So pathetic but sadly doesn't seem like any other option.
I wonder if somehow OSU WSU can keep using the Pac brand and get those teams to merge maybe they can get a bit higher slice of future TV revenue or something. MWC just has a tiny pie to split up.
with the AAC seemingly only interested in adding Army, and none of those teams interested in adding a couple of schools 2 time zones away, it does look like the MWC is the only option
OSU/WSU have been pushing for a '
reverse merger' with the MWC because they want to have a 2-way split of current & future PAC revenue. Mainly they are looking at March Madness money because of the strange formula for distribution.
(
IIRC the networks pay each conference $340,000 for each tournament game played by a conference team. The distributions are pooled into a 6-year cycle. I'm not sure, but I think the total number of appearances pooled and divided by 6 years, and the average is then distributed to the 12 teams. It's just about guaranteed to be a complex formula though. For instance, this year, 2018 is still in the pool. But is 2018's total revenue calculated as 100% or is it now 1/6th of the total? Last year, the Pac's record in the tournament was 3-4; but in 2021 it was 13-5. Those two years show 25 appearances by the PAC; 25 X 340K = 8.5M. If those two years are representative, then OSU/WSU could be looking at a 5 year distribution pool, starting in 2024, that has 20M+/- in it. When they will be looking at a media deal that pays them around 4-5M/year (the MWC current deal), an additional 2-3M year is significant)
so, OSU/WSU are very interested in keeping the PAC alive. At least they are at this point. Some of the stuff I've read suggests the PAC's assets, current & future, are significantly less than rumored; and the liabilities are significantly more. So the revenues Beavs and Cougs are hoping for may be quite a bit less than the dream
and obviously, the MWC teams would have to vote to disband the conference and jump to the PAC....which will not have any media deal in place. Meanwhile, the MWC's media deal has 3 years left. Further, the MWC deal has a significant linear TV component. The PAC was not able to secure any linear TV component when it had Oregon/Washingon and the TV markets of Portland/Seattle/SLC/Denver/Phoenix. The MWC teams would have to make a leap of faith that somehow, joining OSU/WSU in a reformatted PAC would be a good idea. That's a real stretch at this point. And the reformatted PAC wouldn't be able to just take the best teams from the MWC because in order to disband, there would have to be 9 of the 12 MWC teams voting yes. It would probably have to be all 12 teams, leaving their current media deal behind, and joining the PAC on spec and essentially a lot of blind faith that media would do right by the PAC....HA!
it could happen I guess, but at this point it looks like OSU/WSU's dream of keeping the PAC alive is a real longshot. And so is hoping for an uneven split of media revenue because all indications are that media doesn't value those two schools more than they value Boise State or San Diego State or Wyoming
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I agree that these are sad days for tradition. When I went to the UofO they were in the PAC-8. Even then, the PAC had won more NCAA championships than any other conference. And the competition among the conference members was intense, most times. But times change. The UofO used to get 15,000 people in Hayward Field for a dual track meets between Oregon and UCLA. Dual meets don't exist anymore. Oregon had a baseball team, then they spent 3 decades with no baseball team; now they have a baseball team again. And they will have to gauge how viable it is to keep a baseball team around with a travel budget that has doubled being in the BIG
OSU, the school, and the fans, have already strongly signaled they have no interest in continuing the Civil War in football/basketball. And I think the UofO, after initially saying they wanted to keep the rivalry alive has realized how difficult it will be and how little sense it makes for them to have an annual home-and-home trap game against a MWC-level school. It's just not logical
but here's the thing: the NCAA was living in a fool's paradise. They spent 70 years operating as if they had an anti-trust exemption when they didn't. They were just incredibly fortunate that no major legal challenges to the hollow system they erected had migrated thru the courts. But those challenges have migrated now. They can't put the genies of re-alignment, NIL, and the transfer portal back in the bottles. SCOTUS has strongly signaled they are ready and willing to gut what little authority the NCAA is still clinging to
it's a brave new world...the rich get richer; poor get poorer. Money doesn't talk, it swears, and that profanity is extremely loud right now
