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Pete ThamelESPN
The looming changes to the structure of college football simultaneously highlight the strength of the SEC and Big Ten while exposing the fluidity of the rest of the major-conference landscape.
With the Big Ten and SEC preparing to start 16-program versions in 2024 and the 12-team playoff looming the same year, the rest of the college football landscape is left to sort itself out. The only certainty is that more change is coming.
What’s most apparent after interviews with industry and campus sources over the past week is how that financial gap between the SEC and Big Ten and everyone else is going to cause further unrest. It’s safe to say the schools in the Power 2 are going to be making more than $30 million more than teams in the other leagues now and going forward. (The Big 12 is at least safely established in the upper-middle class after agreeing to a recent deal with ESPN and Fox.)
The only variable is time, and the next significant trigger could emerge in the coming weeks when the Pac-12 schools find out what their television deal could look like.
And this all plays out against a backdrop of industry-wide uncertainty — evolving television markets, financial stress in the tech industry, new NCAA leadership and lawsuits and potential government action that loom as change agents.
What’s next for an industry perpetually in flux? Here are four big questions to answer on the Pac-12’s potential problems and how it will affect the Big 12, Big Ten and even the ACC.
What happens now for the Pac-12?
In the immediate future, the most uncertainty looms over the Pac-12, as expiring grants of television rights always yield potential change. The biggest signs of panic have come from the league itself. First, commissioner George Kliavkoff and two other conference officials visited SMU earlier this month in a 48-hour advertisement of the league’s weakness and lack of self-awareness.
By exploring SMU, the Pac-12 is acknowledging that what it’s attempting to sell networks isn’t good enough with 10 schools. And SMU, a fine school with modest tradition, isn’t a significant value add to drive up a league’s overall value the way, for example, that USC and UCLA did for the Big Ten. It’s really inventory filler in a nice market, a move that was expected but didn’t need to be advertised with an administrative parade.
Then the league issued the dreaded “vote of confidence” statement that its schools are “united in our commitment to one another.” By doing it, the league reminded everyone that it could, indeed, fall apart. Tough stretch.
Here’s the bottom line on the Pac-12: The television contract numbers Kliavkoff delivers in the upcoming weeks are paramount to the league’s survival. If the numbers are decent, some sort of temporary solution can be constructed with a deal expected to be in the five-year range. And that’s certainly possible.
Commissioners are ultimately judged by their television deals. Nothing else matters. Especially in this case, as there has been a clear disconnect between Pac-12 hopes and market realities.
No one is expecting anything in the $40-million-per-school range anymore. Getting something in the $30 million range — similar to the Big 12 — could keep the league duct-taped together.
But there’s confusion in the industry over how it will get done. Any type of home run deal would be viewed as Kliavkoff channeling his Las Vegas roots and pulling a Houdini act.
“We’re going to find out if George has had something in his back pocket the whole time,” a Pac-12 source said. “Unfortunately, this next deal is about keeping this league alive after a decade of Larry Scott’s poor decisions and failed strategies.”
Those Scott failures included a too-long television contract, outlandish rent for the conference office, an over-reliance on a conference television network, failure to team that network with a mainstream partner and subsequent distribution issues. It left Kliavkoff a ditch to dig out of.
Within the industry, there are a lot more television suitors who have passed on the Pac-12 than those who are believed to still be interested in paying market value. ESPN and Amazon have long been the speculative favorites, but the level of their interest remains the key variable. And that has caused both an undercurrent of nervousness among the Pac-12 programs and emboldened other leagues interested in adding schools.
“If [Kliavkoff] has something up his sleeve, it’s with some entity that no one knows about,” an industry source said.
Is there a long-term solution for the Pac-12?
The future of the Pac-12 hinges on cornerstone schools Oregon and Washington. And, really, the interest level from the Big Ten in poaching them.
The bad news for a long-term solution is that Oregon and Washington seeking an exit plan looms as an eternal issue. Considering the financial disparity they face with the SEC and Big Ten programs they hope to compete against nationally, sticking in a watered-down Pac-12 for the next generation appears unlikely.
And it’s hard to be conference anchors while flirting with the Big Ten. Unless some financial windfall comes, Oregon and Washington are always going to lack permanence thanks to the financial and potential competitive inequities that come with USC’s and UCLA’s exits from the Pac-12.
Kliavkoff’s biggest failure with USC and UCLA was not realizing they needed to be treated differently. His inability to court them in a way that reflected their market value contributed to their wandering eye. In reality, he likely didn’t have the financial firepower to stop them. But he never got a chance to truly make his case.
Has Kliavkoff learned his lesson and catered to Oregon and Washington in a way he didn’t with USC and UCLA? Time will tell, but he certainly wasted a lot of time and energy — and spent months affirming the league’s weakness — by flailing around trying to keep UCLA in the league through California political pressure. That failed, to the surprise of no one.
The issue with Oregon and Washington and the Pac-12’s future is that the long-term path appears fraught. If there’s a decent deal available to the Pac-12 in the upcoming weeks and if Oregon and Washington want to sign a grant of rights to be part of that deal, it will be a short-term deal. (Think five years.) This means in another three years, the same issues of whether the Big Ten has the appetite to consume them will remain.
Do schools with options, like Colorado, Arizona State, Arizona and Utah — the so-called corner schools — want to be part of a bandage? Or do they slide to the Big 12 and start over there?
With the future of Oregon and Washington in the Pac-12 so uncertain, is it worth it for the corner schools to wait for an inevitable disruption or just control their fate and set their own course?
How does this play out from here?
The easy solution is Kliavkoff and his consultant, Doug Perlman, finding enough TV money to make everyone happy. If that doesn’t happen, things could get increasingly complex.
One of the most bizarre factors looming here is that much of the future of a century-old conference could hinge on Amazon, which has never broadcast a college game of significance.
Amazon has long been linked to the Pac-12 as one of its suitors. And its interest level has been viewed as a potential lifeline for the league amid a marketplace without many attractive open broadcast windows remaining. But it also could have the opposite impact if Amazon’s dollars are redirected.
Amazon could have outsized influence by putting its money elsewhere — the Big Ten and Big 12 via a sublicense — to help subsidize potential realignment moves.
Months ago, Amazon chatted with the Big Ten about buying a package if Oregon, Washington, Cal and Stanford were added. But the games they’d have access to weren’t worth the investment because of where Amazon would have been in the game-picking order. Could they slip back into those conversations? Could the conference find a way with its broadcast partners to provide Amazon access to better games once the extra inventory arrives?
Don’t expect anything significant to happen with the Big Ten and Amazon until outgoing commissioner Kevin Warren officially leaves office, which is scheduled for April. Would a media partner want a deal with an outgoing commissioner? Probably not, especially because Amazon was involved in the original Big Ten negotiations and ultimately left out.
But the potential of new leadership combined with the increasing desperation of Oregon and Washington has cracked the door back open. The Big Ten presidents weren’t keen on more additions initially, and both USC and UCLA have been protective of the West Coast. But could properties that valuable really get left behind?
From an academic standpoint, there’d be some Big Ten interest in Cal and Stanford by the Big Ten presidents. But from a television standpoint, the interest would be minimal. They’re both in a good market, but both programs get little penetration within that market.
Stanford’s best hope is as Notre Dame’s preferred dance partner if the Irish were to ever enter the Big Ten. But the only real threat to Notre Dame’s independence is if it can no longer put together a vibrant schedule because leagues have become so big and bloated that they don’t play many nonconference games or are discouraged from playing nonleague games of significance. (That said, Notre Dame certainly won’t be bullied into joining a league.)
As for the corner schools (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah), the only real market is the Big 12. If the Pac-12 television number comes in below the Big 12’s number, it becomes a math and distribution equation. The notion of too much streaming still looms as uncomfortable for many schools because of visibility. Most are open to some streaming but are afraid of too much.
Could Amazon chip in to buy part of the Big 12 package if it expands with the four corner schools? Would there be enough inventory for a potential Amazon package to be sliced off via sublicense? The corner schools would provide ESPN access to late-night windows, which it needs, and perhaps be a lower expenditure for both companies. (Fox has stated publicly it doesn’t have much interest in the Pac-12, which makes sense after the Big Ten took USC and UCLA.)
And what happens with the ACC?
The Big 12’s new deal — and subsequent grant of rights — has left it in a solid position through 2030-31.
The fact that every major conference television deal expires and can be reupped before the ACC comes back to the table illuminates the fears around the ACC.
The ACC’s deal with ESPN runs through 2036, and part of the reason it ran that long is because it allowed the league to form the ACC Network. But there are increasing nerves about the more than $30 million annually its competitors will be earning above the ACC.
About half the league is fine with the financial status quo. And there’s another half — those schools most invested in football — that continues to look for creative ways to find more money, whether within the league or by finding a way out. Unequal revenue sharing continues to be discussed, but that can’t cover a $30 million delta.
“There’s a disparate nature to the ACC,” an ACC source said. “You have publics and privates and big schools and small schools. It’s a little bit of the ACC uniqueness. But times like now, it really, really shows itself. In the last year, it has become so apparent.”
Sources around the league stress nothing is imminent in terms of a breakaway, but the search for new financial avenues continues.
“I don’t expect anything in six months,” an industry source said. “But in six years, it’d be shocking if everything looked the same. The other leagues get an additional bump before the ACC comes up.”
Just how binding are the grant of rights? School after school has gone to league headquarters to study them, so if there was an easy way out, some smart lawyer would have found it by now. (The ACC, like most leagues, doesn’t allow copies of the television contracts and grants of rights out of the building, which protects the contracts from FOIA requests.)
The essence of an ACC escape is that it would cost more than $100 million to leave and the schools would still need legal wrangling to get access to their own games’ TV money for more than a decade. That’s significant risk — but there’s also plenty of risk for the high-profile schools of falling hundreds of millions behind national competitors.
“Different lawyers have different opinions,” an industry source said. “Eventually someone will take the leap. You’d assume that others would follow right behind.”
As usual in college athletics, the lawyers would be sure to cash in. The only certainty from any type of attempted breakup or breakaway would be billable hours.
“If you are going to try and get out of the grant of rights, you better have a war chest,” an industry source said. “You’re going to need it to pay legal fees.”