News

Feb 26, 2024

Tipsheet: Pac

College football head coaches at Bowl Subdivision public schools earned just over $12.2 million in bonuses. Colorado is leaving the Pac-12 to return to the conference the Buffaloes jilted a dozen

College football head coaches at Bowl Subdivision public schools earned just over $12.2 million in bonuses.

Colorado is leaving the Pac-12 to return to the conference the Buffaloes jilted a dozen years ago, and the Big 12 celebrated the reunion with a two-word statement released through Commissioner Brett Yomark: “They’re back.”

Once upon a time the Big 12 was falling apart.

Schools fled the conference for safer ground as realignment chaos gripped the college sports industry. Nebraska landed in the Big Ten. Colorado went west to the Pac-12. Missouri and Texas A&M shifted over to the mighty Southeastern Conference.

It appeared that the greed and arrogance of Texas – which had cut its own media rights deal – had blown up the Big 12.

But under ultra-aggressive commissioner Brett Yormark, the league has staged a dramatic comeback. Not even the looming loss of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC could derail the Big 12’s resurgence.

“There was a lot of speculation about the future of the Big 12,” Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt said. “They were not in a growth mindset. Insert Brett Yormark. It's full-tilt forward.”

The league has reclaimed Colorado from the teetering Pac-12 and it is about to steal Arizona as well with its westward expansion.

“We were on the other end of that barely two years ago,” an unamed Big 12 athletic director told ESPN. “What we're trying to do is just change our position. You're either growing and you're moving to try to best position yourself, or you're vulnerable. For the first time, the Big 12 is moving in the other direction. If I had to choose which side of that I'd rather be on, I'd rather be on this one, for sure.”

In turn, the Big Ten, which earlier stole USC and UCLA from the Pac-12, appears open to adding Washington and Oregon from that once-proud conference.

Lacking a big-dollar media rights contract – Apple TV has been the top suitor to this point -- the Pac-12 is ripe for the picking.

With the Big 12 and Big Ten looking to get bigger and better, the SEC figures to ponder expansion at some point too. As luck would have it, Florida State is expressing displeasure with the money it gets from the Atlantic Coast Conference.

So the superconference consolidation continues apace in college sports. Mizzou is hanging on to its place in the SEC, but the Big 12’s revival has given TigerFan something to ponder.

Expect more instability moving forward as the sweeping cutbacks at ESPN threaten future media rights deals. Expect more consolidation at the superconference level, which will apply even more pressure on schools like Missouri to keep up.

Here is what folks are writing about this:

Heather Dinich, ESPN.com: “For the third straight summer, conference realignment has been one of the biggest stories in college athletics -- and for the second straight year, the Pac-12 is the league scrambling to pick up the pieces. In 2021, Big 12 co-founders Oklahoma and Texas announced their intent to join the SEC. In 2022, USC and UCLA decided to join the Big Ten, arguably an even more shocking move, given the geographical mismatch with the Big Ten and the history of the Pac-12's flagship schools. All of those sweeping changes combined with new leadership and media rights deals contributed to where the Power 5 pecking order sits today -- with Colorado leaving the Pac-12 in a precarious position.”

Dennis Dodd, CBSSports.com: “The Big Ten has started considering further additions to its 16-team conference with league members holding preliminary conversations surrounding expansion to as many as 20 teams, sources tell CBS Sports. While Oregon, Washington, California and Stanford -- all Pac-12 members -- are the programs under consideration by the league, it is Oregon and Washington that are the primary focus should the Big Ten chose to expand by two programs and become an 18-team conference. These exploratory talks are at their earliest stages for a league that had seemingly closed the door on further expansion after moving to 16 members following the additions of USC and UCLA from the Pac-12. The Trojans and Bruins will join the Big Ten at the start of the 2024-25 athletic season . . . with the Big 12 adding Colorado from the Pac-12 last week and a proposed media rights deal from Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff not appearing to be financially lucrative enough for other teams in the league, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah are now pondering similar moves to the Big 12. Should one (Arizona) or all three programs defect, the Pac-12 could be down to as few as six members with Oregon, Washington, California and Stanford the most prominent universities remaining. (Oregon State, Washington State are the others.) At that point, it may become more prudent for the Big Ten to increase efforts towards acquiring the best remaining programs.”

Eric Prisbell, On3.com: “By most accounts, the Pac-12 overvalued its inventory. Media rights sources expected it to be a reach for the league to reach the Big 12 figure in annual distribution. And if it did, it would have to sacrifice brand visibility by getting into bed largely streaming partners. Especially in this media rights climate, squeezing more money out of the likes of ESPN was bound to be difficult . . . And who is going to pay top dollar for inventory that has been diminished. Without USC and UCLA in the picture, there’s a scarcity of national brand recognition across the league with the exception of Oregon and perhaps Washington.”

Pete Thamel, ESPN.com: “Oregon is now viewed as charting the course for the Pac-12's future. If the Ducks are comfortable with a Big Ten offer, Washington would follow. But there's also a chance Oregon may be comfortable with the ambiguity of the Pac-12's deal, stay put, and try to dominate the Pac-12. Still, the Big Ten is ultimately a goal for both Oregon and Washington. And a transitory financial phase for a multi-generational decision would seem to make sense. But they could stay in a more geographically sensible league and enjoy clearer access to the College Football Playoff. And there remain forces working against Oregon and Washington's additions, both from the West Coast and the heartland. There's a sense the Big Ten's decision could be tied to what the three remaining Four-Corner Schools -- Arizona, Arizona State and Utah -- end up doing. But there's also the idea those schools want to wait and see what Oregon and Washington end up doing. The fascinating dynamic of hoping someone else goes first underscores one of the concerns that has loomed here -- no one is eager to pull the plug on the Pac-12. But everyone is also scrambling so they don't get left behind. That leaves a landscape filled with paranoia, fake hustle, lies and hopes. Sounds collegial, huh?”

Jerry Brewer, Washington Post: “For all of the plundering of college football conference realignment, it hadn’t fleeced an entire region. It was merely a matter of time, not a respectful nod to tradition. The latest phase of greedy mayhem left the Pac-12 dangling, jeopardizing the identity of football on the West Coast. Sadly, it’s hard to envision the conference stabilizing. The aftershocks continue 13 months after USC and UCLA made the seismic decision to bolt for the Big Ten in 2024. Just last week, Colorado announced its intention to return to the Big 12. When the worst football program in the conference is jumping out the window, it’s too late to call the fire department. With the conference down to nine members and still lacking a long-term media rights deal, every Pac-12 school is left to scramble on its own. No one can be firmly committed because survival doesn’t lend itself to loyalty. Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff, who inherited a disaster when he replaced Larry Scott two years ago, seems to have been blindsided by the departures. He projects genuine confidence about the future, but the conference may be unsalvageable. If so, a storied football region would be reduced to shards spread across competing leagues. For the first time, there wouldn’t be a dominant conference organized by and managed for the west.”

Dan Wolken, USA Today: “Meanwhile on the other coast, Florida State has essentially declared war on the ACC, saying that its $40 million per year payout in media rights isn’t enough to compete with the SEC and Big Ten. Even though it's unclear where Florida State intends to go or how it plans to legally navigate a Grant of Rights agreement that would seem to lock them into the ACC until 2036, school president Rick McCullough is now loudly and publicly saying the Seminoles want out — an event that could destabilize the ACC the same way the Pac-12 is getting ransacked piece by piece. Unless someone gets control of this thing, college sports are headed quickly toward 20-team super leagues, the extinction of a Pac-12 that has served its members well since the 1960s and a further solidification of the reality that this is kill-or-be-killed pro sports -- while administrators argue in front of Congress that they deserve legal protections for their ‘amateur’ model.”

Ray Ratto, The Defector: “The end of big kids' college sports as we know them are not yet among us, but we can see it from the highway. All it takes is one meeting of the college presidents and a proposal from one of them that the Southeastern Conference votes to kill and eat Vanderbilt to make room for Florida State. And we'd include the Big Ten and Northwestern, but nobody wants any part of that meal these days. And don't think that's not on someone's short-term agenda. There are going to be four college conferences, maybe even three, and it's going to happen soon—think next Wednesday and adjust from there. The Pacific-12 Conference is now the Pacific-10, the Pacific-Six by Labor Day, and . . . Let's See If The Big Sky Will Have Us. And at that they may be rejected for lowering the tone at Weber State. This is close to the last real lurch the power conferences have to make until they finally turn on each other in the long-anticipated remake of the Civil War—eviscerating the Pac-Number To Be Determined and the ACC (Amalgamated Carolina Conferences) is just the warmup act. The next power move will be when Arizona and its ambitious president, Robert Robbins, decides that Colorado's move to the Big 12 is worth recreating, and then lures Arizona State and Utah to remake the Big 12 as the Big 16. The Big 10 then has a decision to make viz. Oregon and Washington, and that decision is whether to be the Bigger Big 16 or the Big 18. And the SEC will sift through the best remnants of the ACC (or as it will soon become, Superconference USA) to see if it can get to 20 teams before the other two. The rule here is simple. The few eat their fill and leave the many to fend for themselves, and in a country in which sports fans label shop for the biggest games and competitions, a massive chunk of the nation will no longer need to care what happens in college sports. The big-time survivors will eventually turn on each for a larger slice of a shrinking pie because of capitalism, and sooner rather than later today's big winners will become tomorrow's blue plate specials. Ohio State is looking at you, Illinois, and it has a knife, fork, napkins, and a condiment holder. And Mississippi State, your (backside) is Georgia's because it will eventually want your share in addition to its own.”

MEGAPHONE

“I think there's a misconception at least from some schools that Brett (Yormark) is ruthless in his pursuit, and I just don't think it's that way at all. Brett's set a vision and a platform for our conference that's incredibly attractive, candidly, and I think that's ultimately why Colorado decided to come back to the Big 12.”

TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati.

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College football head coaches at Bowl Subdivision public schools earned just over $12.2 million in bonuses.