WSJ today
Pac12 Mistake #1July 2021- not expanding
Then, three weeks after officially taking over on July 1, 2021, the college sports landscape began to change when Texas and Oklahoma announced they would leave the Big 12 for the SEC. According to people familiar with the matter, former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby approached Kliavkoff about combining his eight remaining schools with the Pac-12 to form a 20-team super conference. Kliavkoff was on board, according to a person familiar with his thinking, but the merger failed to clear a subcommittee where Southern California president Carol Folt opposed it, according to people familiar with the matter.
8 of the 12 teams ended up with a better deal than that, USC dramatically so. Not sure what the Pac 12 was supposed to do there, that was not the best deal for their membership then or now. Doesn't sound like they would ever have been close to getting the votes.
The thing that's clear in retrospect: when Texas and Oklahoma bailed, the 8 remaining Big XII teams, basically all grizzled veterans of the conference merry-go-round in one form or another, knew, understood, and accepted their day at the top table was over and stayed united and laser focused on survival in the second tier. The best strategy available, executed in the best way available.
The ACC and Pac 12 had and have schools that don't have to settle for less, so could never have been unified in the same way.
Pac12 Mistake #2 July 2023 - not taking $30M offer
Kliavkoff eventually delivered two options. One was a traditional five-year deal involving traditional networks, with three cable partners and one digital bidder splitting the Pac-12 rights. It would have eventually given schools a disbursement of about $30 million a year—far less than the Big Ten and SEC, but in line with the new Big 12 deal. .....But just days before the July 31 deadline, the ground shifted under Kliavkoff’s feet when Colorado announced it was leaving the Pac-12 for the Big 12. The defection caused the more traditional television deal to fall through.....
That explains a lot. Still a slightly smaller deal than the Big 12, and there was no way Colorado was going to stay for less money it appears.
To translate: the plan was 6 auto bids, for the Power Five and one little guy. There will not be two auto bids for little guys.
12 teams, "wild card" round on campus sites in late December, Round of 8 as Bowl Games, probably a New Year's Day quadruple header, then the CFP final four as we know it now thereafter. A 50/50 split between ESPN and Fox I would all but guarantee.
The thing with the Mountain West is there's a $30M exit fee, and the players at the table no longer have the cash flying around to write that off.
It could be Stanford/Cal to the ACC, OSU/WSU to the MWC.
An interesting article from 2019. A lot of hubris from the Pac 12 killed them as well. "the Pac-12 is hopeful that within the next five years, digital outlets will join traditional TV networks and create a bidding war for their next rights deal."
According to SBJ's John Ourand and Michael Smith, the Pac-12 turned down an offer from ESPN to distribute the Pac-12 Networks.
awfulannouncing.com
While the execution of the Pac 12 Networks was undeniably poor, the deal they're criticizing Scott for not taking there is exactly the same as what the ACC did, locking together the conference for a longish term, but signing their eventual death warrant at the same time and leaving their biggest schools clawing at the exit door.
Scott was the visionary he billed himself as, but he was a day late and a dollar short actually turning his vision into reality.
there are still a significant amount of college football fans that want to turn to channel x or channel y and see the game
we are probably 15 years away from digital TV being the main way people watch stuff
I'm starting to think there's a chance cable subscriber decline has sort of plateaued, as opposed to an inevitable march to zeroing out like home phone service.
Low confidence prediction. Everything remains very up in the air in the industry. It can't be what it was, but how bloody is the sports haircut going to have to be?
