(06-23-2022 09:40 AM)bullet Wrote:  

(06-23-2022 09:13 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(06-23-2022 08:24 AM)Native Georgian Wrote:  

(06-23-2022 06:54 AM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  The Pac-12 is going to be substantially ahead of the ACC as the #3 conference financially when this is all said and done.

If that happens — and tbh, I’ll believe it when I see it — what a devastating indictment that would be of the ACC’s financial strategy/leadership.

I think the ACC made a poorly-time long-term TV deal. Whether that's an indictment of ACC leadership is an open question.

That being said, I'll continue to state that the Pac-12 remains perpetually underrated on this forum due to recency bias in the CFP era. The Pac-12 has multiple large affluent markets where it has a complete P5 monopoly, key marquee brands like USC and UCLA, top academics, and a lineup of institutional, cultural and geographic fits.

The Pac-12 has *always* been the #3 league in terms of long-term conference realignment value in my mind. This is just a matter of the TV rights market finally catching up to that reality.

Theoretically they are, but the actual TV ratings numbers say they have been a clear #5. Reality sometimes gets in the way of theory.

On the other hand, the ACC did have bad timing on their long term deal and so the Pac 12 may pass them by leaving the ACC undervalued.

Yes, I understand the TV ratings argument, but that's also looking at USC being at its lowest point for the past 30 years while OU and Clemson have been at their respective highs. OU is heading to the SEC, so that's of no value to the next Big 12 contract.

This is a softer factor, but also remember that the people running these media companies are totally filled with USC and UCLA alums specifically. These TV networks are located right down the street from those schools. That doesn't mean that they'd value the Pac-12 over the SEC and Big Ten (as all of these people value profits over everything else)... but it also means that they're going to give the league the benefit of the doubt because there's a level of familiarity and understanding there with the schools and brands that doesn't exist with, say, the new Big 12. I just look back at the TV ratings when USC was rolling in the 2000s and they were the single biggest TV draw of any school in the country and a lot of the people running these media companies remember that (just as they remember the ratings for the Cowboys in the 1990s even though they've underperformed since then). The Pac-12 parlayed that into their current deal that was the largest contract of any conference in history when it was signed. The real revenue shortfall for the Pac-12 has been with their Tier 2/3 rights that have been on the Pac-12 Networks (where the Big Ten and SEC have huge advantages) as opposed to the Tier 1 contract.