I reject the notion that ESPN was trying to break the PAC. They offered ballpark $25m/school last year. This is far more than ANY of the other media companies offered, including CBS, Fox, NBC and Apple.

The real issue here is that conference media deals often give every school the same payout, and not all schools carry the same value. Schools like UCLA, USC, Oregon and UW look over at Big 10 money and expect to get that level of payout while the remaining schools in their conference simply weren’t worth that.

The same thing is starting to happen in the ACC. What is causing these splits is the schools no longer want to share equally, and all of them want to get top dollar. It comes down to greed and competition. Oregon and UW walked away from signing the Apple deal when other schools including ASU were ready to do so. ESPN didn’t kill the PAC, a few of the top schools did to better position themselves.

Now if folks want to argue that the B12 and B1G were tampering and trying to destroy the PAC, I might believe that version of events.