Here is my prediction. All of you will still cheer for and watch (when you are able) the college sports teams that you like the bestâŠregardless of which athletic conference they belong to.
We in CT watched the Big East messâŠbut it didnât prevent us from watching UConn womenâs basketball, or whatever.
I honestly have no idea why the ACC would want Cal and Stanford.
UND can advocate - but theyâre going to need to join the ACC in football to get their way.
I can see the ACC venturing westward - to Northwestern or Indiana - they do have an academic rep to keep - but it just makes no sense bringing on two middling athletic schools from the other coast. The ACC is really East Coast. They donât straddle far off for the most part. .
@thumper1 , youâre right about supporting teams as a spectator. My team is my team!
But I am genuinely concerned about athletes in sports that were rarely televised. What are the travel requirements (and costs!) going to be for swimming, volleyball, water polo, yada yada. PAC 12 was a powerhouse in a number of other sports. While the tendency is to think about football, there are a huge number of athletes who will be impacted. Itâs a lot to aak students to fly across the country for a regular conference game - every other week!
Not only the travel concerns, but if these Pac 12 schools that are left donât find their way to a Power 5 conference, they likely have to cut some sports because they will be bringing in significantly less media revenues.
Maybe Stanford can make a go of it as an independent, but even then I expect they will have to cut sportsâŠand that didnât go so well last time they tried to do that a couple of years ago.
Itâs sounding more like the ACC talks are falling apart. No surprise there. These schools will only dilute money from the other ACC schools without adding any value. Both are relatively small/mid market teams. The MWC is trying to get them to agree to a merger. Thatâs seriously not going to happen. The PAC-12 is a P5 conference thatâs been around for over 100 years. Itâs just as easy for them to rebuild by pulling teams from the AAC and MWC.
They would take the Pac 10 name for branding - but you canât replace an Arizona State or Arizona with San Diego State and Reno - you can - but it wonât have the cache.
Short of UCLA/USC, the schools that left are fine schools and have some strengths (like Washington in engineering/CS, ASU in Journalism/Supply Chain and they are good schools - but not to the level of the first two that bolted. Obviously Stanford and Cal are but they are the sticking point.
Academically, the ACC is much stronger than the Pac 10 was in my opinion - and if Stanford was with WASU, Arizona, Oregon, etc. b4 - then having an SDSU, Reno, etc. shouldnât be so insulting to them.
But it would be seen that way.
You can perfume the pig with new schools and the old brand, but the new and unimproved Pac 10 wouldnât be seen as remotely anything close to the old and the dollars they get will reflect that.
I agree any ânewâ PAC 12 isnât going to get near the same $$$ as they were if they bring in some teams from the Mountain West or the AAC.
I donât see how there can be a 5th âPowerâ conference anymoreâŠas it is the Big 10 and SEC have significantly more revenues than even the ACC and Big 12, and I would be surprised if a repackaged PAC 12 gets close to the deals of the ACC and Big 12.
If PAC 12 tries to add teams, I hope they get a new commissioner. How can Kliavkoff stay?
Exactly - if you had and I donât know the #s - 70 members of the 5 conferences before, you canât all of a sudden say thereâs 85 top teams.
I canât believe the commish hasnât already resigned.
True, but I donât see that the PAC-12 has a choice but to rebuild. Thereâs 4 core schools. They can pull the 3 best teams from the AAC and MWC and have a strong conference for 2024 and keep their P5 status.
If youâre SMU, as an example, is Washington State and Oregon State really a step up from USF, Temple, Tulane, or Memphis?
For a sports conference, yes. It puts them higher up on the pecking order. And in college sports, the pecking order is everything, especially in football. So the PAC12 will need to choose good schools in strong markets.
In the long-term, I agree, but thereâs actually an argument that in the short- to medium-term, adding at least one Bay Area school and also SMU in DFW would add to the pot. For every cable household inside the ACC footprint that has ACC Network, the ACC receives a significant fee (I believe itâs a little over $1), but for households outside the footprint, the fee is more like 10 cents. So bringing new metro areas like SF and DFW into the âfootprintâ of the league would instantly increase ACC revenue from SF/DFW cable households by roughly a factor of 10. Cable subscriptions are declining over time, but in the near term, estimates are that this change alone would bring another ~$8M/yr into the ACC.
Plus, ESPN reportedly has a pro-rata obligation to kick in another full share amount (~$30-35M) for new members - and SMU has pledged to forego its entire share for 5-7 years so that its money could be redistributed to existing members (which will kick off another fight about how to allot that new money). But much of the new money would be eaten up with travel costs, so I donât think it would really result in huge net gains even short-term.
The real problem for the ACC, as it was for the Pac 12 and old Big 12 with UT/OU, is that some members have very different resources/priorities/goals than other members, so they canât agree on a direction that is appropriate for everyone. Some are all-in on football, some want to be but lack the resources/location/brand strength to succeed, some want to have more well-rounded athletic programs, and others are hesitant to prioritize athletics over academics. This is actually the underrated strength of the current Big 12 - all of them value investing in revenue sports, none are worried about whether that will affect academics, and (critically) none of them have any realistic shot of being poached by a wealthier conference. So they are unified, at least for the foreseeable future.
But the Pac-4 canât just take MWC schools at will - thereâs a $34M MWC exit fee for anyone leaving in summer 2024, and neither the MWC schools nor the PAC-4 can afford to cover that. The fee would be down to $17M for summer 2025, which is tough but potentially achievable, so they could theoretically take some combo of SMU/Tulane/Memphis/Rice for 2024 at a much cheaper exit fee, then add MWC schools for 2025. Still pretty expensive, though, and the PAC schools most eager to rebuild (WSU, OSU) have the least money. They need Stanford to help fund all of this, and Stanford may prefer to go its own way and keep its money.
A couple of items here:
- Each MWC school has a $30M+ exit fee. They are not leaving unless the MWC dissolves.
- For the MWC to dissolve would take the approval of 9 universities in the MWC, not all of which would be taken into any merger with the PAC4, so why would they give up the aforesaid exit fee.
- SDSU is already out of the MWC. Yep, they tendered their resignation. They tried to pull it back, but the MWC said âno dice.â In 2024, SDSU has no home and owes the smaller exit fee of $17M.
- The AAC teams make more on their media rights deal than the MWC, it isnât even close. While Stanford could go independent, the other school (hereâs looking at you Cal) need the cash.
- Anyone that thinks that SMU has any draw in DFW is kidding themselves (and I am an SMU alum). The sports hierarchy in Dallas is Cowboys/Mavs/Rangers/Stars/Longhorns/Aggies/FrogsâŠthen, maybe the Ponies, maybe.
Not sure what you mean by âkeepâ their P5 status. The potential media deal they would be looking at is unlikely to be close to any of the other 4 power conferences. The PAC 12 schools each received $37M in 2022âŠthe recently proposed Apple deal was reportedly for $20M - $23M per school (so, far less than their current deal that ends 2023/24, $7M - $10M less than the Big 12âs current deal, and a great deal less than Big 10 and SEC money).
Maybe Apple still offers a deal but it wonât be anything like the recently proposed deal (that was the last straw causing teams to flee at record speed).
Letâs do some scenariosâŠsay the PAC12 adds 6 schools, and Apple TV comes back with a $15M per school media deal (just a guess, and probably on the high end). Is that enough to keep Stanford, or would they choose to go independent at that point? The remaining four PAC 12 schools would likely have to cut a number of sports teams at that level, too. Nothing there that suggests this would be a conference at the level of the remaining P4 schools.
I still wouldnât count out the ACC and Jim Philips getting Stanford and UCB, especially if Notre Dame football is part of the deal. They only need 12 of 15 yes votes.
Sucks for them, but they might pony up some of the cash to do it, at least for a few schools. The AAC only charges $18 million. The Apple media deal is worth around $20-$30 million per school. Itâs actually a much better deal than it sounds, and itâs superior to anything the MWC or the AAC is offering. A merger would be a disaster, because the Apple deal is based on the fact that this is a P5 conference. If that gets lost or diluted with the MWC, Apple will pull the plug. If they can pull in a good 6 strong school, the PAC-12 lives and keeps their media deal. The fewer schools the better, because it means more money per school.
This was briefly the case, but they patched it up with SDSU agreeing to pay the MWCâs attorney fees. SDSU to remain in Mountain West as sides resolve dispute, receive $6.6M - ESPN
IMO, SMU would be even lower than that - well behind UT/A&M/OU/Tech and a little behind Ark/Baylor/TCU. Maybe even with Ok State. But for ACC purposes, brand strength wouldnât matter as much in the short term due to contractually-mandated ACC Network fee increases based on league footprint. AAC/MWC donât have networks, so the number of people who would actually watch is a bigger deal.
The PAC12 is a P5 conference, it splits the proceeds from the CFPB with the Big10, SEC, ACC, and B12. I think it is about $80M per conference. Thatâs real money. If the PAC12 doesnât exist, then that money goesâŠ?
That Apple deal is not on the table anymore. Bringing in whatever schools you want from MWC or AAC will not bring back an Apple deal at that previous level (which was already significantly lower than the other now Power 4 conferences).