THE HCP
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That’s pretty amazing! Growing up going to our Ducks losing every game my whole childhood, so proud they have kept things going as long as they have.
Pac 12... 11... 10... 9... 8... 7...6...5...4... POOF!
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That’s pretty amazing! Growing up going to our Ducks losing every game my whole childhood, so proud they have kept things going as long as they have.
Pinwheel1
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Well, I do love the Tampa airport....... one of the best
THE HCP
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I refuse to click on a link that starts with “sportskeeda”
wizenheimer
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https://www.sportskeeda.com/amp/col...e-kliavkoff-looks-last-minute-revival-reports
the guy who tweeted that made a name for himself over the last year by being wrong more than anybody. He made up for it by tweeting just about every possibility he could think of so he could point to being right....as long as you ignored his .005 batting average
that's not to say he's wrong about this, but there is an 18M exit fee from the AAC and ESPN owns the media rights to the AAC
the remaining AAC teams are: Charlotte, East Carolina, FAU, Memphis, Navy, North Texas, Rice, South Florida, SMU, Temple, Tulane, Tulsa, UAB, and UTSA
lots of travel for the remaining PAC teams and Stanford probably won't be part of the deal. The AAC's deal with ESPN pays each school about 7M/year. Hard to see the revamped PAC getting more than 10M/year per team. Not sure ESPN would be bidding. It might be back to Apple for a streaming deal
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wizenheimer
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I think the hope from OSU/WSU might be they can steal Tulane, Temple, Memphis, South Florida, etc. Maybe more and at the same time convince the MWC conference teams to leave and join the PAC. Problem with that is the MWC exit fee is 34M instead of the AAC exit fee of 18M
thing is that the AAC media deal with ESPN pays each school 6-7M/year. The MWC media deal is with CBS/FOX and pays each school about 4-5M/year. And if Stanford opts out of the revamped PAC, and there are plenty of indications they would...where is the revamped PAC going to for a media deal? And could they even expect to approach 10M/year because OSU/WSU/Cal don't seem to have any significant media leverage
BassPlaya
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Well....irregardless.....
Duckhook
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Duuuuude.....
Tince
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Mediocre Man
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Reminds me of the joke about the The HCP at dinner
He said to Mrs HCP that he was going going to eat his entire Big Mac before she could count to 3. She starts “uno, dos” then to her amazement, and horror, The Big Mac vanished without a tres
He said to Mrs HCP that he was going going to eat his entire Big Mac before she could count to 3. She starts “uno, dos” then to her amazement, and horror, The Big Mac vanished without a tres
SharpesTriumph
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So the MWC media deal goes through 2025 or 2026? I'd think it makes more sense for the four Pac schools to just wait this out for a few years - maybe for a couple seasons do a four team conference home and away games - so 6 conference games - plus add more nonconference games. Then grab the best 4-6 MWC teams to reform the PAC after that media deal ends and the exit fee is gone or much lower. Keep the conference as all west coast - it would be the only one in the country. Can sell recruits/fans/TV partners/etc the opportunity to not have crazy travel like the B1G schools. Can sell a trip to Hawaii - way more fun to travel in the winter than Maryland/Nebraska/Ohio/Michigan/etc. Try to lure in BYU with a larger cut of the fees or allow them to keep their own network or something. Could adjust the nonconference schedule the next few years to try and add some of those matchups even earlier.
Hawaii
Boise State
UNLV
San Diego State
Colorado State
Fresno State
BYU???
Yes that conference would still be below the SEC/B1G but it may rival the Big12/ACC/etc for 3rd in the country. Having cross country travel doesn't make any sense for the names of teams being thrown out there.
Hawaii
Boise State
UNLV
San Diego State
Colorado State
Fresno State
BYU???
Yes that conference would still be below the SEC/B1G but it may rival the Big12/ACC/etc for 3rd in the country. Having cross country travel doesn't make any sense for the names of teams being thrown out there.
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I don't see how that could come close to rivaling the Big12/ACC for 3rd in the country. It might be on a level comparable to the AAC.
Still, I agree that's probably their best bet.
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So no TV deal next year and then try to find a TV broadcast partner for the newly merged Pac-?/MWC.
If Apple was the only one to offer the Pac-12 a deal when there were schools like Oregon and Washington I don't see the new Pac - ? getting much of an offer.
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BTW, amidst all the hand-wringing about the demise of the Pac-12, I don't think the Big-12 has been given nearly enough credit for how proactive and effective they have been in keeping their conference relevant after Oklahoma and Texas's departure. Have to say I'm more than a little jealous of their leadership.
kjironman1
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If they will give me a couple million I'll gladly take my Betamovie camcorder to the games and put it on You Tube.
wizenheimer
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* BYU has joined the Big-12
* the MWC media deal runs thru 2026. So, the 4 PAC teams would then have to play 2 seasons without media money to support all of their sports teams, and to qualify for NCAA Division 1, they need 16 sports teams. FCS requires 14. OSU's athletic department is in debt, and running at a deficit each year. They have now tacked on 2M/year in debt service for the Reser expansion on top of that. And all this has happened while OSU has been receiving their share of Pac-12 media GOR, which is around 30M/year. Keeping a Div1 athletic department alive for two years when you'd normally receive 60M but will be receiving 0 doesn't seem realistic
* to qualify as an NCAA conference, there needs to be a minimum of 8 teams. The 4 PAC teams would not be a conference and the PAC would be disbanded. Any excess monies and revenue (March Madness mostly) would be distributed to all teams in the conference in it's last legal season...which would be the 2023-24 season. That's means all 12 teams. The reason that OSU/WSU are going thru the process contortions to keep the PAC alive is because a team that leaves the conference forfeits it's claim on those monies. Meaning that the Pac-4 would get it all. So, in order to keep the PAC alive, there needs to be 8 teams in it next season, 2024-25, or it dies forever
* so, you're suggesting they go independent next season, and the season after that. Stanford would very likely go independent anyway; they would be loathe to join the MWC or AAC. Obviously, teams from the MWC make geographic sense. The problem is the MWC exit fee. It is only 17M if a team gives more than a year's notice. Otherwise it is 34M. There simply will be no media deal out there for a revamped PAC that will cover that 34M exit fee. But some teams may be willing to join the PAC for the 2025-26 season while absorbing only a 17M exit fee. But again, the Catch-22 is that unless the PAC-4, maybe the PAC-3, can find 4 or 5 teams to join NEXT season, and to join a conference that would have no signed media deal...in other words, join on spec...unless that can happen, the PAC will be dead/kaput/fini
* those exit fees are very real obstacles. AAC teams have an 18M exit fee. The problem is that there's isn't money in the media deals to cover the cost. AAC teams make 6-7M/year; MWC teams make 4-5M/year. Expecting a revamped PAC to go out into a saturated media market and secure a deal significantly larger than the AAC is not realistic. Figure on 8-9M/year with no linear TV component....and that may be too optimistic
* and no, a revamped PAC will not be on par with the Big-12 or ACC; not even in the same zip-code. It would not be a Power conference anymore. It might be more highly regarded than the current AAC or MWC, but that's not saying much if you use media deals as the gauge, and unfortunately, that's the gauge that matters
* the PAC may pull a rabbit out of it's hat and stay alive. But it sure seems like an uphill climb. Both the AAC and MWC have said the PAC teams could join their conference. The structures are there. But again, OSU/WSU especially want to get any revenue the PAC can generate and want to claim any excess monies the PAC has if it continues.
* (March Madness is probably the biggest source of future revenue. The networks pay, to conferences, $340,000 for every game a conference team plays in the tournament. The PAC pools that money and their formula for distribution is 6-year rolling average. OSU/WSU/Cal could be getting 1-2M a year for the 5 years after 2023-24. They want that money which is why they are going thru the contortions to keep the PAC alive)
Shaboid
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https://theathletic.com/4779781/202...neri/?source=pulsenewsletter&campaign=7475141
Pretty much best possible scenario? As far as "contorting" to keep the PAC alive, what other option do we have at this point? Get a loan from Stanford's endowment to stretch out payments for our stadium?
Pretty much best possible scenario? As far as "contorting" to keep the PAC alive, what other option do we have at this point? Get a loan from Stanford's endowment to stretch out payments for our stadium?
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SharpesTriumph
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Just realized Ducks are going to have the smallest endowment of all Big10 schools at 1.4 billion. Michigan has the biggest at 17 while a few schools only have 2.0. UW has over 4 while UCLA/USC are 6/8.
Oregon State is smallest in the Pac12 at 0.83 billion. UA ASU WSU UTH are all similar size to the Ducks. Stanford is a colossal $38 billion. Cal is 6.
Oregon State is smallest in the Pac12 at 0.83 billion. UA ASU WSU UTH are all similar size to the Ducks. Stanford is a colossal $38 billion. Cal is 6.
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I'm actually surprised Oregon State's is that large. Not trying to dis OSU at all, just not clear to me where that came from.
Surprised Cal, UCLA, and USC's are not larger.
barfo
bigbailes
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Make no mistake, Yormark was the biggest beneficiary of the P12 presidents being morons and passing on the ESPN money. The WWL really had no where else to go since the ACC was already locked up and B12 deal was next to run out after P12. B12 really sat there and were right (much like B12 writers) only because P12 were idiots and didn't just take the money and run. Yormark looks like a genius for sitting on his hands and taking what came to him. Yea he went out and got Houston/BYU but even if the P12 just takes the ESPN money, then it would have been interesting to see where that left the B12, but we'll never know.
blazerfan11
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https://trojanswire.usatoday.com/li...themselves-to-be-strong-armed-by-a-professor/
Pac-12, George Kliavkoff allowed themselves to be strong-armed by a professor
(excerpts, not the entire article)
Brady McCollough of the Los Angeles Times came out with a well-reported, highly-sourced examination of the collapse of the Pac-12 on Wednesday. There are several stories we need to share with you from that report, but the biggest one is that the Pac-12 listened to a wacky fringe professor with a crazy idea. George Kliavkoff, instead of asserting himself as a leader who told the Pac-12 CEO Group what had to be done in a time of crisis, allowed one university president and professor to derail the deal which would have saved the conference.
Let’s start with the general reminder that ESPN offered the Pac-12 a deal in 2022 which would have paid each school $30 million per year, very close to the $31.7 million the Big 12 arrived at for its eventual deal with ESPN. This figure would have saved the Pac-12, by all indications. Colorado and the other Four Corners schools would not have bolted.
Industry experts had said back in July of 2022, right after USC and UCLA left for the Big Ten, that the estimated media rights value of the 10-member Pac-12 was roughly $300 million, or $30 million per school. We noted this.
McCollough’s L.A. Times report noted that the Pac-12’s own internal analysis generally agreed with this estimate. McCollough reported that the Pac-12 was considering a line of negotiations in which it would make a counteroffer to ESPN which could leverage the situation and arrive at an ultimate deal which paid each school $35 million instead of $30 million. Maybe the negotiations could have at least bumped the number up to $32 million, which would have been higher than the Big 12’s $31.7 million figure.
Sounds sensible and reasonable, right?
Here’s where it all went wrong, according to McCollough, who reported the following:
“When the Pac-12 CEO group met to discuss the offer, one of the league presidents had other ideas. The president worked with a professor on his campus to come up with their own estimate of what the 10 schools should get based on their market value: $50 million.”
This was the crazy contrarian in the room. A good leader would have silenced this voice and told the CEOs to accept the deal and save the conference. Kliavkoff couldn’t — wouldn’t — do it.
One key reminder about the Pac-12’s failure/unwillingness to finalize a media rights deal in 2022 when ESPN put an offer on the table: The lack of a media deal meant that the conference continued to exist under an expiring contract (the current one which ends with this 2023-2024 college sports cycle). If the conference had agreed to a media deal in 2022, conference members would have accordingly signed a new grant of rights agreement which would have contained exit fees for any school which subsequently left the conference.
By not finalizing the media deal in 2022, the Pac-12 left itself open to defections which did not include exit fees. Colorado, Arizona State, Arizona, Utah, Oregon, and Washington have all left the Pac-12 without having to pay an exit fee. If the conference had handled its media deal and its grant of rights business in 2022, the conference would not have splintered and disbanded.
This was all very preventable, and none of it was inevitable.
Via McCollough:
“Without Texas and Oklahoma, the eight schools left in the Big 12 were looking for a new home. Kliavkoff received word from Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby that the eight were interested in coming to the Pac-12 to make a Pac-20, playing games across every time zone. The Power Five conferences would become a Power Four.”
This eerily echoes the 2011 drama in which Larry Scott pitched a Pac-16 proposal with Texas and Oklahoma, only for the Pac-12 presidents to shoot it down.
Much as Pac-12 presidents shut down Larry Scott in 2011, USC President Carol Folt shut down the idea of adding any Big 12 schools, according to McCollough.
A Pac-20 (adding eight Big 12 schools) was unrealistic, but adding two strategic Big 12 schools — at least one from the state of Texas, probably from a major media market such as Dallas-Fort Worth — would have made a lot of sense (and dollars) for the Pac-12.
It didn’t happen. Kliavkoff reportedly did not challenge Carol Folt when she shut down the idea of adding any Big 12 schools.
The number one reason the Pac-12 is dying, and the number one failure of George Kliavkoff as Pac-12 commissioner, are one and the same.
If Kliavkoff had stood his ground and told the presidents to accept the 2022 ESPN deal, instead of allowing himself to be pushed around by the CEOs and by a school president with a nutty professor, the Pac-12 would be alive today and would have a real future.
Kliavkoff, as we wrote earlier this summer, needed to tell the CEOs to stop being greedy and unrealistic. If they rejected the ESPN deal, Kliavkoff needed to submit his resignation as a threat — and a message — to a bunch of school presidents who were regularly out of touch with reality.
Alas, Kliavkoff was unwilling to lead the clueless presidents in his conference. That’s why we are where we are today.
Pac-12, George Kliavkoff allowed themselves to be strong-armed by a professor
(excerpts, not the entire article)
Brady McCollough of the Los Angeles Times came out with a well-reported, highly-sourced examination of the collapse of the Pac-12 on Wednesday. There are several stories we need to share with you from that report, but the biggest one is that the Pac-12 listened to a wacky fringe professor with a crazy idea. George Kliavkoff, instead of asserting himself as a leader who told the Pac-12 CEO Group what had to be done in a time of crisis, allowed one university president and professor to derail the deal which would have saved the conference.
Let’s start with the general reminder that ESPN offered the Pac-12 a deal in 2022 which would have paid each school $30 million per year, very close to the $31.7 million the Big 12 arrived at for its eventual deal with ESPN. This figure would have saved the Pac-12, by all indications. Colorado and the other Four Corners schools would not have bolted.
Industry experts had said back in July of 2022, right after USC and UCLA left for the Big Ten, that the estimated media rights value of the 10-member Pac-12 was roughly $300 million, or $30 million per school. We noted this.
McCollough’s L.A. Times report noted that the Pac-12’s own internal analysis generally agreed with this estimate. McCollough reported that the Pac-12 was considering a line of negotiations in which it would make a counteroffer to ESPN which could leverage the situation and arrive at an ultimate deal which paid each school $35 million instead of $30 million. Maybe the negotiations could have at least bumped the number up to $32 million, which would have been higher than the Big 12’s $31.7 million figure.
Sounds sensible and reasonable, right?
Here’s where it all went wrong, according to McCollough, who reported the following:
“When the Pac-12 CEO group met to discuss the offer, one of the league presidents had other ideas. The president worked with a professor on his campus to come up with their own estimate of what the 10 schools should get based on their market value: $50 million.”
This was the crazy contrarian in the room. A good leader would have silenced this voice and told the CEOs to accept the deal and save the conference. Kliavkoff couldn’t — wouldn’t — do it.
One key reminder about the Pac-12’s failure/unwillingness to finalize a media rights deal in 2022 when ESPN put an offer on the table: The lack of a media deal meant that the conference continued to exist under an expiring contract (the current one which ends with this 2023-2024 college sports cycle). If the conference had agreed to a media deal in 2022, conference members would have accordingly signed a new grant of rights agreement which would have contained exit fees for any school which subsequently left the conference.
By not finalizing the media deal in 2022, the Pac-12 left itself open to defections which did not include exit fees. Colorado, Arizona State, Arizona, Utah, Oregon, and Washington have all left the Pac-12 without having to pay an exit fee. If the conference had handled its media deal and its grant of rights business in 2022, the conference would not have splintered and disbanded.
This was all very preventable, and none of it was inevitable.
Via McCollough:
“Without Texas and Oklahoma, the eight schools left in the Big 12 were looking for a new home. Kliavkoff received word from Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby that the eight were interested in coming to the Pac-12 to make a Pac-20, playing games across every time zone. The Power Five conferences would become a Power Four.”
This eerily echoes the 2011 drama in which Larry Scott pitched a Pac-16 proposal with Texas and Oklahoma, only for the Pac-12 presidents to shoot it down.
Much as Pac-12 presidents shut down Larry Scott in 2011, USC President Carol Folt shut down the idea of adding any Big 12 schools, according to McCollough.
A Pac-20 (adding eight Big 12 schools) was unrealistic, but adding two strategic Big 12 schools — at least one from the state of Texas, probably from a major media market such as Dallas-Fort Worth — would have made a lot of sense (and dollars) for the Pac-12.
It didn’t happen. Kliavkoff reportedly did not challenge Carol Folt when she shut down the idea of adding any Big 12 schools.
The number one reason the Pac-12 is dying, and the number one failure of George Kliavkoff as Pac-12 commissioner, are one and the same.
If Kliavkoff had stood his ground and told the presidents to accept the 2022 ESPN deal, instead of allowing himself to be pushed around by the CEOs and by a school president with a nutty professor, the Pac-12 would be alive today and would have a real future.
Kliavkoff, as we wrote earlier this summer, needed to tell the CEOs to stop being greedy and unrealistic. If they rejected the ESPN deal, Kliavkoff needed to submit his resignation as a threat — and a message — to a bunch of school presidents who were regularly out of touch with reality.
Alas, Kliavkoff was unwilling to lead the clueless presidents in his conference. That’s why we are where we are today.
blazerfan11
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Link to LA Time article.
https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2023-08-16/pac-12-collapse-decisions-realignment-ucla-oregon
Inside the Pac-12 collapse: Four surprising moments that crushed the conference
As the calendar turned to December 2022, the Pac-12 Conference was in a precarious position.
Six months after USC and UCLA announced they were joining the Big Ten and the Pac-12 began its media rights negotiations early in response, the 10 remaining schools did not have a new TV deal in place. Worse than that, the Big 12 jumped the Pac-12 in line with ESPN and Fox, agreeing in October 2022 to extend its current deal through 2030-31.
But Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff was working on another way to save the 108-year-old conference. Multiple sources not authorized to speak publicly about negotiations shared the following outline of the plan and Pac-12 leaders’ response with The Times.
Publicly, the University of California Board of Regents’ threats to force UCLA to stay in the Pac-12 and avoid hurting UC Berkeley were viewed as posturing, bluffs to get attention and possibly some money from the departing Bruins.
Privately, Kliavkoff was deeply engaged with a small group of regents about the framework of a deal that would lead to the regents voting to block UCLA’s move — even though the regents did not want to set a precedent of overturning a monumental campus-specific decision.
The regents did the math. UCLA was supposed to make $62 million per year from the Big Ten’s new mega media rights deal. The Bruins’ travel costs to compete in the Midwest-based conference were expected to be in the range of $10 million to $12 million annually. So, the regents gave Kliavkoff a magic number. If he could guarantee the Bruins $52 million annually during the five years of the league’s next media deal, the regents promised Kliavkoff a vote heavily in favor of UCLA staying in the Pac-12.
It was not going to be easy for the remaining 10 schools to stomach giving UCLA a much bigger annual revenue share. The Pac-12’s math said that a media rights deal for 11 schools — even with the Los Angeles market back under the conference footprint — was not likely to net $52 million for each school.
Not only did Kliavkoff need the Pac-12 presidents to sign off on the guaranteed money, but they would also have to take the leap of faith to sign a grant of rights binding the schools together without knowing the exact details of what their media deal would be. Lastly, the Pac-12 would have to pay the $15-million fee UCLA would owe to the Big Ten for breaking its agreement.
When Kliavkoff presented the idea to the Pac-12 board, Oregon interim president Patrick Phillips vehemently shut it down. He said he would not have the Ducks in a conference where they have to take less money than UCLA, and any conversation about the possibility quickly died.
Kliavkoff declined to comment on the negotiations that played out quietly behind the scenes.
On Dec. 14, the UC Regents met and voted 11 to 5 to approve the Bruins’ exit to the Big Ten. While the vote was assumed by many to be mere formality, it certainly could have gone the other direction — a theme that would emerge time and again on the Pac-12’s road to ruin.
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Today, the Pac-12 is now the Pac-4. Oregon and Washington are joining USC and UCLA in the Big Ten, while Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah are headed to the Big 12. Stanford, Cal, Washington State and Oregon State are left to the whims of an industry that has become comfortable making momentous long-term decisions while under immense short-term pressure.
Following interviews with dozens of sources within the Pac-12 and in other corners of college athletics during the last two years, this is the story behind the Pac-12’s collapse.
The setup
The Pac-12 hired Kliavkoff in May 2021 to clean up a mess that was the making of his predecessor, Larry Scott, and the conference’s university leaders.
The league struggled in just about every facet other than the number of championships won in the lower-revenue Olympic sports. This allowed Scott to constantly trumpet the Pac-12 as the “Conference of Champions” while it fell drastically behind its peers in the Big Ten and SEC in media rights distribution dollars and its self-created Pac-12 Network wallowed in relative obscurity.
The league was not winning in football, the most visible and lucrative sport, either. USC was struggling to recover from crippling NCAA sanctions, and Pac-12 teams had made the new four-team College Football Playoff just twice.
Morale was down among Pac-12 athletic directors, who felt Scott was disconnected from campus realities, spending most of his time at the conference’s headquarters in downtown San Francisco.
Morale wouldn’t have been an issue if Scott had backed up his promise to make the schools rich. He maintained until his last days leading the league that it was well-positioned to reach revenue goals in its next media rights agreement, but he would not be the one to see it through.
Kliavkoff was an entertainment executive at MGM Resorts in Las Vegas when he landed the Pac-12 job, but he previously worked at Major League Baseball and NBC Universal around the advent of streaming. At NBC, he was part of Hulu’s start. With that experience, it was reasonable for Pac-12 presidents to think he would be equipped to handle their media rights negotiations.
At the time he was hired, though, his most pressing task was mending campus relationships by showing schools that the league office cared about their various plights.
Kliavkoff’s plan was to spend his first weeks on the job as Kumbaya George, visiting each school and taking meetings with all stakeholders, understanding old grievances so he could help break them down.
But three weeks into his tenure, the college sports landscape shook from an unforeseen blast — Texas and Oklahoma were leaving the Big 12 for the SEC.
Kliavkoff established a war room devoted to making sure his schools would be safe amid the uncertainty. He told The Times in July 2021 that he thrived on solving complex puzzles and that navigating college sports’ next realignment wave was a welcome challenge.
But Kliavkoff couldn’t just go out and unilaterally fight for the Pac-12. His marching orders came from 12 university presidents and chancellors who, in the heat of battle, were about to show they were allies in name only.
Without Texas and Oklahoma, the eight schools left in the Big 12 were looking for a new home. Kliavkoff received word from Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby that the eight were interested in coming to the Pac-12 to make a Pac-20, playing games across every time zone. The Power Five conferences would become a Power Four.
Three sources with direct knowledge of the talks who were not authorized to discuss the negotiations publicly provided The Times with the following new details about the Big 12’s offer and the Pac-12’s response.
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Kliavkoff was open to adding all eight, but the league was probably going to be more selective and look seriously at a few schools located in strategic markets.
The Pac-12 formed a membership subcommittee of six officials — three presidents and three athletic directors, each representing one of the league’s six travel pairings. USC president Carol Folt was chosen to represent the Trojans and Bruins.
Pac-12 officials prepared a 12-slide presentation deck explaining the merits of expansion leading into the first subcommittee meeting. About three slides in, Folt told the group that she did not understand why the Pac-12 would expand and expressed surprise they were even talking about it.
The Times first reported last year that Folt objected to adding Big 12 teams, citing multiple sources not authorized to speak publicly about the committee’s discussions. It’s unclear whether Folt knew about Big Ten expansion plans involving USC at the time.
“We’re not going to respond to anonymous comments or hearsay,” Folt said in a statement to The Times when asked about the meeting.
Out of deference to the Trojans, whom members of the committee considered the linchpin to a strong future, the discussion ended.
“A lot of times, the way presidents’ rooms work, he or she who speaks the loudest and first kind of sets the dynamic,” a source with knowledge of the discussions recently told The Times. “And if there’s nobody else that has a real strong knowledge base or inclination to do something else, they say the person who has a real strong opinion must feel strongly for a reason.”
Kliavkoff, in his first weeks on the job, didn’t push back against Folt given USC’s importance to the league, a source said.
Kliavkoff declined to comment on the meeting.
Less than a year later, on June 30, 2022, the Pac-12 was caught off guard when USC and UCLA bolted for the Big Ten.
If the Pac-12 had added Big 12 schools when it had the chance, it would have remained the fourth-best conference without the L.A. schools.
Instead, the Big 12 survived and added four schools of its own from the “Group of Five” — BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and the University of Central Florida. The Big 12 was composed of 12 schools that were not of interest to the Big Ten and SEC, so they presented a united front.
The Pac-12 now featured 10 teams, with Oregon and Washington pining for a Big Ten invite. The timing of the events made the league even more vulnerable. With their media rights agreements complete in the spring of 2024, Pac-12 schools were free to leave and start play in another conference in 2024 with no exit fees.
This time, a war room wouldn’t be enough for Kliavkoff. His wounded conference needed a MASH unit, too.
In October 2022, the Pac-12 completed its three-month exclusive negotiating window with Fox without a deal. The network, the Big Ten’s top media rights partner, was viewed as a catalyst in USC and UCLA’s move that bolstered its investment in the Big Ten Network and had little interest in bidding on the 10-team Pac-12’s media rights. But ESPN, which had enjoyed the “Pac-12 After Dark” games that kicked off in the 10 p.m. hour Eastern time, remained very interested, three sources told The Times.
Kliavkoff brought the schools an ESPN offer of $30 million per school annually for all of their rights. The Pac-12’s analysis said the schools would be worth somewhere in the mid-$30-million range apiece, so they could go back to ESPN with a reasonable counter in the high $30-million-range and maybe the two sides would end up around $35 million.
When the Pac-12 CEO group met to discuss the offer, one of the league presidents had other ideas. The president worked with a professor on his campus to come up with their own estimate of what the 10 schools should get based on their market value: $50 million.
“George and our media consultant were pretty clear there was some risk, but they said, ‘Nope, our numbers show we’re worth this, go ask for it,’” a source with direct knowledge of the negotiations not authorized to speak publicly about them told The Times. “... ESPN did not react very well to it.”
Given the stakes of negotiations, a source with experience negotiating media rights agreements told The Times, Kliavkoff should have been more forceful pushing back against the high counteroffer.
Multiple sources declined to provide further details about the university president because discretion is demanded in the industry, especially when details of discussions could deeply damage a person’s reputation.
With the hopes of a potential Big Ten invite out there for Oregon and Washington, it was always going to be hard to persuade them to sign a grant of rights for what amounted to half a Big Ten distribution share. What if the Big Ten later decided to add them at full shares like USC and UCLA? There was no reason for the Ducks and Huskies, in particular, to box themselves in.
To the east, the rejuvenated Big 12 was much more willing to band together at a rate dictated by the networks. On Oct. 30, the Big 12 announced it had re-upped early with Fox and ESPN with a deal that would pay its schools $31.7 million annually.
New Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark was able to convince his schools that stability was more important than fighting for every last dime.
As part of the Big 12’s deal, Yormark got the networks to agree that if he were to add “Power Five” schools in expansion, the networks would pay for the additions at the same annual rate.
The Pac-12 schools now had no exit fee and an attractive fallback plan in case the 10 couldn’t come to an agreement.
No more waiting
By the time 2023 hit, Kliavkoff was running out of moves. The Pac-12 presidents had nixed expansion, misread the ESPN negotiation and blocked a deal that could have returned UCLA to the Pac-12, albeit with a steep price tag and some kicking and screaming.
He waited out the economic downturn and hoped he could secure a palatable media rights deal.
Pac-12 officials knew that Colorado, in particular, had been flirting with the Big 12. The Buffaloes had been a national power in the Big Eight in the 1980s and 1990s and again emerged in the Big 12 in the early 2000s. As a Pac-12 member, however, they had been a South Division doormat. New football coach Deion Sanders and some influential donors were pushing for a move to the Big 12, a source told The Times.
Other Pac-12 schools certainly knew the Big 12 door was open to them as well.
The presidents and chancellors gave Kliavkoff a deadline of July 31 to present final media rights offers.
The commissioner had two options. One was a package based on traditional linear TV distribution that had ESPN taking the top tier of content. NBC and Amazon were negotiating for the second tier, with Fox grabbing the third and CBS the lowest, which amounted to a handful of basketball games.
The second option was an all-streaming deal with Apple, which was excited to add the Pac-12 to its growing sports subscription offerings.
But on July 26, five days before the deadline, Colorado informed the Pac-12 that it wasn’t going to wait any longer. The Buffs were heading back to the Big 12.
“I applaud our [athletic director] Rick George for choosing the best scenario for all athletics at CU,” Sanders told 247Sports.com’s Carl Reed. “This move is a game-changer and we plan on changing the game.”
Soon, negotiations broke down with NBC and Amazon. The linear package was dead.
On Aug. 1, Kliavkoff met with the remaining presidents and chancellors, finally handing them the offer from Apple. Somehow, he was going to have to convince a group of presidents who loved the idea they were worth $50 million to consider an offer for … $23 million.
The final hours
The Apple deal was easy to mock once the number was leaked to the public. It didn’t matter that the deal included additional revenue based on subscriptions that could have put the payout to schools well above the Big 12 and the ACC, or that Apple believed so much in its ability to sell subscriptions to the Pac-12 content that it offered the schools an out after two years if they hadn’t reached the Big 12’s $31.7 million, two sources with direct knowledge of the offer told The Times.
The perception was that the deal was a failure far beyond the small annual distribution.
The offer did not guarantee teams any games on linear TV networks, although that was something that would have been under consideration.
Pac-12 football coaches were going to recruit kids without being able to tell them they would get to showcase their talent on the networks they grew up watching?
With the league clearly in crisis mode, the Big Ten began engaging again with Oregon and Washington, while the Big 12 was circling the Arizona schools and Utah.
Oregon and Washington were the key to keeping the league together, and the Apple deal had one very important Duck feather in its cap.
“Phil Knight loved it,” a source said.
The Nike CEO whose millions helped build upstart Oregon into a West Coast power saw the potential that Kliavkoff was pitching.
After two days of reports circulating that the Ducks and Huskies were pushing to leave for the Big Ten, there was a sudden turnabout. Reports from multiple outlets said the Pac-12 presidents were intending to meet on the morning of Aug. 4 to sign their grant of rights with a 10th school to be added later replacing Colorado.
Ten minutes before the meeting was to begin, however, Washington informed the Pac-12 that it was leaving for the Big Ten. The possibility of playing no games on the major linear networks was too tough of a sell for Washington football coach Kalen DeBoer, two sources told The Times.
“I give president [Ana Mari] Cauce and [athletic director] Jennifer Cohen a lot of credit, because these are not easy choices,” DeBoer told reporters after the move to the Big Ten was announced, according to the Seattle Times. “But just thinking years down the road, it came to a point where the resources that we need to be able to provide for our student-athletes … going to the Big Ten allowed for a lot of that.”
Once the Huskies left, the Ducks followed. The Arizona, Arizona State and Utah exodus to the Big 12 flowed naturally from there.
Washington and Oregon were charter members of the Pacific Coast Conference in 1916. They left the only home they’d ever known to join a conference based 2,000 miles away — a league that was only going to pay them each about half a share of what other Big Ten schools will get for the life of its current media deal.
What’s next?
Kliavkoff has been drawing up proposals for the four remaining Pac-12 teams — Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Washington State.
But first he must wait until the ACC reaches what seems to be an inevitable conclusion. Despite Notre Dame’s pleas on behalf of fellow academic powers Stanford and Cal, the conference based in North Carolina desperately trying to compete with its better-funded neighbors in the SEC doesn’t see enough value in adding a West Coast flank.
If the Pac-12 brand makes it through this period of uncertainty as a transformed league, it will have an uphill battle to maintain its status within the College Football Playoff structure as one of the “autonomous five” conferences, which receive a higher share of the financial pie than the group of five schools.
The remaining four have hired consultants to help them clear this crisis, including Washington State hiring Oliver Luck, the former West Virginia athletic director and NCAA executive.
How much of a role Kliavkoff will have in charting the league’s course from this point on remains to be seen.
https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2023-08-16/pac-12-collapse-decisions-realignment-ucla-oregon
Inside the Pac-12 collapse: Four surprising moments that crushed the conference
As the calendar turned to December 2022, the Pac-12 Conference was in a precarious position.
Six months after USC and UCLA announced they were joining the Big Ten and the Pac-12 began its media rights negotiations early in response, the 10 remaining schools did not have a new TV deal in place. Worse than that, the Big 12 jumped the Pac-12 in line with ESPN and Fox, agreeing in October 2022 to extend its current deal through 2030-31.
But Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff was working on another way to save the 108-year-old conference. Multiple sources not authorized to speak publicly about negotiations shared the following outline of the plan and Pac-12 leaders’ response with The Times.
Publicly, the University of California Board of Regents’ threats to force UCLA to stay in the Pac-12 and avoid hurting UC Berkeley were viewed as posturing, bluffs to get attention and possibly some money from the departing Bruins.
Privately, Kliavkoff was deeply engaged with a small group of regents about the framework of a deal that would lead to the regents voting to block UCLA’s move — even though the regents did not want to set a precedent of overturning a monumental campus-specific decision.
The regents did the math. UCLA was supposed to make $62 million per year from the Big Ten’s new mega media rights deal. The Bruins’ travel costs to compete in the Midwest-based conference were expected to be in the range of $10 million to $12 million annually. So, the regents gave Kliavkoff a magic number. If he could guarantee the Bruins $52 million annually during the five years of the league’s next media deal, the regents promised Kliavkoff a vote heavily in favor of UCLA staying in the Pac-12.
It was not going to be easy for the remaining 10 schools to stomach giving UCLA a much bigger annual revenue share. The Pac-12’s math said that a media rights deal for 11 schools — even with the Los Angeles market back under the conference footprint — was not likely to net $52 million for each school.
Not only did Kliavkoff need the Pac-12 presidents to sign off on the guaranteed money, but they would also have to take the leap of faith to sign a grant of rights binding the schools together without knowing the exact details of what their media deal would be. Lastly, the Pac-12 would have to pay the $15-million fee UCLA would owe to the Big Ten for breaking its agreement.
When Kliavkoff presented the idea to the Pac-12 board, Oregon interim president Patrick Phillips vehemently shut it down. He said he would not have the Ducks in a conference where they have to take less money than UCLA, and any conversation about the possibility quickly died.
Kliavkoff declined to comment on the negotiations that played out quietly behind the scenes.
On Dec. 14, the UC Regents met and voted 11 to 5 to approve the Bruins’ exit to the Big Ten. While the vote was assumed by many to be mere formality, it certainly could have gone the other direction — a theme that would emerge time and again on the Pac-12’s road to ruin.
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Today, the Pac-12 is now the Pac-4. Oregon and Washington are joining USC and UCLA in the Big Ten, while Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah are headed to the Big 12. Stanford, Cal, Washington State and Oregon State are left to the whims of an industry that has become comfortable making momentous long-term decisions while under immense short-term pressure.
Following interviews with dozens of sources within the Pac-12 and in other corners of college athletics during the last two years, this is the story behind the Pac-12’s collapse.
The setup
The Pac-12 hired Kliavkoff in May 2021 to clean up a mess that was the making of his predecessor, Larry Scott, and the conference’s university leaders.
The league struggled in just about every facet other than the number of championships won in the lower-revenue Olympic sports. This allowed Scott to constantly trumpet the Pac-12 as the “Conference of Champions” while it fell drastically behind its peers in the Big Ten and SEC in media rights distribution dollars and its self-created Pac-12 Network wallowed in relative obscurity.
The league was not winning in football, the most visible and lucrative sport, either. USC was struggling to recover from crippling NCAA sanctions, and Pac-12 teams had made the new four-team College Football Playoff just twice.
Morale was down among Pac-12 athletic directors, who felt Scott was disconnected from campus realities, spending most of his time at the conference’s headquarters in downtown San Francisco.
Morale wouldn’t have been an issue if Scott had backed up his promise to make the schools rich. He maintained until his last days leading the league that it was well-positioned to reach revenue goals in its next media rights agreement, but he would not be the one to see it through.
Kliavkoff was an entertainment executive at MGM Resorts in Las Vegas when he landed the Pac-12 job, but he previously worked at Major League Baseball and NBC Universal around the advent of streaming. At NBC, he was part of Hulu’s start. With that experience, it was reasonable for Pac-12 presidents to think he would be equipped to handle their media rights negotiations.
At the time he was hired, though, his most pressing task was mending campus relationships by showing schools that the league office cared about their various plights.
Kliavkoff’s plan was to spend his first weeks on the job as Kumbaya George, visiting each school and taking meetings with all stakeholders, understanding old grievances so he could help break them down.
But three weeks into his tenure, the college sports landscape shook from an unforeseen blast — Texas and Oklahoma were leaving the Big 12 for the SEC.
Kliavkoff established a war room devoted to making sure his schools would be safe amid the uncertainty. He told The Times in July 2021 that he thrived on solving complex puzzles and that navigating college sports’ next realignment wave was a welcome challenge.
But Kliavkoff couldn’t just go out and unilaterally fight for the Pac-12. His marching orders came from 12 university presidents and chancellors who, in the heat of battle, were about to show they were allies in name only.
Without Texas and Oklahoma, the eight schools left in the Big 12 were looking for a new home. Kliavkoff received word from Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby that the eight were interested in coming to the Pac-12 to make a Pac-20, playing games across every time zone. The Power Five conferences would become a Power Four.
Three sources with direct knowledge of the talks who were not authorized to discuss the negotiations publicly provided The Times with the following new details about the Big 12’s offer and the Pac-12’s response.
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Kliavkoff was open to adding all eight, but the league was probably going to be more selective and look seriously at a few schools located in strategic markets.
The Pac-12 formed a membership subcommittee of six officials — three presidents and three athletic directors, each representing one of the league’s six travel pairings. USC president Carol Folt was chosen to represent the Trojans and Bruins.
Pac-12 officials prepared a 12-slide presentation deck explaining the merits of expansion leading into the first subcommittee meeting. About three slides in, Folt told the group that she did not understand why the Pac-12 would expand and expressed surprise they were even talking about it.
The Times first reported last year that Folt objected to adding Big 12 teams, citing multiple sources not authorized to speak publicly about the committee’s discussions. It’s unclear whether Folt knew about Big Ten expansion plans involving USC at the time.
“We’re not going to respond to anonymous comments or hearsay,” Folt said in a statement to The Times when asked about the meeting.
Out of deference to the Trojans, whom members of the committee considered the linchpin to a strong future, the discussion ended.
“A lot of times, the way presidents’ rooms work, he or she who speaks the loudest and first kind of sets the dynamic,” a source with knowledge of the discussions recently told The Times. “And if there’s nobody else that has a real strong knowledge base or inclination to do something else, they say the person who has a real strong opinion must feel strongly for a reason.”
Kliavkoff, in his first weeks on the job, didn’t push back against Folt given USC’s importance to the league, a source said.
Kliavkoff declined to comment on the meeting.
Less than a year later, on June 30, 2022, the Pac-12 was caught off guard when USC and UCLA bolted for the Big Ten.
If the Pac-12 had added Big 12 schools when it had the chance, it would have remained the fourth-best conference without the L.A. schools.
Instead, the Big 12 survived and added four schools of its own from the “Group of Five” — BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and the University of Central Florida. The Big 12 was composed of 12 schools that were not of interest to the Big Ten and SEC, so they presented a united front.
The Pac-12 now featured 10 teams, with Oregon and Washington pining for a Big Ten invite. The timing of the events made the league even more vulnerable. With their media rights agreements complete in the spring of 2024, Pac-12 schools were free to leave and start play in another conference in 2024 with no exit fees.
This time, a war room wouldn’t be enough for Kliavkoff. His wounded conference needed a MASH unit, too.
In October 2022, the Pac-12 completed its three-month exclusive negotiating window with Fox without a deal. The network, the Big Ten’s top media rights partner, was viewed as a catalyst in USC and UCLA’s move that bolstered its investment in the Big Ten Network and had little interest in bidding on the 10-team Pac-12’s media rights. But ESPN, which had enjoyed the “Pac-12 After Dark” games that kicked off in the 10 p.m. hour Eastern time, remained very interested, three sources told The Times.
Kliavkoff brought the schools an ESPN offer of $30 million per school annually for all of their rights. The Pac-12’s analysis said the schools would be worth somewhere in the mid-$30-million range apiece, so they could go back to ESPN with a reasonable counter in the high $30-million-range and maybe the two sides would end up around $35 million.
When the Pac-12 CEO group met to discuss the offer, one of the league presidents had other ideas. The president worked with a professor on his campus to come up with their own estimate of what the 10 schools should get based on their market value: $50 million.
“George and our media consultant were pretty clear there was some risk, but they said, ‘Nope, our numbers show we’re worth this, go ask for it,’” a source with direct knowledge of the negotiations not authorized to speak publicly about them told The Times. “... ESPN did not react very well to it.”
Given the stakes of negotiations, a source with experience negotiating media rights agreements told The Times, Kliavkoff should have been more forceful pushing back against the high counteroffer.
Multiple sources declined to provide further details about the university president because discretion is demanded in the industry, especially when details of discussions could deeply damage a person’s reputation.
With the hopes of a potential Big Ten invite out there for Oregon and Washington, it was always going to be hard to persuade them to sign a grant of rights for what amounted to half a Big Ten distribution share. What if the Big Ten later decided to add them at full shares like USC and UCLA? There was no reason for the Ducks and Huskies, in particular, to box themselves in.
To the east, the rejuvenated Big 12 was much more willing to band together at a rate dictated by the networks. On Oct. 30, the Big 12 announced it had re-upped early with Fox and ESPN with a deal that would pay its schools $31.7 million annually.
New Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark was able to convince his schools that stability was more important than fighting for every last dime.
As part of the Big 12’s deal, Yormark got the networks to agree that if he were to add “Power Five” schools in expansion, the networks would pay for the additions at the same annual rate.
The Pac-12 schools now had no exit fee and an attractive fallback plan in case the 10 couldn’t come to an agreement.
No more waiting
By the time 2023 hit, Kliavkoff was running out of moves. The Pac-12 presidents had nixed expansion, misread the ESPN negotiation and blocked a deal that could have returned UCLA to the Pac-12, albeit with a steep price tag and some kicking and screaming.
He waited out the economic downturn and hoped he could secure a palatable media rights deal.
Pac-12 officials knew that Colorado, in particular, had been flirting with the Big 12. The Buffaloes had been a national power in the Big Eight in the 1980s and 1990s and again emerged in the Big 12 in the early 2000s. As a Pac-12 member, however, they had been a South Division doormat. New football coach Deion Sanders and some influential donors were pushing for a move to the Big 12, a source told The Times.
Other Pac-12 schools certainly knew the Big 12 door was open to them as well.
The presidents and chancellors gave Kliavkoff a deadline of July 31 to present final media rights offers.
The commissioner had two options. One was a package based on traditional linear TV distribution that had ESPN taking the top tier of content. NBC and Amazon were negotiating for the second tier, with Fox grabbing the third and CBS the lowest, which amounted to a handful of basketball games.
The second option was an all-streaming deal with Apple, which was excited to add the Pac-12 to its growing sports subscription offerings.
But on July 26, five days before the deadline, Colorado informed the Pac-12 that it wasn’t going to wait any longer. The Buffs were heading back to the Big 12.
“I applaud our [athletic director] Rick George for choosing the best scenario for all athletics at CU,” Sanders told 247Sports.com’s Carl Reed. “This move is a game-changer and we plan on changing the game.”
Soon, negotiations broke down with NBC and Amazon. The linear package was dead.
On Aug. 1, Kliavkoff met with the remaining presidents and chancellors, finally handing them the offer from Apple. Somehow, he was going to have to convince a group of presidents who loved the idea they were worth $50 million to consider an offer for … $23 million.
The final hours
The Apple deal was easy to mock once the number was leaked to the public. It didn’t matter that the deal included additional revenue based on subscriptions that could have put the payout to schools well above the Big 12 and the ACC, or that Apple believed so much in its ability to sell subscriptions to the Pac-12 content that it offered the schools an out after two years if they hadn’t reached the Big 12’s $31.7 million, two sources with direct knowledge of the offer told The Times.
The perception was that the deal was a failure far beyond the small annual distribution.
The offer did not guarantee teams any games on linear TV networks, although that was something that would have been under consideration.
Pac-12 football coaches were going to recruit kids without being able to tell them they would get to showcase their talent on the networks they grew up watching?
With the league clearly in crisis mode, the Big Ten began engaging again with Oregon and Washington, while the Big 12 was circling the Arizona schools and Utah.
Oregon and Washington were the key to keeping the league together, and the Apple deal had one very important Duck feather in its cap.
“Phil Knight loved it,” a source said.
The Nike CEO whose millions helped build upstart Oregon into a West Coast power saw the potential that Kliavkoff was pitching.
After two days of reports circulating that the Ducks and Huskies were pushing to leave for the Big Ten, there was a sudden turnabout. Reports from multiple outlets said the Pac-12 presidents were intending to meet on the morning of Aug. 4 to sign their grant of rights with a 10th school to be added later replacing Colorado.
Ten minutes before the meeting was to begin, however, Washington informed the Pac-12 that it was leaving for the Big Ten. The possibility of playing no games on the major linear networks was too tough of a sell for Washington football coach Kalen DeBoer, two sources told The Times.
“I give president [Ana Mari] Cauce and [athletic director] Jennifer Cohen a lot of credit, because these are not easy choices,” DeBoer told reporters after the move to the Big Ten was announced, according to the Seattle Times. “But just thinking years down the road, it came to a point where the resources that we need to be able to provide for our student-athletes … going to the Big Ten allowed for a lot of that.”
Once the Huskies left, the Ducks followed. The Arizona, Arizona State and Utah exodus to the Big 12 flowed naturally from there.
Washington and Oregon were charter members of the Pacific Coast Conference in 1916. They left the only home they’d ever known to join a conference based 2,000 miles away — a league that was only going to pay them each about half a share of what other Big Ten schools will get for the life of its current media deal.
What’s next?
Kliavkoff has been drawing up proposals for the four remaining Pac-12 teams — Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Washington State.
But first he must wait until the ACC reaches what seems to be an inevitable conclusion. Despite Notre Dame’s pleas on behalf of fellow academic powers Stanford and Cal, the conference based in North Carolina desperately trying to compete with its better-funded neighbors in the SEC doesn’t see enough value in adding a West Coast flank.
If the Pac-12 brand makes it through this period of uncertainty as a transformed league, it will have an uphill battle to maintain its status within the College Football Playoff structure as one of the “autonomous five” conferences, which receive a higher share of the financial pie than the group of five schools.
The remaining four have hired consultants to help them clear this crisis, including Washington State hiring Oliver Luck, the former West Virginia athletic director and NCAA executive.
How much of a role Kliavkoff will have in charting the league’s course from this point on remains to be seen.
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HailBlazers
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LA can fall in the ocean already.
wizenheimer
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I don't know who that guys is and it so it could be bullshit
but if it's true that Stanford, Cal, SMU are willing to join the ACC with no payout for years, that sure tells you what they think about the viability of a revamped PAC
SharpesTriumph
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Actually that is a good point. Looking at the ACC endowments Clemson 1.01B Florida State 0.89B Louisville 0.96B.... Especially Florida State with a 45k enrollment and founded in 1851 over on the east coast I would've expected that to be much larger than Oregon State 0.83B.
Norte Dame is 18 billion which I'd expect. Duke at 12 billion and Virginia at 10.5 billion are bigger than I expected.
SharpesTriumph
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I guess the best hope for OSU may be if they can get in the ACC along with Stan/Cal/etc. or some sort of merger with the WAC that the TV networks agree to renegotiate the media deal for.
Seems like a massive drop in revenue is unavoidable for OSU.... they will probably have to eliminate a ton of staff positions all over the athletic department and just hope to claw back to break even in 5 years.
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OSU needs to get creative. They should beg the Seahawks for a preseason game, and see if they can get some summer outdoor concerts. Maybe set up some sort of a Saturday night sheep brothel.
wizenheimer
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don't take this as gospel because over the last year I've read so much on realignment I'm totally confused
but what I understand is that the ACC media deal does not have any escalator clauses to add more money for new teams joining to conference. What they do have is a carriage provision that will add money for the number of cable subscribers in a school's local area (I forget the parameters of "local area"). It isn't large, IIRC it's around 35 or 40 cents per subscriber. But that's a monthly fee so it can add up
Stanford and Cal are in the Bay area which has a population of 7.7M; SMU is in Dallas which has a population of 7.6M. OSU is in Corvallis and WSU is in Pullman. That's a problem and the ACC won't be interested IMO
OSU/WSU want to try and keep the PAC alive because they would get 5-10M from PAC residuals over the 5 years following this season (assuming PAC liabilities don't exceed assets). But they need to add 6 teams, 5 teams if you figure Cal will join them. But all the target teams they are talking about have exit fees between 18-34M. And the PAC has no media deal to act as a landing pad for any teams considering leaving their conference for a revamped PAC
the simplest geographically would be joining the MWC and having the MWC renegotiate their media deal. Currently it pays 4-5M/year to each team. If Cal/OSU/WSU joined. the MWC might be able to increase their payout to 6-7M, but ESPN/FOX already have lots of content and might not be inclined to pay more for those 3 schools
the AAC payout is 6-7M, but the west coast schools would be significantly increasing their travel costs because of the distance to those venues
I saw several different media valuations of teams in the Pac-12-->Pac-10-->Pac-9. Consistently, OSU/WSU were at the bottom of the lists. Cal wasn't much better. I'm not sure that a revamped PAC will be able to secure a media deal significantly better than the AAC
SharpesTriumph
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So what do you think some of the best possible options are for Oregon State?
At some point it might make more sense to wait, to just go independent, or do their own AppleTV/Amazon/Beavers TV network/pay per view streaming deal. Locking themselves into some 4-6 million multi year TV deal has no future flexibility, upside, or solution to their budget issues.
Their ranked 18th in the country right now with games starting in a few weeks. Maybe they hope they have a strong year and with national exposure their opportunities later improve. If the options right now are only shit, they will still have those shit options at a later date.