more money than they’d get from remaining in their existing G5 conference.
UO and UW hold the keys to the future of the PAC - even more than ESPN. If they are willing to sign a new GOR binding them to the conference for a longer term then I don't think anyone will leave. Money in the B12 shouldn't be better than a PAC 10 that has UO, UW, Stanford and Utah. There are a lot of alumni from those schools that live in SoCal and will watch games - SC and UCLA don't control that entire market. But iF UO and UW want to keep their options open and refuse to sign a new GOR then all bets are off and the conference will likely fold.
What kind of TV ratings do Pac-12 games that don't involve USC or UCLA draw in Los Angeles?
I've been trying to sort that out too, because it is obvious they aren't watching USC and UCLA there very much, based upon the ratings of those 2 teams last year.
Oregon was the tenth most watched college football team in 2021, ahead of either LA school. Mainly because the LA schools have sucked. You have to go all the way to the 30s to see a few other Pac 12 schools (Utah, UCLA, USC).
The Bay Area schools and Washington are capable of drawing big tv ratings when they are competitive. That seems to be the problem though, the PAC (with the exception of Oregon and Utah) have been dismal in football.
That didn't quite answer my question, but ok. I'm guessing this was your source:
https://medium.com/run-it-back-with-zach/which-college-football-programs-were-the-most-watched-in-2021-49ef4f315858
If we're being honest, Oregon's #10 spot was greatly influenced by just one game; Ohio State, which was the 8th most-watched game of the regular season. Of the 7.73 million viewers that game drew, how many were watching for Oregon vs those watching for Ohio St? When estimating, consider that Oregon played in only one other game all season that was in the Top 41, that being the Utah game, which drew 4.82 million viewers (#28 most watched regular season game). Meanwhile, Ohio State played in six other games on that Top 41 list, including the most-watched game of the entire regular season (Michigan).
Not trying to be argumentative that Oregon can't draw viewers on its own, they obviously have some brand appeal that extends beyond the state. But there are a lot of things to consider that can't be fully extrapolated from one single list, and little details like that are what the networks look at when they determine how much a program is worth to them.
If you remove the Ohio State game, Oregon still averaged 2.1 million for the other 11 games, which would still have placed them in 14th place nationally, without adjusting by removing the most watched games of the 13 teams that would be ahead of them.
That's more than Texas A&M, competitive with University of Texas and the best in the Conference.
I wouldn't remove the Utah game because it is not unusual for Oregon to draw 4 million. In fact, Oregon has had 8 games with 4 million or more in the last 5 years, tops in the Conference.
Andy Staples in The Athletic did a deeper dive into this and tried to remove as many potential outliers as he could, and ranked by who drew more than 1 million viewers the most times since 2015 (excluding 2020). By his criteria, Oregon was #4 among schools that were not part of the future Big Ten/SEC or Notre Dame. 1 thru 3 were Clemson, Florida St and Washington, respectively. A surprising #6 was Washington St.
https://theathletic.com/3410274/2022/07/08/college-football-realignment-tv-viewers/
There's also a lot of other factors we can't really extrapolate based on the data provided in those links. The time slot and network can influence viewership no matter who the two teams playing are. A game on ESPN at 3:30pm ET is going to draw more viewers than the exact same teams playing on ESPN+ at the same time, or on the main ESPN at 10:30pm.
That part is where I have real concerns about making a deal right now with ESPN, with no additional bidders involved and no leverage to use to try and get as many of your games in more optimal channels and time slots as you can. That the Pac schools are going to get a lot less money is pretty much guaranteed no matter what happens. But they need to hold the line on visibility of their games, or it will make it hard for even their best programs to recruit.
Really good points and thanks for the link on the Athletic article.
It seems to me Oregon is an attractive target, but of course I'm biased.
The good thing about the 2015 forward is it also includes 2016 and 2017, which were not good years and yet Oregon did okay on balance.
I've never read such delusion. The ACC GOR is iron clad for the next 14 years. ESPN has NO incentive to change their contract with the ACC...NONE. There will be no alliance with the PAC10. ESPN is not going to give the PAC10 $30M per school in a new deal. So. Cal is gone with USC. Quit being such snobs and idiots and let WA, OR, AZ, UT go to the Big 12. Play in a much less isolated corner of the world. The new contract in the Big 12 will pay over $50M per university per year. And they can be the third behind the SEC and B1G. And additional money is coming with the expansion of the CFP, which oh, by the way, the PAC12 botched with the goofy non-contractual "alliance" with the B1G and ACC. Let the adults get things done, PAC10. You're as dead as disco.
MA in Humanities and a teaching certificate in '76. I had siblings at AHS through '75. Can't say I remember you, but you know about retired memories.
Believe me I do.
Fresno State has a huge television market which they cover from Bakersfield all the way up to Sacramento. Makes so much sense to get them in the Pac 12!
Lots of “What If’s”
John, don't you think a championship game that rotated between Vegas and Atlanta in alternate years would be more attractive to the ACC?
Well I think the pac 12 be called pacific coast conference. Try to bring BSU BYU and SD state for football and add team Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s for all sports.
Too many scenarios for me. Makes my head swim. I’ll just wait to see what I get to see when…if? Crazy world.
Wild stuff... but I think it will settle down and we'll see the path soon.
Guilty as charged. So is Scott, in my opinion. And I agree that George was lied to.
@John Canzano Would love to hear what your former Fox exec thinks the new BIG XII TV deal will look like, especially compared to a potential PAC 10 deal.
The TV markets in the Big 12 total up only about 13 million households. The ACC has more than 28 million.
Correct. My question is if the PAC 10 TV deal is estimated to be ~$300 million, what would a new Big XII TV deal be? I assume lower (at least per school) or the four corner schools would have left already.
I would like to see a BigPAC would make some good matchups
While I like some of the potential match ups with a Pac 12-ACC "alliance" some others won't be all that intriguing. Oregon State-Wake Forest. Washington State Syracuse. Cal-Pitt. But, the marquis match ups might make it all palatable.
This season, Oregon State plays Boise State, Fresno State and Montana State in non-conference games. I'll take a game vs. Wake Forest. You're right, tho. The justification is in the dollars that ESPN will invest because it wants Clemson vs. Utah and Oregon vs. Miami.
Everyone has been referencing a “partnership” or “alliance” with the ACC as a potential outcome to all this - is it crazy to think that a full-blown merger with the ACC could be possible? I know this would let all the ACC schools out of their grant of rights and could allow the SEC or Big10 to poach a few teams of their liking; however the remaining PAC and ACC tv markets would make for quite the media rights deal (I believe 10 of the top 30 markets nationwide). I’ve also read that the SEC and Big10 have at least said that they are planning to hold steady with the number of teams in each league. How true that is remains anyone’s guess.
In a full-blown merger with the ACC, I don’t think people should be too quick to dismiss the idea of Tiering schools. The reality is that schools like Oregon State (and I’m a Beav), Washington State, Wake Forest, Boston College, etc. don’t bring as much value to the conference as other schools might. By taking a smaller share of an ACC PAC media deal, it would allow the critical schools to collect media revenue that might get them closer to what the Big10 and SEC schools are getting, which may curb their desire to bolt for “greener pastures”. I have to think that the Beavs share (albeit reduced) of an ACC PAC media deal would be immensely more palatable than being relegated to the Mountain West and getting $2 million annually in media revenue.
A merger would be interesting and I don't blame you for thinking it... but if you merged them... the ACC members could opt out of their media deal and Clemson/Miami may try to go to the Big Ten. ESPN would not want that.
Don’t you mean Clemson/Miami to the SEC?