(08-04-2023 02:00 PM)erice Wrote: [ -> ] (08-04-2023 01:43 PM)Orange County Owl Wrote: [ -> ]Cal and Stanford have very interesting decisions and arguably existential crises. I'm sure independence is tempting but that's a crazy complicated thing to pull together by next July (including TV/media rights). Remember, all of these moves are for NEXT FALL!
Welcome to the curb, Cal & Stanford. Almost 30 years later, I can tell you, it only gets worse.
Others have mentioned that the prospects, today, for some sort of Magnolia* conference are better than ever (even if still fairly low). Might be, but I wonder if our athletic performance on and off the field over the years has been so poor that we won't merit consideration for membership. It would suck if we miss that ship.
*Is it still "Magnolia" if Stanford's in?
Is it still the Southeastern Conference with UT, TAMU and OU?
So can we go ahead and withdraw our application to the Pac 12 now?
(08-04-2023 02:00 PM)erice Wrote: [ -> ] (08-04-2023 01:43 PM)Orange County Owl Wrote: [ -> ]Cal and Stanford have very interesting decisions and arguably existential crises. I'm sure independence is tempting but that's a crazy complicated thing to pull together by next July (including TV/media rights). Remember, all of these moves are for NEXT FALL!
Welcome to the curb, Cal & Stanford. Almost 30 years later, I can tell you, it only gets worse.
Others have mentioned that the prospects, today, for some sort of Magnolia* conference are better than ever (even if still fairly low). Might be, but I wonder if our athletic performance on and off the field over the years has been so poor that we won't merit consideration for membership. It would suck if we miss that ship.
*Is it still "Magnolia" if Stanford's in?
Magnolia Sequoia Conference?
(08-04-2023 02:00 PM)erice Wrote: [ -> ]Others have mentioned that the prospects, today, for some sort of Magnolia* conference are better than ever (even if still fairly low). Might be, but I wonder if our athletic performance on and off the field over the years has been so poor that we won't merit consideration for membership. It would suck if we miss that ship.
*Is it still "Magnolia" if Stanford's in?
I can imagine that a Magnolia-like conference might have a chance if we, Tulane, SMU, Ga. Tech and some others decide to hop off the major college football train. But while those West Coast schools joining the Big Ten/12 conferences appear to be willing to pay the higher costs their new all-sports travel, I can't imagine those left behind (especially Stanford & Cal) would be interested in a similarly distant conference that would bring in meager (if any) media $$ support.
It seems like the AAC isn’t faring too badly if the Pac 12 implodes. SMU isn’t going anywhere now and neither is Memphis?
Maybe even Cal and Stanford consider the AAC now with all the private schools? But that seems to be a long shot.
Those 2 schools are the big losers. Unless the Big 10 (18) throws them a life preserver.
(08-04-2023 02:33 PM)Tomball Owl Wrote: [ -> ] (08-04-2023 02:00 PM)erice Wrote: [ -> ] (08-04-2023 01:43 PM)Orange County Owl Wrote: [ -> ]Cal and Stanford have very interesting decisions and arguably existential crises. I'm sure independence is tempting but that's a crazy complicated thing to pull together by next July (including TV/media rights). Remember, all of these moves are for NEXT FALL!
Welcome to the curb, Cal & Stanford. Almost 30 years later, I can tell you, it only gets worse.
Others have mentioned that the prospects, today, for some sort of Magnolia* conference are better than ever (even if still fairly low). Might be, but I wonder if our athletic performance on and off the field over the years has been so poor that we won't merit consideration for membership. It would suck if we miss that ship.
*Is it still "Magnolia" if Stanford's in?
Is it still the Southeastern Conference with UT, TAMU and OU?
Would it be the Pacific Conference with South Florida?
(08-04-2023 03:12 PM)Almadenmike Wrote: [ -> ]... if we, Tulane, SMU, Ga. Tech and some others ...
No one is going to leave a major conference and give up $30mm+ annually in TV revenue. Teams would have to come from outside the (now) Power 4.
(08-04-2023 03:03 PM)westsidewolf1989 Wrote: [ -> ]So can we go ahead and withdraw our application to the Pac 12 now?
Rice gets accepted to PAC12 a few hours before they disband...Independence, here we come!
My initial thought this morning was that the remaining PAC schools, whatever that number lands at, could be picky about who they associate with going forward, but there's likely only a take-or-leave-it deal joining the MWC. The MWC exit fee ballooned to more than $30M on July 01, much to the chagrin of SDSU who have been ready to pull the trigger on joining the PAC since February. If the PAC had fallen apart in June, the leftovers would have had their pick of the MWC litter and wouldn't necessarily have to associate with New Mexico, UNLV, or Boise State if they didn't want to. There's no way a theoretical future PAC of their expected remnants and any combination of additions from the MWC + the Texas AAC could afford that $30M/school MWC buyout. In the extremely unlikely possibility that Arizona State and Utah stay in the PAC, maybe SMU and UTSA or Rice could stabilize the PAC well enough at 8 to wait out the MWC buyout to affordable levels, but failing that, the PAC is going the way of the SWC. And if I'm SMU looking at this PAC, I don't know that I bite on an invitation to that sinking ship, anyway.
Maybe the MWC buys the PAC branding like the current Big East did, but the low end teams of the MWC have to thank their lucky stars tonight that the PAC leadership has made nearly every possible strategic mistake for the last 15 years.
For those keeping track, looks like ASU and Utah are being added to the Big 12 tonight.
So PAC membership is down to four: Stanford, Cal, WSU, OSU.
I wonder what the minimum number of schools was on their Apple streaming offer(?)
Tomorrow will be very interesting, too.
The PAC has historically been the least stable of the major conferences. From PCC to AAWU to PAC-8 to PAC-10 to PAC-12, it has broken apart and re-formed repeatedly.
One thing that's killing them is the time zone. A 7 pm kickoff in LA is 10 pm on the east coast, and people just aren't going to shell out big TV money for a conference that doesn't play when people are watching. To get TV money, they would have to play at 10 am, 1 pm, and 4 pm, their time. They would like to get some teams in the Mountain or even Central zones.
We know that we are also close to seeing some members of other P5 conferences getting axed like a Wake Forest, Vandy, Duke, Northwestern, etc. who are going to be viewed as not pulling their weight financially for the contracts that the conferences are negotiating.
Maybe Cal and Stanford take an unconventional path and try to lead the formation of a Magnolia conference of real student athletes playing at highest level. Lots of disgust out there right now and it would seem to have appeal for some players, many fans, coaches, etc. (and thus sports networks for $) that are turned off by what is becoming the NFL minor leagues destroying what many thought was special about college football in first place. Always been a hail mary kind of idea (and still is) but as the chaos increasingly becomes more real each day, seems like the time for such a consideration has never been higher.
(08-04-2023 06:55 PM)owl40 Wrote: [ -> ]We know that we are also close to seeing some members of other P5 conferences getting axed like a Wake Forest, Vandy, Duke, Northwestern, etc. who are going to be viewed as not pulling their weight financially for the contracts that the conferences are negotiating.
Maybe Cal and Stanford take an unconventional path and try to lead the formation of a Magnolia conference of real student athletes playing at highest level. Lots of disgust out there right now and it would seem to have appeal for some players, many fans, coaches, etc. (and thus sports networks for $) that are turned off by what is becoming the NFL minor leagues destroying what many thought was special about college football in first place. Always been a hail mary kind of idea (and still is) but as the chaos increasingly becomes more real each day, seems like the time for such a consideration has never been higher.
^^^ This is most definitely within the realm of the possible
Well… not sure about a Magnolia rising from these ashes. But I don’t think there’s any doubt that the next wave of realignment will happen. And it will consolidate even further. Give it 4-5 years and the Michigans and OSUs and Texas’ and OUs and the Alabamas and Georgia’s will complain that they are having to share the $$$ with teams that aren’t pulling their weight and aren’t capable of commanding a big enough TV presence. So the top couple of conferences organize at the top and jettison the likes of Indiana, Purdue, Vanderbilt, Miss. St etc and you now have one 20 member Super conference. And everybody else outside looking in.
(08-04-2023 07:20 PM)owl at the moon Wrote: [ -> ] (08-04-2023 06:55 PM)owl40 Wrote: [ -> ]We know that we are also close to seeing some members of other P5 conferences getting axed like a Wake Forest, Vandy, Duke, Northwestern, etc. who are going to be viewed as not pulling their weight financially for the contracts that the conferences are negotiating.
Maybe Cal and Stanford take an unconventional path and try to lead the formation of a Magnolia conference of real student athletes playing at highest level. Lots of disgust out there right now and it would seem to have appeal for some players, many fans, coaches, etc. (and thus sports networks for $) that are turned off by what is becoming the NFL minor leagues destroying what many thought was special about college football in first place. Always been a hail mary kind of idea (and still is) but as the chaos increasingly becomes more real each day, seems like the time for such a consideration has never been higher.
^^^ This is most definitely within the realm of the possible
(08-04-2023 06:55 PM)owl40 Wrote: [ -> ]We know that we are also close to seeing some members of other P5 conferences getting axed like a Wake Forest, Vandy, Duke, Northwestern, etc. who are going to be viewed as not pulling their weight financially for the contracts that the conferences are negotiating.
Maybe Cal and Stanford take an unconventional path and try to lead the formation of a Magnolia conference of real student athletes playing at highest level. Lots of disgust out there right now and it would seem to have appeal for some players, many fans, coaches, etc. (and thus sports networks for $) that are turned off by what is becoming the NFL minor leagues destroying what many thought was special about college football in first place. Always been a hail mary kind of idea (and still is) but as the chaos increasingly becomes more real each day, seems like the time for such a consideration has never been higher.
(08-04-2023 07:20 PM)owl at the moon Wrote: [ -> ]^^^ This is most definitely within the realm of the possible
(08-04-2023 07:48 PM)greyowl72 Wrote: [ -> ]Well… not sure about a Magnolia rising from these ashes. But I don’t think there’s any doubt that the next wave of realignment will happen. And it will consolidate even further. Give it 4-5 years and the Michigans and OSUs and Texas’ and OUs and the Alabamas and Georgia’s will complain that they are having to share the $$$ with teams that aren’t pulling their weight and aren’t capable of commanding a big enough TV presence. So the top couple of conferences organize at the top and jettison the likes of Indiana, Purdue, Vanderbilt, Miss. St etc and you now have one 20 member Super conference. And everybody else outside looking in.
I think it will be ESPN/Disney who will be doing the complaining and force the shedding of the lower-tier P2/3 teams. The companies' profits are already declining as rights fees (especially for the popular pro NFL/NBA leagues) AND cord cutting are both increasing ... and streaming is not massively popular (at least not yet).
For a detailed rundown on the current landscape, see:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/busin...isney.html (subscription content)
I suspect that the upper-tier teams would surely prefer to have some easier wins on their schedules. But the overlords' need for ever-increasing profits will ultimately dictate otherwise.
Might the pro leagues help subsidize ESPN's linear TV model? We'll see.
But I doubt that ... as much as we'd like to see it ... a Magnolia-like league emerges from the effluent of the current (and future) college football reorganizations.
I think it's possible that the high end money starts to be reined in. Fox Sports and ESPN threaten cable and satellite carriers with the prospect of losing those companies' flagship networks if the carriers don't put, respectively, the Big Ten Network or the SEC Network on their lowest level TV service package because the companies own significant percentages of the conference networks, too. That's where a lot of the money sloshing around those conferences comes from. The PAC hit a double whammy with this failed TV negotiation. The major TV channels were already leveraged beyond being able to afford a traditional full deal at the new higher interest rates, and streaming services are only willing to pay for the specific eyeballs watching your content which they can measure with near complete certainty in real time. The Apple TV+ deal purportedly rejected by UW and UO today was said to have potential payouts as high as $40M/school, better than the Big XII deal, but contingent on hitting certain levels of new subscriptions. Colorado was probably apprised of the broad strokes of those terms when they decided to leave. Washington, Oregon, and Arizona certainly are by now. Given the choice between gambling on streaming and certainty on traditional TV, those with the option are choosing the latter, but it may not be an option for much longer. If everybody's next media deals have to be on streaming, it gets a lot harder to demand that households that never watch sports, college or otherwise, should be forced to pay for the privilege of carrying a channel they don't want when they can go to the next streaming service and pay a more reasonable price. Word this week is that Bob Iger is looking to spin ESPN out of Disney for lack of growth prospects, and I can't help but think a future where sports production can't extort streaming platforms the way it has cable and satellite is a big reason why. Separating ESPN+ from Star Wars and Mickey Mouse will do certainly do no favors to the next SEC deal.
(08-04-2023 05:46 PM)franklyconfused Wrote: [ -> ]My initial thought this morning was that the remaining PAC schools, whatever that number lands at, could be picky about who they associate with going forward, but there's likely only a take-or-leave-it deal joining the MWC. The MWC exit fee ballooned to more than $30M on July 01, much to the chagrin of SDSU who have been ready to pull the trigger on joining the PAC since February. If the PAC had fallen apart in June, the leftovers would have had their pick of the MWC litter and wouldn't necessarily have to associate with New Mexico, UNLV, or Boise State if they didn't want to. There's no way a theoretical future PAC of their expected remnants and any combination of additions from the MWC + the Texas AAC could afford that $30M/school MWC buyout. In the extremely unlikely possibility that Arizona State and Utah stay in the PAC, maybe SMU and UTSA or Rice could stabilize the PAC well enough at 8 to wait out the MWC buyout to affordable levels, but failing that, the PAC is going the way of the SWC. And if I'm SMU looking at this PAC, I don't know that I bite on an invitation to that sinking ship, anyway.
Maybe the MWC buys the PAC branding like the current Big East did, but the low end teams of the MWC have to thank their lucky stars tonight that the PAC leadership has made nearly every possible strategic mistake for the last 15 years.
Rick Greenspan like performance by the last two commissioners of the Pac 12.
Who would have thought Stanford and Cal would be so eff’ed. The rumors have been flying here in Utah since USC and UCLA bolted. Pretty obvious the Vandys, G Tech, Iowa State, Kansas, K State , Northwestern, Rutgers will take a few years to wean out. Super League of 30 to 40 max with stadiums over 80,000 with home game revenues over $10 million per game. Six home games and TV money of over $40 million a year is $100 million football budget and the NIL means that money isn’t spent on the athletes. Football coaches will all make more than NFL coaches. Fortunately most of those teams will in the eastern and central time zone so games will be on earlier for me. If there is any silver lining, some of the P5s that out recruited Rice because of the money that fell to them, might be on our tier again unless there is a G5 A and B. Hopefully our new AD is thinking ahead and keeps us in front. I don’t see a way out for the rest of the PAC teams. They can’t poach from the MWC due to buyout costs and they would impose huge travel costs to events for any team east of them. As bad as we thought Rice managed athletics, the PAC 12 or whatever it is now had this happen the year after they had SIX teams in the AP final top 25
The two schools in the most liberal area of the Pac 12 and the two schools in the most conservative areas of the Pac 12 (other than maybe Utah) now remain. Gotta love it.
Oregon St and Wazzu might as well trudge to Colorado Springs now to be admitted to the MWC. They are the two worst academic schools in what was the Pac 12 and are a better cultural fit with the Boise States and Utah States of the world.
Stanford and Cal are tough also. They are hoping for a Big 10 or Big 12 lifeline at this point. Neither is a viable option as an independent. Stanford football at least has some history to stand on, but their football program isn't a talisman for an entire religion in the U.S., so they aren't going to succeed in attracting big time TV or streaming money.