The increased cost of travel, especially when it comes to the non revenue sports, is going to be the killer. BYU, of all universities, should know this given their football roadies to the east coast over the last several years. As a revenue sport, football could absorb the cost while their non revenue teams were quietly tucked away playing teams a lot closer to home.
That ends this fall. They may get paid a little better than their Indy contract, but going to Morgantown is a logistical feat that is more expensive than flying to Hawaii to play.
Many of the other locations suffer from similar issues as West Virginia as they are served by small to medium regional airports, unlike the PAC 12 who, with the exception of Pullman (Spokane) is served by National/International airports. Honestly their footprint is unsustainable. They just don’t know how unsustainable it is yet. At least U$C and fUCLA will be generally traveling along higher use routes and hubs. That should help them better manage cost, but will still cost a ton more than it did in the PAC 12.
I will call it now, the BIG 12 will likely fall apart (again) at the end of their new TV rights contract because the schools will need to find a less expensive option.
I’m trying to find more info on this, but apparently the Big12 media deal is set up so that new teams added would make less than our current pac12 media deal and certainly less than whatever we end up with. I’m not sure of that is correct, or if that only applies to more G5 teams they might add or what.
But if true, all the more reason for the PAC to stay together with the exception of Oregon and Washington bolting to the B1G.
But it would seem that the big12 media deal is actually ensuring that there remains 5 P5 conferences and that may have been by design with the media partners. Dunno.
Point being I think the announcement from the PAC that “we are all in this together” is sincere and also a signal to media partners as they sort this out.
Another analysis I saw indicated that it would still make sense to stick together with a deal that amounts to less than the $31M per school the big12 schools together for all the reasons we know - that number is estimated to be around $25M.
Another prevalent thought seeming to float around is that USC/UCLA will be wanting back in the pac after 4-5 years of traveling and being a small fish in a big pond. That sounds like wishful thinking at this point but possible.
Regardless, at the end of the day the Pac even with the addition of SMU and SDSU is a far superior product to the big12, with more viewers, more ranked football teams, higher education standards and better Olympic sports.
The big12 has the edge on college b-ball… but that doesn’t generate near the revenue of football.
My opinion is that the PAC will strike a media deal within 10% of the big12 and will stick together. It would obviously be foolish not to, with the B1G being the one caveat.
I think UO and UW stay in the PAC, for a few reasons:
their media market sizes don’t move the needle for the B1G
there’s now a clearer path to the CFP with the expanded playoffs - superconferences may have been a Summer of '22 phenomenon.
Even with 4 teams in the B1G “Western Wing”, there’s still a lot of serious travel, enough that it presents a competitive obstacle.
Political sentiment in Oregon & Washington for their universities to stick together, don’t break up their very long histories. (Those two states have a sensitivity to inequality. Why let it get worse?)
the media rights end up being a fraction of overall athletics revenues. Uncle Phil and the high-rollers in Seattle can keep those schools competitive in football, certainly.
SC at best is the new Penn State and UCLA at best is the new Minnesota. Not sure you want to be playing in cold ■■■ weather with 4-6 hour flights to get to games for very long. Not to mention the Big Nude (Big Noon) kickoffs of the Big 10 which will be 9am kickoffs locally/
Not that anyone in LA gives half a rat’s ■■■, let alone a full rat’s ■■■ about UCLA sports. Neither move the media needle much, if at all. U$C is only followed when they are in the National Championship hunt, otherwise they are just as irrelevant as UCLA.
Lol, what a joke. Somebody blindly asserts that I’m the same poster as “nevercoug” and my account gets suspended? Shouldn’t the mods be able to tell we aren’t the same poster? I have no idea who nevercoug is. I joined here to encourage us to be open to the Big12 as an option, and try and talk sense to our fans who insist on thumbing their noses at it for some reason.
There is so much ignorance among our base it’s embarrassing. As evidenced by posts in this very thread. Yormark lost OU and UT? Lol, uhhh, no. Remaining PAC better in football than new Big12? No. Last two College Football Playoffs and rankings clearly suggest otherwise. More viewership? Better media deal? Please. When the dust settles we would make a minimum of 5-10M more per year as part of the Big12. Wake up, people. I live in Big12 country and can tell you it would NOT be a bad landing spot. What is the point in summarily rejecting what might be the best thing that could happen to us? I’ll never understand it.
Seriously? Are you a mature, learned adult? Although I couldn’t care less what happens to CFB or where P12 schools land, this is a board for, mostly CFB fans. Which fan-base(s) has no embarrassing fans? Why attack this fan-base? You think the opinions of this fan-base matter? Would you be happier if everyone here agrees with you?
In fact, please identify, collectively, any sane sports fan-base – rhetorical.
Hello there, Dallas, first time poster. What exactly is your connection to the U?
Please explain:
With the playoffs being expanded to 12 after this coming season, why should Utah join a super conference? (We’ve already been in one, it broke up because of all the travel.)
Since the B12 added UCF and Cincinatti, how is that better than, let’s say, Cal & Stanford? How is TTech, Iowa State and the Kansas schools a better fit than the NW schools?
Why should we be enthusiastic about re-stoking one of the most dysfunctional rivalries in college football?
We’re 2314 miles from Orlando, 1911 miles to Morgantown and 1651 miles to Cincinnati. Please elaborate on how this is a good idea.
Ute fans will support Utah no matter what happens. In the meantime, we’ll support the PAC schools, who are sticking together. Unless things change, no reason to wander east of the 100th meridian. OK, maybe SMU.
SMU adds nothing. Trust me on this. I’m in Dallas and nobody gives two squirts of piss about SMU. They bring zero eyeballs.
Now to your other questions, the simplest reason to being open to a jump to Big12 is money. After the LA Traitors’ departure, we are left with some harsh realities. Cal and Stanford are far left-wing bastions who care very, VERY little about football. Oregon St and Wash St are complete afterthoughts that haven’t competed for anything meaningful in forever. Meanwhile, the Big12 jumped in front of us on their media deal (shrewd move) and have teams in the last two college football playoffs (Cincy and TCU) and a top 5 program last year (Baylor) and they boast the top MBB league in the nation, by far, and it isn’t even close. All three of those things matter, and they have a shark for a commissioner who is almost certainly going to keep them relevant moving forward in media negotiations.
Why wouldn’t we want to consider being a part of that? Especially since it’s almost certain they’re going to poach Arizona, ASU, and CU at this point? What are we so adamantly hanging onto? Personally I’d like the additional $10M per year and some stability. The league would be split up regionally, and covers all 4 time zones. Frankly, it’s a great landing spot. But for some reason most of my fellow Ute fans act like it’s somehow beneath us. It’s mind boggling.
Oregon State & Washington State are both tough “outs” in football, they’re the proof that small market teams in the west can be competitive. Ask Oregon.
I’m not sure how Yormark continues to upgrade media contracts moving forward - will he re-negotiate, like pro athletes do?
About the near certainty of poaching the 4 corners schools… wasn’t that a near certainty last summer?
Some Internet source associated with U of A blew all his credibility last summer predicting the day things would go down… while ASU’s AD explicitly denied the rumored meeting with the 4C ADs and the Big-12, and our own AD put it more humorously:
“Imagine my surprise to wake up and read I was in a meeting in Dallas, when I was pretty sure I was having a cup of coffee in my own kitchen here in SLC”.
All the attempts to destabilize the PAC failed last summer, and until hard announcements are made to the contrary, there’s no reason for us to speculate on the PAC’s demise, especially after they re-iterated their commitment, last week.
(The PAC’s track record is more credible, going back to the circus last summer.)
‘My fellow’ - hardly. Almost no one is arguing it’s beneath us. We’re arguing it’s not the best option. It’d be jumping the gun before we can see what media deal can be worked out. It’d be stupid for every sport but football due to travle as discussed ad naseum (making it a less then ideal landing spot). It’s mind boggling you can’t see ither opinions and at least see the valodity of multiple options with tradeoffs instead of your myopic ‘Rome is burning’ conspiracy.
BSME '04
FB team is 12-5 in road/bowl games I’ve attended since graduating (just saying I’ve put money into my fandom since I’m not in Utah). How about you imposter?
