Realignment Megathread (All The Moves)
- Thread starter ISUcyclones11
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Ah okay that makes more sense. I thought you meant “I don’t know” instead of “I don’t get.” I agree with you. Not sure what has changed other than the numerous deadlines getting passed by and maybe some are interpreting that as good for GK now.
I've never really expected any of the schools to move. They really don't want to associate with us unless they absolutely financially have to.
Colorado most likely to leave. They get major publicity with the move. Renew old rivalries. Stabilize their financial future. They have no real loyalty to the PAC 12.
Arizona is a maybe. But don’t see them leaving. Yet.
PAC 12 will cobble something together short term. No one will be happy. They take their spot as the #5 conference. Big 12 hits pause after Colorado. Not taking G5 teams.
Arizona is a maybe. But don’t see them leaving. Yet.
PAC 12 will cobble something together short term. No one will be happy. They take their spot as the #5 conference. Big 12 hits pause after Colorado. Not taking G5 teams.
Nothing changed, the pac schools just really don’t want to break up or leave the conference. Remember it’s school presidents making these decisions not AD’s, an extra 10-20mil per year is legit nothing to most of these schools yearly budgets. For the schools that don’t have the history or the athletic passion (all the remaining pac schools) this probably all seems just like a major annoyance to the decision makers. When push comes to shove the status quo usually wins.
I still don’t think this is firmly settled until there is a media deal out there but I don’t know if any of the PAC schools want to be the first to make the leap. Colorado makes the most sense as a former member but if they really wanted to make a move they would have done it already, the big12’s numbers aren’t changing.
I bet there’s a big difference in what trade offs between $ and linear coverage each will accept. Poorer schools that don’t get prime network spots anyway probably want to max the money. A school like Oregon and UW that aren’t so dependent on media $ probably would give up some money to get more linear/network coverage. Throw in likely discussions on unequal revenue, and there’s a lot of varying terms to compromise on.
I keep coming back to the idea that whatever offers they have will be a dealbreaker for either WAOR or some portion of the corner schools. It might be good enough to keep the corner schools, or do a unequal revenue distribution to get WAOR happy enough, but not both.
Or the deals are so fantastically awful that they're not workable for anyone that has another option (ie, everyone but WSU, OR St, Cal and Stanford).
Where are WAOR going to go though? The 4 Corners might be in a better position to move if it blows up.
Perhaps that's why Yormarck has not pressured the 4 corner schools into hurrying up and deciding. Maybe he already knows they have no other acceptable alternative available, so no need to pressure and look like he's destroying the Pac.
I agree with 95% of what you wrote. Especially the part of the P12 schools absolutely do not want to go to the B12 unless they have to.
I do think this is more than annoyance to the school decision makers though. The Washington State president and AD were getting absolutely grilled about their financials by the Washington BOR in their meeting last week. They were literally going down the AD budget line item by line item.
Then stories came out about UW’s shortfall and CU suffering a $54M loss in opportunity cost the last 10 years. These are real dollars and cents that have a lot of eyeballs on them from presidents, BORs, and taxpayers due to financial mismanagement.
Every dollar of revenue the P12 schools don’t get in a media deal is either one extra dollar the school has to kick in, $1 extra of debt incurred, or $1 extra they fall behind. Just a couple mil per year is going to get more scrutiny from outside eyeballs right now given the current financial status of some of these schools.
This is my belief too. Maryland, USC, and UCLA are the only P5 schools in this realignment saga that didn't want to move. But the conference they moved to or moving to (Big 10) had much more money than their former conference. Difference between Big 12 money versus likely Pac money won't offset the extra travel and culture change, even if it goes heavy streaming.
Hilarious. There is no deal right now and when the PAC eventually runs out of runway and has to come clean the results will be hilarious.
Thamel followed up the tweet with another saying SDSU doesn’t have an invite from the P12. To me that says:
1.) GK has given them a verbal invite once they have a deal
2.) GK has given them a verbal invite contingent on a member leaving, but there was a holdup on that
3.) SDSU has an invite to the Big 12?
So if you're a Pac school, your choice is to stay in your current conference with a crappy payout, crappy exposure, and no long term stability (given your two best remaining teams are looking to ship at their first opportunity), or you can move to a another power conference with better financials, better exposure, and much better long-term stability.
Sounds like a no brainer to me, but what do I know.