A friend of mine who is very close to the situation said this weekend that as it turns out there really wasn’t any possibility that the Pac could get an acceptable media deal after the Big Xii jumped the line and got the deal first. After that, there werent enough windows or dollars to justfy a competitive deal and the breakup probably was inevitable.
My $.02: Yormack made it his goal to destroy the Pac and he succeeded. .
It was probably a case of destroy or be destroyed. Kliavkoff blew it when he didn’t act before Yormack.
Your an analytics guy. Wonder how much timezones and fan interests mattered. Losing a large portion of EST has to be a huge ding in the price.
this is my concern when the next Big XII media deal expires. There will always be money for the NFL, B1G and SEC but everyone else will likely get squeezed ( especially if the current sports $$$ market stays the same or declines further)
I think in 2028-2030 there will be another big realignment. I see 1 of 2 things happening:
1- TV consolidates even more. The SEC and B1G add teams, break off and become a massive power group. This would suck.
2- USC, Texas, Oklahoma, Oregon and UCLA get tired of not being the best. Right now, USC is the fourth best B1G program, at best. Texas is not a top 3 SEC team and neither is Oklahoma.
They leave their conferences and form 1-2 new conferences. The PAC reforms in some form with Texas and OU and ACC teams and you have a P3 OR the PAC reforms in some capacity and Texas and Oklahoma take ACC teams and make a new conference.
Either way, the Big 12 is nothing come 2031. This new “stable” Big 12 will be falling apart in 2028. Every team will be trying to get into the B1G/SEC or whatever new conference USC/Texas are making.
I can see that happening. To me what caused the B12 to get a deal while the PAC couldn’t get anything was that ESPN started to lose too much money to make an offer to the PAC.
When the current B12 deal is about to expire, I can see two super leagues forming with even more teams being left out.
Stanford is too valuable to be left out so at some point I can see a B1G invite. If Notre Dame ever decides to join a conference then their partner would be Stanford. If ND continues to reject the B1G’s invites then there might be a tiny chance that Utah could be a partner with Stanford to join the B1G. I know the chances are very slim but in my own biased opinion, Utah makes more sense to partner with Stanford than Cal.