I'm disgusted by the hypocrisy of the colleges and NCAA begging Congress to help them clamp down on NIL because they think athletes trying to make money is ruining college sports, and yet look at what these schools/conferences are doing chasing the almighty dollar for themselves.
That may be the only hope some of these lower-brand Power 5 schools have. So many of them are heavily leveraged paying for facilities and coaches, all reliant on them getting that equal share of the big money. If conference realignment cuts schools like OSU/WSU off at the knees, they're in trouble.
As a Cal fan I have wondered ever since the UCLA-USC announcement if it might be better for Cal to just drop out of big-time football (hold the jokes, we are hanging on to memories of the Tedford era for dear life over here) and move on.
But the truth is, that stadium renovation debt isn't gonna pay itself off. You bought it, you own it. That's where we are.
Cal has a couple things going for it (elite academics, large TV market) that may save it from being left out. But yeah, you can't very well pay off that stadium, not to mention fund all those other sports, if you're only getting paychecks from the Ivy League.
Elite academics does not equate to touchdowns or baskets made. I’m sick
Of getting academics thrown around as some sort of elitist benchmark. The laws of thermodynamics are the same at Stanford as they are at OSU. So spare me that red herring argument.
Take it up with the college presidents, not me. They make these decisions, and all indications are it's something many of them care about when deciding what conference to affiliate with, and who they invite into their own conference.
I learned a long time ago, the hard way, not to underestimate an AG with an axe to grind. They have an enormous amount of power, and a robust set of tools they can use to gum up the works well beyond state borders. Hopefully someone steps up before it's too late.
Would not be surprised if the presidents of OSU and WSU have already had conversations with their respective AGs. Maybe that's why neither appears to be panicking (yet).
A bandaid on a severed limb won't work. What gets lost in this discussion is that the B10 and soon SEC schools will have >$60M/year more than the B12/ACC schools and will effectively price those schools out of the market.
Have a great coach? Good luck keeping them. Want a key recruit? Better hope they are open to a discounted NIL deal to play for you. Want to match the scouting and recruiting muscle of the big 2 schools? Good luck with that.
An aggressive stance will be to force a payout to the peer university (think UCLA/Cal situation). Anything beyond that is simply a death blow to both.
Yep, there is a huge cause of action here against Fox and ESPN....all these back door deals are going to cause havoc when you have schools (and creditors) of those schools waiting.
"The Oregon Ducks are the glue"?!?!?!? If they're the glue, they're that cheap Walmart shit that dissolves if it gets wet. Three teams have already left! Three more are about to pull the trigger. What glue?!?!
Beautifully said. It’s easy to blame the TV networks for sprinkling money around, but the truth is the institutions that have absolutely raped athletes for decades and made money hand-over-fist for themselves have an insatiable appetite for cash and will leave history/tradition in the rear view for more money.
I think it's a sick ecosystem at this point. Both play a part. Both are currently unhinged entities that are only self fulfilling and not looking at the long term effects.
I don't know how this will play out, but I know this may be the last year I'm fully invested with college football. My money will just go to the Pro game and bypass what is becoming a professional minor league.
As I've previously mentioned I think there's some opportunities for the FTC to step in and put the TV contracts back into a Collegiate Athletics frame. If the PAC explodes I imagine OSU and WSU will help lead the charge on the legal challenges.
Been saying this too. I think if the Pac implodes and other ACC schools get left behind I think lawsuits are inevitable.
The pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction vs where we were 30-40 years ago, to the point where large public universities budgets are being directly impacted by private institutions.
I think it gets real when the Big 10 says we are not going to incude all 4 - we'll take WA for now, and 1 of Stanford or Oregon. I do not see them filling up 4 and clog up their ranks.
I cant see Big 12 taking more than 1 more.
How is it TV can find money to add 4 to Big 12 and 4 to Big 10 but cant find money on a stand alone basis? OSU and WSU be damned.....but I can't see this being in anyone's interest.
Maybe, the c;ouds clear, networks realize this and get real;
I've heard people like Greg Sankey and Jim Delaney make comments that suggest they are cognizant of the potential for antitrust lawsuits if they try to go the gated community route and set up their own CFB league featuring just the top 40 or so brands. That's why they seem intent on keeping access to the CFP realistically available for all. Problem is the CFP alone doesn't make up for what these schools would lose in regular season TV money if their conference gets left behind.
As soon as Apple TV+ becomes the only option for PAC media then the consumer just got economically disadvantaged by the Horizontal relationships that the conferences represent. Essentially it was allowable for the conferences to organize grant of rights and collective media bargaining right up to the point where one conference was able to strangle the media options for another.
Could you say more about how FTC intervention might look in practice? Is there anything to be done pre-emptively to preserve value vs. waiting for everything to implode?
The quick and dirty of it is that it's illegal for competitors in the economy to group up (engage in Horizontal Conduct) for collective bargaining if that grouping results in "limited competition, leads to higher prices, or hinders other businesses from entering the market".
In the case of schools such as the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Washington State University , Clemson, FSU, Washington, etc. they see their potential media earnings artificially depressed because the schools in the Big-10 and the SEC have formed advantageous horizontal relationships. These relationships clearly advantage the earnings of members such as Rutgers and Vanderbilt above the intrinsic value of their product and to the detriment of programs that would see higher compensation from the intrinsic value of their product.
If the FTC steps in and the court agrees then ALL of the existing media contracts negotiated through conferences would be nullified. This would force each individual school to negotiate their media contract with Fox, ESPN, Apple TV+ etc. in a one-on-one negotiation just as Notre Dame does today. That essentially gets the conferences out of the media contracts business and reverts them to being responsible for officiating, scheduling and championships. If that happens then schools no longer receive a direct financial advantage from joining any particular conference and without the grant of rights in place they are free to go back to joining conferences based on traditions, academics and regional concerns.
That's the essence of the FTC intervention idea. I would want the situation however to evolve one further step and for Congress to take legislative action. Have you ever wondered why the NFL is able to negotiate media contracts for the teams who are all economic competitors? It's because of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 that was passed to allow the AFL-NFL merger and it grants the NFL an antitrust waiver to have the NFL negotiate every teams media contract. If Congress were to take up the current proposed NIL legislation that essentially forces NIL payments to be recorded and taxable then add an antitrust exemption to the NCAA as a fiduciary for college athletics then the NCAA gets put back in charge of College Athletics.
Players would then have a 100% legal and regulated way to receive NIL payments without boosters essentially violating the pay-to-play rules. Conference realignment gets halted and most likely reversed. Conferences can then focus on quality officiating, game scheduling and organizing the conference championships. School retain their NIL for merchandising revenue.
The role for the NCAA is a major change however. It negotiates with all the media partners to ensure broad access to sporting events and does so with a student athlete first, fans second, individual programs third perspective. Negotiating a policy on revenue distribution would need to be hammered out. A hybrid approach would I think be best that ensures all schools get enough money to run their programs but likely offers a ratings based differential for the programs that have a higher valued product. It would somewhat level the playing field financially but not totally. Alabama and Ohio St. games get the highest ratings so they see a nice revenue check for that benefit to the overall sport. Nobody watches Vanderbilt games but they continue to get enough money to run their program and maintain the tradition.
100% this is what needs to happen. Even with an antitrust exemption I agree some kind of hybrid approach would be the best. I think we’ve seen what happens when one side has all the power in dictating terms.
Also I don’t imagine it would be too different a model. The NCAA already does that with March Madness, so I’m sure it could do the same with CFP revenue. Hell, maybe even find a way to fold the FCS into it as well so they get more exposure for the non FBS conferences.
Wow, thanks for such a thoughtful and detailed response. Hopefully some leaders at the state level can at least gum up the works to buy some time for Washington to get their act together. Clearly this would be a heavy lift, but one I believe it worthwhile.
Correction: 50 schools in the top media markets, not the Top 50 schools. UCLA is not a national powerhouse in anything. It’s just in West LA/Beverly Hills.
This is why that other than football why are there not subsets of D 1 sports? Aside from a few Olympic sports such as mens volleyball (Hawaii, Cal St. Long Beach), mens hockey (Minn Duluth, Quinipiac) or skiing (Utah, Vermont). Very few D1 schools have any chance of winning team titles unless you are a top tier P4 conference. With state of pac no longer p5
I think it's going to be even less than the top 50. It seems like this round of realignment is the first step towards a breakaway of the 25-30 schools who turn a profit from athletics.
It's a fascinating conundrum: how you create meaning in this new world optimized for helmet programs to face just the right amount of randomness and adversity along the path to (re)claiming their birthright. We should be talking more about this as a bubble that could, you know, pop someday.
The Pac-12 is a great conference with loads of rich history. I keep thinking about all the great players and coaches who suited up over the years. Also, the fan bases that have been left in agony and limbo for the last 14 months.
They deserved better.
Thanks for the update, John! Great summary statement. Every day that goes by with no signed deal, confusion and speculation will continue to run rampant from the media pundits and us cable/streaming customers. I have to remember that I can't control what's going now or what the future will be. I can only change where my financial resources will be allocated so, in 2024, I can subscribe to a service that will broadcast all Beavers & Ducks football games each week. Anything beyond that is not worth worrying about.
Spot on today. The TV Monster controls college football and basketball. Everything from game days to starting times to replays to conference affiliation is now dictated by TV. Tradition, rivalries, loyalty, geography, and academics be damned. This is where TV has brought us, and the Pac-12. Ironically, Larry Scott, in his infinite wisdom, was approached by ESPN several years ago when he was trying to sell equity in the league. ESPN offered to buy a piece of the Pac-12 and extend its media rights agreement into the 2030s. Scott turned it down.
Feels like a Super League is coming in the 2030s, right? And the Northwesterns and Cals of the world will not be in that one. (Maybe that'll be for the best, and the rest of us can go back to Saturday 1pm starts.)
May not wait seven years Jason. But yeah, once millions of fans blow off fantasies of a "national championship," those Saturday afternoon games may be a Godsend.
OR, Div I may become a three or four-tiered system and EACH has its' own playoffs, much as the Div I to III does now.
Completely agree that the whole situation is a mess. Maybe we have to redefine what 'end well' means. Right now, the focus is all on how much money universities can generate from broadcast rights. Sixty years ago that was a minor concern. In those days most schools had to pay to get television to broadcast a game. Top coaches were paid reasonable salaries for the scope of their jobs (Bo Schembechler, Michigan, 1969: $135,127). Perhaps the end game should be to simply get back to the basics of what college athletics were meant to be. Good luck with that.
While fixating on the media rights dollar amount, I'm concerned that the loss of value for advertising (with a streaming deal) the games on the over the air/cable/satellite carried channels, the loss of connection to the older and the rural segment of their market and alumni and fans (which happen to be larger part of the audience, and more loyal customers, and pump more $s in in the long run), the loss of new customer recruitment from channel surfers, and the loss of revenue from advertisers who won't reach as large a market from poor distribution, will wind up in total costing even more. That part of the valuation equation is being largely overlooked.
Not the top 50, but the 50 Div I colleges in the largest media markets. There’s a difference. When we’re calling SMU a good fit for the PAC, we’re doing so on the size of the market and nothing else. To an extent, same with SDSU. Boise State is a FAR better athletic fit for the PAC-12 but the market is too small.
I mean, why not UPenn to the ACC? Rice to the Big 12? Why not Cal State-Long Beach to the PAC-12 for baseball or something?
There's already a two-tiered system among the Div I in football, this may just add another tier or two? 125 FCS teams and 129 FBS teams may just morph into another configuration, with perhaps those 50-60 schools--the perennial Top 25s in football and a handful of ambitious pretenders--in an "elite" division. Stay tuned.
You are right on target. TV controls everything and they are on a mission to shed the smaller schools. In the process they will destroy much of what many of us love about rivalry and tradition.
The best days of 2023 were joining Bald Face Truth and getting married at 66 years old. John thank you, I love your articles, and I hang onto your words.
The new developments are sending the PAC 12 into chaos, so many unknowns. What I do know is you’ll keep us updated, every day, every hour. Stay Calm and Conzano on! Go Beavs!
Well...I'm just gonna say it, but it truly sucks being Wazzu or the Beavs at this point in time. UW, Oregon, Cal, and Stanford gets some varying degrees of consideration from the B1G. While the Arizona schools and Utah have Big XII eyes locked on them. What does that leave? Wazzu and Oregon State as the undesirable left-overs. It makes me very sick having that thought of everyone departing for bigger and better things while Wazzu and Oregon State having to be relegated to whatever obscurity or irrelevance. *sigh* The Pac-8/10/12 was a fun ride while it lasted. The traditions & pageantry, the rivalries, and the road trips.
They need to have Yorkmark on the phone. If super conferences are the future, they need to get in now! The BIG20, SEC, or even the ACC aren't looking. Sell the b12 that they too bring Portland and Seattle. If they have to sit on the sidelines too long they will be in the Mt west.
b12 could add the following to make it to 19, take your pick on 20 if it is even needed.
Utah
ASU
UA
SDSU
OSU
WSU
Add them to the existing 13, is that super enough for you?
I am just looking for the silver lining. I think there is a path to keep every existing PAC school in a major conference. Even if the PAC is eliminated.
Kliavkoff was hired to read & navigate the entertainment landscape. Instead, he put the blinders on and plodded forward, taking "blindside" hits as he has muddled through.
Make no mistake: Larry Scott put the Conference on its current path towards ruin, but George Kliavkoff has not done nearly enough to appreciably move the Conference off this path.
In Toto, this is profoundly sad & disappointing on so many levels.
If the ship sinks, bad hire. Should have known the media market better and told them to sign the deal last year that was on par with the current Big-12 deal. Very much critical misstep.
Great summation, JC. I'll echo my earlier comments, in paraphase: I feel duped, dumped on, mislead, played, taken for granted, ignored and dismissed. If GK is guilty of anything, I'd say it was trusting the word of the snake oil saleman Bret Yormark. If he was aleep at the wheel when the LA schools defected, its also true they never asked to discuss their concerns before bolting.
It hurts, it saddens me, to witness the vultures picking at the carcas. We do deserve better.
I appreciate today’s column, John, and also notice something: there’s a resignation to your tone. You don’t explicitly write that the PAC-12 is finished, but it sure feels that way after reading the column (and so many of the comments).
I noticed that too. I think John, believed this would work out for the pac. This is late in the 4th and they ae down 3 scores.
Can they pull it out? If they do will it propel them in coming years? From what I am reading in the World Wide Interweb, the promises of a rewarding media deal are empty. I always felt that they should get this deal done, bring in SDSU and spend the next 5 years showing UCLA the error of their ways. The PAC needed LA for longevity.
Well lying about an election that wasn’t stolen was great for democracy. It’ll cost them billions. So I really doubt the Murdoch’s care about the integrity or history of college athletics. Then again the Murdoch’s are despised in both Australia and England. Some countries even ban their “news” from being on the air. For good reason.
Having to buy a subscription on top of having a cable bill to view all the other college games.... that’s tough. And giving incentives to the schools for the number of people to sign up specifically for PAC football is like asking kids in high school and younger to sell cookies door to door to help the traveling component of the team. What.... is Bo Nix or Penix going to go door to door and ask for sign ups?! The whole it’s on your apple phone for free is not accurate without paying the freight for the game to be shown on said apple phone. I don’t care how Apple advertises it, are you really going to get enough regardless of Alumni base to sign up for extra fee’s per month to just watch football? As a die hard fan as I am of college football... I’m not going to do it. Arizona with their basketball prowess should jet for a guaranteed greener pasture in the B12. Gambling is exactly what got this league in trouble with Larry Scott and his band of merry Presidents when the PAC Network came about. Role the dice again and crap out? Truly though this is sad for the schools that can’t jump to another league. OSU deserves better. WAZU’s administration is on par with ASU’s ... that is to say not good. Stanford doesn’t care about sports really. Cal is broke financially athletically. This is bad. It didn’t have to get here.
Welcome to the age of "scale", good luck if you had a fondness for anything local or regional. You either fit into the plans of the industry scaling up to mega proportions or you fall into disrepair.
Just read a majority of the comments. My question, as dyed in the wool "Left Coasters", how many of us give a rats about following SMU , UNLV, Colorado State, and all the others. Like drinking box wine after being used to Oregon Pinot Noir. I remain strongly in favor of taking the survivors we love, OSU, WSU, Stanford, Cal, the Ducks if they ever return to Planet Earth, and having a nice, relaxed, comfortable and entertaining Pac Ivy League West. Bask in our Academics, watch a few games in person during the afternoons, and once again live in reality. The greed has to go, but the spirit and love of alma mater shall survive. Just sayin', Charlie
Totally agree. But these schools are so overcommitted to making football work that they have to stretch their necks out too far. (See UCLA) I love the idea of it all, but that simply will never happen. And Uncle Phil desperately wants a championship, Oregon doesn't spend all of this money so that they can hold onto their quaint and charming past. But here's to you, that's a lovely vision. I'd trade the chance to be super competitive in a heartbeat for that reality.
“The greed has to go, but the spirit and love of alma mater shall survive. “ Thanks for this Charlie, I needed a reminder of what’s really important! Well played😊
I'm disgusted by the hypocrisy of the colleges and NCAA begging Congress to help them clamp down on NIL because they think athletes trying to make money is ruining college sports, and yet look at what these schools/conferences are doing chasing the almighty dollar for themselves.
At this point, unless an intrepid state attorney general steps forward to protect the interests of his/her taxpayers, I fear the chase is over.
That may be the only hope some of these lower-brand Power 5 schools have. So many of them are heavily leveraged paying for facilities and coaches, all reliant on them getting that equal share of the big money. If conference realignment cuts schools like OSU/WSU off at the knees, they're in trouble.
As a Cal fan I have wondered ever since the UCLA-USC announcement if it might be better for Cal to just drop out of big-time football (hold the jokes, we are hanging on to memories of the Tedford era for dear life over here) and move on.
But the truth is, that stadium renovation debt isn't gonna pay itself off. You bought it, you own it. That's where we are.
Cal has a couple things going for it (elite academics, large TV market) that may save it from being left out. But yeah, you can't very well pay off that stadium, not to mention fund all those other sports, if you're only getting paychecks from the Ivy League.
Elite academics does not equate to touchdowns or baskets made. I’m sick
Of getting academics thrown around as some sort of elitist benchmark. The laws of thermodynamics are the same at Stanford as they are at OSU. So spare me that red herring argument.
Take it up with the college presidents, not me. They make these decisions, and all indications are it's something many of them care about when deciding what conference to affiliate with, and who they invite into their own conference.
These are schools and not the professional ranks. So academics is goimg to be part of it all.
Does the Ivy League issue paychecks or is it like a country club where you have to pay an initiation fee? 😂
If you inquire about membership rather than waiting for the tap, you are automatically disqualified. Ditto asking about fees prior to your interview.
I learned a long time ago, the hard way, not to underestimate an AG with an axe to grind. They have an enormous amount of power, and a robust set of tools they can use to gum up the works well beyond state borders. Hopefully someone steps up before it's too late.
Would not be surprised if the presidents of OSU and WSU have already had conversations with their respective AGs. Maybe that's why neither appears to be panicking (yet).
A bandaid on a severed limb won't work. What gets lost in this discussion is that the B10 and soon SEC schools will have >$60M/year more than the B12/ACC schools and will effectively price those schools out of the market.
Have a great coach? Good luck keeping them. Want a key recruit? Better hope they are open to a discounted NIL deal to play for you. Want to match the scouting and recruiting muscle of the big 2 schools? Good luck with that.
An aggressive stance will be to force a payout to the peer university (think UCLA/Cal situation). Anything beyond that is simply a death blow to both.
Yep, there is a huge cause of action here against Fox and ESPN....all these back door deals are going to cause havoc when you have schools (and creditors) of those schools waiting.
If I were an OR or WA resident, I'd be making a few calls / writing a few letters today, that's for sure.
No kidding. Sounds like an instant bankruptcy and foreclosure coming. There's no way whatsoever for OSU, WSU this is sustainable.
I don't know if it is for anyone....traveling the country to play every major amd minor sport? Time zones, late games for TV. This is nonsense
Traditional TV is collapsing as well, and at some point it does, and we are left with this haphazard mess.
Soon to be Power FOUR. Wow, who coulda predicted?
Really good piece by Dan Wetzel on that today.
"The Oregon Ducks are the glue"?!?!?!? If they're the glue, they're that cheap Walmart shit that dissolves if it gets wet. Three teams have already left! Three more are about to pull the trigger. What glue?!?!
Beautifully said. It’s easy to blame the TV networks for sprinkling money around, but the truth is the institutions that have absolutely raped athletes for decades and made money hand-over-fist for themselves have an insatiable appetite for cash and will leave history/tradition in the rear view for more money.
I think it's a sick ecosystem at this point. Both play a part. Both are currently unhinged entities that are only self fulfilling and not looking at the long term effects.
I don't know how this will play out, but I know this may be the last year I'm fully invested with college football. My money will just go to the Pro game and bypass what is becoming a professional minor league.
As I've previously mentioned I think there's some opportunities for the FTC to step in and put the TV contracts back into a Collegiate Athletics frame. If the PAC explodes I imagine OSU and WSU will help lead the charge on the legal challenges.
I think you may be right.
Been saying this too. I think if the Pac implodes and other ACC schools get left behind I think lawsuits are inevitable.
The pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction vs where we were 30-40 years ago, to the point where large public universities budgets are being directly impacted by private institutions.
I think it gets real when the Big 10 says we are not going to incude all 4 - we'll take WA for now, and 1 of Stanford or Oregon. I do not see them filling up 4 and clog up their ranks.
I cant see Big 12 taking more than 1 more.
How is it TV can find money to add 4 to Big 12 and 4 to Big 10 but cant find money on a stand alone basis? OSU and WSU be damned.....but I can't see this being in anyone's interest.
Maybe, the c;ouds clear, networks realize this and get real;
I've heard people like Greg Sankey and Jim Delaney make comments that suggest they are cognizant of the potential for antitrust lawsuits if they try to go the gated community route and set up their own CFB league featuring just the top 40 or so brands. That's why they seem intent on keeping access to the CFP realistically available for all. Problem is the CFP alone doesn't make up for what these schools would lose in regular season TV money if their conference gets left behind.
As soon as Apple TV+ becomes the only option for PAC media then the consumer just got economically disadvantaged by the Horizontal relationships that the conferences represent. Essentially it was allowable for the conferences to organize grant of rights and collective media bargaining right up to the point where one conference was able to strangle the media options for another.
By what legal basis if the tv contract expires and teams are free, while the PAC-12 implodes do to zero tv monies?
Could you say more about how FTC intervention might look in practice? Is there anything to be done pre-emptively to preserve value vs. waiting for everything to implode?
Here is a link to the FTC's page on Anticompetitive behavior: https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/anticompetitive-practices
The quick and dirty of it is that it's illegal for competitors in the economy to group up (engage in Horizontal Conduct) for collective bargaining if that grouping results in "limited competition, leads to higher prices, or hinders other businesses from entering the market".
In the case of schools such as the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, Washington State University , Clemson, FSU, Washington, etc. they see their potential media earnings artificially depressed because the schools in the Big-10 and the SEC have formed advantageous horizontal relationships. These relationships clearly advantage the earnings of members such as Rutgers and Vanderbilt above the intrinsic value of their product and to the detriment of programs that would see higher compensation from the intrinsic value of their product.
If the FTC steps in and the court agrees then ALL of the existing media contracts negotiated through conferences would be nullified. This would force each individual school to negotiate their media contract with Fox, ESPN, Apple TV+ etc. in a one-on-one negotiation just as Notre Dame does today. That essentially gets the conferences out of the media contracts business and reverts them to being responsible for officiating, scheduling and championships. If that happens then schools no longer receive a direct financial advantage from joining any particular conference and without the grant of rights in place they are free to go back to joining conferences based on traditions, academics and regional concerns.
That's the essence of the FTC intervention idea. I would want the situation however to evolve one further step and for Congress to take legislative action. Have you ever wondered why the NFL is able to negotiate media contracts for the teams who are all economic competitors? It's because of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 that was passed to allow the AFL-NFL merger and it grants the NFL an antitrust waiver to have the NFL negotiate every teams media contract. If Congress were to take up the current proposed NIL legislation that essentially forces NIL payments to be recorded and taxable then add an antitrust exemption to the NCAA as a fiduciary for college athletics then the NCAA gets put back in charge of College Athletics.
Players would then have a 100% legal and regulated way to receive NIL payments without boosters essentially violating the pay-to-play rules. Conference realignment gets halted and most likely reversed. Conferences can then focus on quality officiating, game scheduling and organizing the conference championships. School retain their NIL for merchandising revenue.
The role for the NCAA is a major change however. It negotiates with all the media partners to ensure broad access to sporting events and does so with a student athlete first, fans second, individual programs third perspective. Negotiating a policy on revenue distribution would need to be hammered out. A hybrid approach would I think be best that ensures all schools get enough money to run their programs but likely offers a ratings based differential for the programs that have a higher valued product. It would somewhat level the playing field financially but not totally. Alabama and Ohio St. games get the highest ratings so they see a nice revenue check for that benefit to the overall sport. Nobody watches Vanderbilt games but they continue to get enough money to run their program and maintain the tradition.
100% this is what needs to happen. Even with an antitrust exemption I agree some kind of hybrid approach would be the best. I think we’ve seen what happens when one side has all the power in dictating terms.
Also I don’t imagine it would be too different a model. The NCAA already does that with March Madness, so I’m sure it could do the same with CFP revenue. Hell, maybe even find a way to fold the FCS into it as well so they get more exposure for the non FBS conferences.
Wow, thanks for such a thoughtful and detailed response. Hopefully some leaders at the state level can at least gum up the works to buy some time for Washington to get their act together. Clearly this would be a heavy lift, but one I believe it worthwhile.
Collegiality is dead.
Mutuality is dead.
Welcome to the new age of Greed and Fear. The 80's ain't got nothing on this one!
I wonder what happens to anything outside of the Top 50 schools.
Correction: 50 schools in the top media markets, not the Top 50 schools. UCLA is not a national powerhouse in anything. It’s just in West LA/Beverly Hills.
This is why that other than football why are there not subsets of D 1 sports? Aside from a few Olympic sports such as mens volleyball (Hawaii, Cal St. Long Beach), mens hockey (Minn Duluth, Quinipiac) or skiing (Utah, Vermont). Very few D1 schools have any chance of winning team titles unless you are a top tier P4 conference. With state of pac no longer p5
The MPSF and Big West membership make entirely too much sense to be employed for any other sport besides mvb.
Top 50 by what ranking?
TV market?
Basically, large-ish (20-50K) colleges in large media markets. Take 50 of those. That’s about it.
I think it's going to be even less than the top 50. It seems like this round of realignment is the first step towards a breakaway of the 25-30 schools who turn a profit from athletics.
They won't be going away, but they will be more FCS-like than the non-Power 5 is now.
It's a fascinating conundrum: how you create meaning in this new world optimized for helmet programs to face just the right amount of randomness and adversity along the path to (re)claiming their birthright. We should be talking more about this as a bubble that could, you know, pop someday.
The pendulum does swing, back. The question is, when and how long from now?
The Pac-12 is a great conference with loads of rich history. I keep thinking about all the great players and coaches who suited up over the years. Also, the fan bases that have been left in agony and limbo for the last 14 months.
They deserved better.
Thanks for the update, John! Great summary statement. Every day that goes by with no signed deal, confusion and speculation will continue to run rampant from the media pundits and us cable/streaming customers. I have to remember that I can't control what's going now or what the future will be. I can only change where my financial resources will be allocated so, in 2024, I can subscribe to a service that will broadcast all Beavers & Ducks football games each week. Anything beyond that is not worth worrying about.
GO BEAVS!!!
Spot on today. The TV Monster controls college football and basketball. Everything from game days to starting times to replays to conference affiliation is now dictated by TV. Tradition, rivalries, loyalty, geography, and academics be damned. This is where TV has brought us, and the Pac-12. Ironically, Larry Scott, in his infinite wisdom, was approached by ESPN several years ago when he was trying to sell equity in the league. ESPN offered to buy a piece of the Pac-12 and extend its media rights agreement into the 2030s. Scott turned it down.
What they'd give to have that deal right now...
I am not sure this is going to end well for any school outside the top 50 or so.
Feels like a Super League is coming in the 2030s, right? And the Northwesterns and Cals of the world will not be in that one. (Maybe that'll be for the best, and the rest of us can go back to Saturday 1pm starts.)
May not wait seven years Jason. But yeah, once millions of fans blow off fantasies of a "national championship," those Saturday afternoon games may be a Godsend.
OR, Div I may become a three or four-tiered system and EACH has its' own playoffs, much as the Div I to III does now.
Completely agree that the whole situation is a mess. Maybe we have to redefine what 'end well' means. Right now, the focus is all on how much money universities can generate from broadcast rights. Sixty years ago that was a minor concern. In those days most schools had to pay to get television to broadcast a game. Top coaches were paid reasonable salaries for the scope of their jobs (Bo Schembechler, Michigan, 1969: $135,127). Perhaps the end game should be to simply get back to the basics of what college athletics were meant to be. Good luck with that.
I don't know ... $135,127 was A LOT of money back in 1969.
Yup... around $1 million todays $s. Alabama pays Saban $7million.
I'm pretty sure it won't.
While fixating on the media rights dollar amount, I'm concerned that the loss of value for advertising (with a streaming deal) the games on the over the air/cable/satellite carried channels, the loss of connection to the older and the rural segment of their market and alumni and fans (which happen to be larger part of the audience, and more loyal customers, and pump more $s in in the long run), the loss of new customer recruitment from channel surfers, and the loss of revenue from advertisers who won't reach as large a market from poor distribution, will wind up in total costing even more. That part of the valuation equation is being largely overlooked.
Not the top 50, but the 50 Div I colleges in the largest media markets. There’s a difference. When we’re calling SMU a good fit for the PAC, we’re doing so on the size of the market and nothing else. To an extent, same with SDSU. Boise State is a FAR better athletic fit for the PAC-12 but the market is too small.
I mean, why not UPenn to the ACC? Rice to the Big 12? Why not Cal State-Long Beach to the PAC-12 for baseball or something?
None of this makes sense. It’s all media markets.
There's already a two-tiered system among the Div I in football, this may just add another tier or two? 125 FCS teams and 129 FBS teams may just morph into another configuration, with perhaps those 50-60 schools--the perennial Top 25s in football and a handful of ambitious pretenders--in an "elite" division. Stay tuned.
You are right on target. TV controls everything and they are on a mission to shed the smaller schools. In the process they will destroy much of what many of us love about rivalry and tradition.
They're just shredding the landscape.
The LA schools going to the Big 10 makes zero sense outside of gross TV revenue. Travel alone will eat like 10% of that.
The best days of 2023 were joining Bald Face Truth and getting married at 66 years old. John thank you, I love your articles, and I hang onto your words.
The new developments are sending the PAC 12 into chaos, so many unknowns. What I do know is you’ll keep us updated, every day, every hour. Stay Calm and Conzano on! Go Beavs!
Stay Calm and Canzano On! <- where can I get that t-shirt??
I know, that just came to me.😂
Seriously, John settles me down, except for today’s post…🫤
Well...I'm just gonna say it, but it truly sucks being Wazzu or the Beavs at this point in time. UW, Oregon, Cal, and Stanford gets some varying degrees of consideration from the B1G. While the Arizona schools and Utah have Big XII eyes locked on them. What does that leave? Wazzu and Oregon State as the undesirable left-overs. It makes me very sick having that thought of everyone departing for bigger and better things while Wazzu and Oregon State having to be relegated to whatever obscurity or irrelevance. *sigh* The Pac-8/10/12 was a fun ride while it lasted. The traditions & pageantry, the rivalries, and the road trips.
They need to have Yorkmark on the phone. If super conferences are the future, they need to get in now! The BIG20, SEC, or even the ACC aren't looking. Sell the b12 that they too bring Portland and Seattle. If they have to sit on the sidelines too long they will be in the Mt west.
b12 could add the following to make it to 19, take your pick on 20 if it is even needed.
Utah
ASU
UA
SDSU
OSU
WSU
Add them to the existing 13, is that super enough for you?
I am just looking for the silver lining. I think there is a path to keep every existing PAC school in a major conference. Even if the PAC is eliminated.
The BIg-12 doesn't have the contract to add that many schools is my understanding. The networks would have to finance it. Will they?
Nah
Kliavkoff was hired to read & navigate the entertainment landscape. Instead, he put the blinders on and plodded forward, taking "blindside" hits as he has muddled through.
Make no mistake: Larry Scott put the Conference on its current path towards ruin, but George Kliavkoff has not done nearly enough to appreciably move the Conference off this path.
In Toto, this is profoundly sad & disappointing on so many levels.
Kliavkoff is a disaster
Worst ***ing poker player ever
in retrospect, John, was George a good or bad hire? Will he be known as George the Pac killer?
If the ship sinks, bad hire. Should have known the media market better and told them to sign the deal last year that was on par with the current Big-12 deal. Very much critical misstep.
Great summation, JC. I'll echo my earlier comments, in paraphase: I feel duped, dumped on, mislead, played, taken for granted, ignored and dismissed. If GK is guilty of anything, I'd say it was trusting the word of the snake oil saleman Bret Yormark. If he was aleep at the wheel when the LA schools defected, its also true they never asked to discuss their concerns before bolting.
It hurts, it saddens me, to witness the vultures picking at the carcas. We do deserve better.
Excellent thoughts. Thank you.
I appreciate today’s column, John, and also notice something: there’s a resignation to your tone. You don’t explicitly write that the PAC-12 is finished, but it sure feels that way after reading the column (and so many of the comments).
I noticed that too. I think John, believed this would work out for the pac. This is late in the 4th and they ae down 3 scores.
Can they pull it out? If they do will it propel them in coming years? From what I am reading in the World Wide Interweb, the promises of a rewarding media deal are empty. I always felt that they should get this deal done, bring in SDSU and spend the next 5 years showing UCLA the error of their ways. The PAC needed LA for longevity.
...Pacific Division of the Big10 Anyone?
I'm with John on this one. I really believed in Kliavkoff... until I didn't. THIS is what we've been waiting a year for??? Sigh.
Gawd Fox is the devil. In everything!
Fox Sports is NOT Fox News
Your leftist world view is showing again...why bother with facts when you can have ideology?
Well lying about an election that wasn’t stolen was great for democracy. It’ll cost them billions. So I really doubt the Murdoch’s care about the integrity or history of college athletics. Then again the Murdoch’s are despised in both Australia and England. Some countries even ban their “news” from being on the air. For good reason.
John,
Having to buy a subscription on top of having a cable bill to view all the other college games.... that’s tough. And giving incentives to the schools for the number of people to sign up specifically for PAC football is like asking kids in high school and younger to sell cookies door to door to help the traveling component of the team. What.... is Bo Nix or Penix going to go door to door and ask for sign ups?! The whole it’s on your apple phone for free is not accurate without paying the freight for the game to be shown on said apple phone. I don’t care how Apple advertises it, are you really going to get enough regardless of Alumni base to sign up for extra fee’s per month to just watch football? As a die hard fan as I am of college football... I’m not going to do it. Arizona with their basketball prowess should jet for a guaranteed greener pasture in the B12. Gambling is exactly what got this league in trouble with Larry Scott and his band of merry Presidents when the PAC Network came about. Role the dice again and crap out? Truly though this is sad for the schools that can’t jump to another league. OSU deserves better. WAZU’s administration is on par with ASU’s ... that is to say not good. Stanford doesn’t care about sports really. Cal is broke financially athletically. This is bad. It didn’t have to get here.
Welcome to the age of "scale", good luck if you had a fondness for anything local or regional. You either fit into the plans of the industry scaling up to mega proportions or you fall into disrepair.
Really sad to lose what was so sacred to so many.
The New World Order.
Just read a majority of the comments. My question, as dyed in the wool "Left Coasters", how many of us give a rats about following SMU , UNLV, Colorado State, and all the others. Like drinking box wine after being used to Oregon Pinot Noir. I remain strongly in favor of taking the survivors we love, OSU, WSU, Stanford, Cal, the Ducks if they ever return to Planet Earth, and having a nice, relaxed, comfortable and entertaining Pac Ivy League West. Bask in our Academics, watch a few games in person during the afternoons, and once again live in reality. The greed has to go, but the spirit and love of alma mater shall survive. Just sayin', Charlie
Totally agree. But these schools are so overcommitted to making football work that they have to stretch their necks out too far. (See UCLA) I love the idea of it all, but that simply will never happen. And Uncle Phil desperately wants a championship, Oregon doesn't spend all of this money so that they can hold onto their quaint and charming past. But here's to you, that's a lovely vision. I'd trade the chance to be super competitive in a heartbeat for that reality.
“The greed has to go, but the spirit and love of alma mater shall survive. “ Thanks for this Charlie, I needed a reminder of what’s really important! Well played😊
@Charley, whilst I appreciate the sentiment and picture you paint, I cannot go there. Not yet. Perhaps I am living in denial.