Are We Headed Towards 4 Conferences?

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Gophers_4life said:
The PAC may not legally be able to talk about those details with parties outside the negotiations.
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But if the PAC is where SDSU intends to go, they would have had to have at least back channel talks to push them to ask this of MWC. But I also think Yormark wants to be as big a conference as possible, money wise, without shrinking anyone's shares.
 

mngolf said:
But if the PAC is where SDSU intends to go, they would have had to have at least back channel talks to push them to ask this of MWC. But I also think Yormark wants to be as big a conference as possible, money wise, without shrinking anyone's shares.
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While SDSU is a perfect fit geographically to slot into the PAC, that conference has always had an aire of snootyness about their academic standing, so I could see Cal and Stanford turning up their noses at this.
 

Regarding G4L's nitpicking post, I have some thoughts.

When Penn State joined, they were an independent, when that was still a viable thing for multiple schools that aren't Notre Dame. As an indy, they didn't have to answer to a conference about leaving.

I'm not sure that if the B1G was expanding today, that they would necessarily take both Rutgers and Maryland. Maryland, probably yes. But with regional cable systems not what they once were, and the reality that Rutgers has a small fanbase despite being a large school and weak sports programs in general, would getting the network in the NY metro even matter that much?

Yes Colorado left the Big 12 for the PAC, but I wonder how much of that was because of the elephant (Texas) in the room and the amount of sway they had over conference decisions. I know that was a big reason Nebraska left. And those two schools had enough clout to do so, as opposed to an Iowa State or K-State who have to sit back and be happy where they are (and they both ended up pretty damn fortunate how things turned out.)
 

disco said:
While SDSU is a perfect fit geographically to slot into the PAC, that conference has always had an aire of snootyness about their academic standing, so I could see Cal and Stanford turning up their noses at this.
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They better not keep being snooty because there aren’t that many schools in the west to add to the PAC. In California there are only three Division 1 FBS schools that are not in a P5 conference: Fresno State, San Diego State and San Jose State. In fact, all remaining western FBS schools are in the Mountain West Conference.

It’s been almost one year since UCLA and USC announced their move to the B1G and it seems almost nothing has been accomplished by the PAC to shore up the conference. They have not been aggressive in adding more schools and they haven’t finished the new media package to fill the schools coffers. The lack of progress has me wondering what their strategy going forward will be.

Maybe they’ll stand pat at 10 schools and negotiate only the conference games for the media deal, leaving each school free to negotiate their own out of conference media deals. This new look package could ad some interesting matchups as the schools more focused on sports could negotiate a slate of coveted home schedules. How much would a network pay to broadcast an Ohio State at Oregon? What about Notre Dame at Stanford. The ability for schools to negotiate their own at home non-conference schedules could keep the PAC together and bring a little more excitement to the conference.

It might be a stretch, but the PAC has to do something.
 

FWIW - apparently the Colorado Board of Regents meeting on Monday is to discuss something related to athletics - but not with realignment or switching conferences. the subject of the meeting involves the track & field program.

and there is another Regents meeting on June 22nd & 23rd - but nothing on the agenda involving athletics. so looks like nothing brewing on that front.

now, a radio host named Greg Swaim is tweeting that "multiple sources" are reporting that Colorado "will vote late next week to leave the Pac12 for the Big12." but as far as I can tell, he is the only one reporting this.

and if that wasn't wacky enough - there are multiple reports on traditional media outlets that Colorado FB Coach Deion Sanders may have to have his left foot amputated due to ongoing blood-flow problems. he has already had two toes on that foot removed.
 


mngolf said:
But if the PAC is where SDSU intends to go, they would have had to have at least back channel talks to push them to ask this of MWC.
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Investigating adding SDSU to the PAC won't be instantaneous. It will still be a process that takes a couple weeks if not longer.

If the announcement of the media deal and GoR being agreed to by all 10 PAC schools is made even say on June 27 ... that's still not enough to start going through the process of seeing if the 10 have any appetite left to actually add another school, or if they just want to stick with the 10 and reevaluate at the end of the GoR (say in 5 years).

My wild guess is that's why SDSU asked the MWC if they'd agree to an extension.

mngolf said:
But I also think Yormark wants to be as big a conference as possible, money wise, without shrinking anyone's shares.
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Generally sure, that's what any conference wants when expanding.
 

disco said:
While SDSU is a perfect fit geographically to slot into the PAC, that conference has always had an aire of snootyness about their academic standing, so I could see Cal and Stanford turning up their noses at this.
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They have the most doctoral students of Cal State, but yeah they're still pretty far down in research. (Though, so is Oregon ... quite massively down from the rest of the PAC ... it's quite a shock that they're still AAU, no medical school ... they should've been kicked out when Nebraska was ... bribes?)

So it would be a political thing, to finally get a Cal State at the table with the big UC's.

Does it take a unanimous vote to add a school? Don't know.


There may be no appetite left to explore expansion after getting the new media deal and GoR pushed through for the current 10.
 

disco said:
I'm not sure that if the B1G was expanding today, that they would necessarily take both Rutgers and Maryland. Maryland, probably yes. But with regional cable systems not what they once were, and the reality that Rutgers has a small fanbase despite being a large school and weak sports programs in general, would getting the network in the NY metro even matter that much?
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It was a play, and it was driven by cable systems getting BTN, as you mention.

Not sure if it (Rutgers) has worked out like they were hoping. Neither has Nebraska, on the football field.

Would they go Maryland Virginia, if the latter would agree to it? Probably want to stay with UNC though. I think Maryland had always been on the outside of the ACC braintrust (Tobacco road and Virginia) and were fine leaving them.

disco said:
Yes Colorado left the Big 12 for the PAC, but I wonder how much of that was because of the elephant (Texas) in the room and the amount of sway they had over conference decisions. I know that was a big reason Nebraska left. And those two schools had enough clout to do so, as opposed to an Iowa State or K-State who have to sit back and be happy where they are (and they both ended up pretty damn fortunate how things turned out.)
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The hearsay I had always read about the move was that CU desired to align with and identify themselve as "Western" and a major research/academic institution. They wanted to be associated with Cal and Stanford, not Texas and Oklahoma.
 

WAGopher said:
They better not keep being snooty because there aren’t that many schools in the west to add to the PAC. In California there are only three Division 1 FBS schools that are not in a P5 conference: Fresno State, San Diego State and San Jose State. In fact, all remaining western FBS schools are in the Mountain West Conference.

It’s been almost one year since UCLA and USC announced their move to the B1G and it seems almost nothing has been accomplished by the PAC to shore up the conference. They have not been aggressive in adding more schools and they haven’t finished the new media package to fill the schools coffers. The lack of progress has me wondering what their strategy going forward will be.

Maybe they’ll stand pat at 10 schools and negotiate only the conference games for the media deal, leaving each school free to negotiate their own out of conference media deals. This new look package could ad some interesting matchups as the schools more focused on sports could negotiate a slate of coveted home schedules. How much would a network pay to broadcast an Ohio State at Oregon? What about Notre Dame at Stanford. The ability for schools to negotiate their own at home non-conference schedules could keep the PAC together and bring a little more excitement to the conference.

It might be a stretch, but the PAC has to do something.
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I can almost taste the desperation and jadedness of Washington fans seeping out of this post. They know no Big Ten invite is coming any time soon and that the PAC isn't breaking up.

The PAC doesn't "need" to do a damn thing, other than focus on keeping the 10 together over the next at least 5 hopefully more like 10 years. Then let the cards fall where they may as the ACC GoR comes to a close and any tectonic shifts in CFB then occur.


The Big 12 lost: Colorado, Nebraska, Missouri, and Texas A&M. And replaced them with ..... TCU and West Virginia. And they survived just fine.

If the PAC keeps the current 10 together and calls it a day, they'll be just fine.


Lastly, I don't recall any major conference allowing members to keep their entire non-conference TV rights. The Big 12 allowed members to keep so-called "Tier 3" rights, to the least desired non-conf home games, to sell themselves. Texas created the Lohnhorn Network for this, and Oklahoma had a sorta similar thing on their own. The rest couldn't do anything and so I believe they created the Big 12 Network" which is just a marketing label for games on ESPN+.
 



short ornery norwegian said:
FWIW - apparently the Colorado Board of Regents meeting on Monday is to discuss something related to athletics - but not with realignment or switching conferences. the subject of the meeting involves the track & field program.

and there is another Regents meeting on June 22nd & 23rd - but nothing on the agenda involving athletics. so looks like nothing brewing on that front.
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Of course

short ornery norwegian said:
now, a radio host named Greg Swaim
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:rolleyes:

Swaim and slimy cohorts like Scheer and barely better than Flugaur, at this point.
 






mngolf said:
I don't feel like any date concerning the PAC media deal is safe. At this point, wouldn't surprise me if they got to the end of this contract and still had nothing.
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Yeah, and the longer it goes IMHO, the more likely that those schools start to accelerate pursuing a new dance partner.
 

the sniping between pro-Pac12 and pro-Big 12 media outlets is getting more intense - or more funny depending on your point of view.

If there is no announced media deal before the Pac-12 media day on July 21, I would not want to be a Pac-12 coach or AD and have to face all the questions. But if Kliavkoff does a presser, that could be one for the books.

BTW - former Gopher OC Jedd Fisch weighed in on a podcast. Fisch - now the HC at Arizona, was asked about the situation and said “Arizona is going to have a place to go. That’s what I tell our recruits, that’s what I tell our donors, that’s what I tell our families.” He also referred to the conference as the "Pac-10" which I felt was somewhat amusing.
 

and there is.......some kind of an update.......

Pac-12 presidents on Friday received a notable update on the conference’s long-awaited television contract. Ross Dellenger of Sports Illustrated reported that this update was described as “accelerated” progress on a TV deal. While only a general framework was revealed, including significant linear concepts, a more substantive framework is expected by football media day on July 21.

and.......

San Diego State will not be leaving the Mountain West for the foreseeable future, according to a report.

Per ESPN’s Pete Thamel, SDSU will tell the Mountain West today that it will not withdraw from the league. SDSU previously notified the Mountain West of its intentions to leave the conference.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
and there is.......some kind of an update.......

Pac-12 presidents on Friday received a notable update on the conference’s long-awaited television contract. Ross Dellenger of Sports Illustrated reported that this update was described as “accelerated” progress on a TV deal. While only a general framework was revealed, including significant linear concepts, a more substantive framework is expected by football media day on July 21.

and.......

San Diego State will not be leaving the Mountain West for the foreseeable future, according to a report.

Per ESPN’s Pete Thamel, SDSU will tell the Mountain West today that it will not withdraw from the league. SDSU previously notified the Mountain West of its intentions to leave the conference.
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Feels like nothing new
 


PMWinSTP said:
I think SDSU announcing it will not be leaving MW is significant since it was a target for Pac12.
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imagine being 'in the room' at SDSU right now. they wanted to move to the Pac12. They were practically pleading with the Pac-12 to get its shite together and come up with a media deal - but the Pac-12 couldn't do it, and now SDSU has to get on its knees and beg the MWC to let SDSU back in.

there have to be some really angry people behind the scenes at SDSU.

prompting the question - if the Pac-12 does eventually come up with a media deal, does SDSU still want in - or does SDSU start looking at other options.........?
 

short ornery norwegian said:
imagine being 'in the room' at SDSU right now. they wanted to move to the Pac12. They were practically pleading with the Pac-12 to get its shite together and come up with a media deal - but the Pac-12 couldn't do it, and now SDSU has to get on its knees and beg the MWC to let SDSU back in.

there have to be some really angry people behind the scenes at SDSU.

prompting the question - if the Pac-12 does eventually come up with a media deal, does SDSU still want in - or does SDSU start looking at other options.........?
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Unless the money is similar, they will chase the money. Regardless.
 

Pac12 just pushed the media contract timeline to end of July. The SDSU news even more sense now.
 

PMWinSTP said:
Pac12 just pushed the media contract timeline to end of July. The SDSU news even more sense now.
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Although now it delays adding SDSU for a couple of years due to cost. PAC and Kliavkoff are so embarrassing at this point.
 

the Mountain West Conference does not seem inclined to welcome SDSU back.......

from Yahoo Sports:

San Diego State may want to remain in the Mountain West after all, but the feeling apparently isn’t mutual.

The university told the Mountain West last month that it “intends to resign” from the conference next summer. It did so before July 1, too, in order to cut an exit fee down from nearly $34 million to about $17 million.

On the Friday before the deadline, SDSU informed the conference that it wasn’t going to withdraw after all.

But a day later, the Mountain West rejected that claim. According to the conference, SDSU has withdrawn formally and owes a nearly $17 million exit fee. So, “in connection with our receipt of the SDSU Notice of Resignation,” the Mountain West is withholding a more than $6.6 million payment that was due to the school this week as the first part of that exit fee.

Lawyers from both sides are “actively involved in the issue,” per the Union-Tribune. SDSU’s status in the Mountain West is going to be discussed at a board of directors meeting July 17, when the school could be reinstated officially. As SDSU initially said it was going to leave the conference, (SDSU President) de la Torre was removed from the board and won’t be at that meeting.
 


meanwhile, I'm seeing multiple tweets and reports online - including from John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal - that the Pac-12 media deal may not be ready in time for the Pac-12 media day on July 21. Ourand said he is hearing "Labor Day" as a possible target for an announcement.

it's almost impossible to know who or what to believe - but the longer this gets drawn out, the better this deal has to be for the Pac-12 to save face - and keep any members from jumping ship.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
meanwhile, I'm seeing multiple tweets and reports online - including from John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal - that the Pac-12 media deal may not be ready in time for the Pac-12 media day on July 21. Ourand said he is hearing "Labor Day" as a possible target for an announcement.

it's almost impossible to know who or what to believe - but the longer this gets drawn out, the better this deal has to be for the Pac-12 to save face - and keep any members from jumping ship.
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I don't think there is any chance for it to be good enough to save face at this point. They'll be below the B12 in money and linear broadcasting. Just a lose/lose for half of the PAC now that would have options.
 

PAC FB media day is friday. Per Ross Dellinger there is no deal expected to be announced. How is Kliavkoff going to appear for the first time in many months and field the question that is going to dominate their media days.
 

BigTen to add Zurich University and Tel Aviv State. Commissioner claims the move was NOT financially motivated.
 

the Pac-12 media deal: new day, same story. lots of rumors but no concrete information.

according to one story I read today, if you want to believe it, the hang-up involves the % of games that will be on linear TV vs streaming. supposedly, some of the decision-makers at the Pac-12 want more games on linear and are balking at any deal that has a majority of the games on streaming.

almost everyone seems to think that the streaming component will be on Apple. as for the linear component, some people think ESPN is back in the picture.

I also keep seeing claims that the deal could be incentive-laden - as in, the Pac-12 could receive more $$ based on the number of people who stream games or buy subscriptions.

yikes.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
the Pac-12 media deal: new day, same story. lots of rumors but no concrete information.

according to one story I read today, if you want to believe it, the hang-up involves the % of games that will be on linear TV vs streaming. supposedly, some of the decision-makers at the Pac-12 want more games on linear and are balking at any deal that has a majority of the games on streaming.

almost everyone seems to think that the streaming component will be on Apple. as for the linear component, some people think ESPN is back in the picture.

I also keep seeing claims that the deal could be incentive-laden - as in, the Pac-12 could receive more $$ based on the number of people who stream games or buy subscriptions.

yikes.
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Yikes is right. Having it on a narrow content streaming platform with a contract that is incentive laden seems like a desperate move. Just read Disney is reportedly taken huge losses with Disney+ and Hulu streaming. Maybe Apple+ is in better shape. Plus I don't think PAC12 is compelling content that would hit any kind of incentives.
 

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