(03-22-2021 10:58 AM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote: (03-20-2021 12:01 AM)Attackcoog Wrote: (03-19-2021 11:05 AM)ken d Wrote: (03-19-2021 09:51 AM)DFW HOYA Wrote: ...or why they'll be calling Texas and Oklahoma sooner rather than later.
https://awfulannouncing.com/local-networ...ibers.html
Why would they be calling Texas and Oklahoma? Interest in West Coast football would likely be even lower in those states than they are in the existing PAC 12 footprint.
Your kidding right? The Pac-12 NEEDS large population states with viewers that actually care about football--thats why. The real question is why in the hell would Texas and Oklahoma actually agree to any Pac-12 offer? Hey, come add a bunch of excessive travel to play schools your fans dont care about---oh---and you'll do it for a smaller share of a smaller smaller pie. I suspect thats not likely to be the most enticing offer Texas and Oklahoma will see over the next few years.
I think it is ridiculous to think that "the Pac-12 needs large population states that actually care about football." Outside of Texas, what large population states does the Big 12 have? California has about ten million more people than Texas. I realize that Texas is a football crazy state, but it is not like people hate football in California or anywhere in the west. There is just not the same reverence for football that they have in Texas.
The Pac-12 Network Payment issue is about the incompetence of the Pac-12 leadership. Only the Pac-12 can fix that. Texas cannot fix that and UT is not going to give up their $15 million dollar a year payment from the Longhorn Network for a less than $2 million payment from the Pac-12 Network.
I agree with this. The long-term demographic and population trends actually favor the Pac-12 more than any other power conference: Colorado, Arizona, Oregon, Washington and Utah all have among the hottest real estate markets in the country on top of the already huge California population. Plus, the demographic growth isn't just coming from people looking for the cheapest prices or lowest taxes: the major Pac-12 markets are getting disproportionately high numbers of highly educated high income workers.
Meanwhile, the Big 12's population "advantage" is *entirely* due to Texas. (Don't get me wrong - Texas in and of itself is a monster.) All of the other states in the Big 12 are low growth or no growth states whose largest TV markets consist of Kansas City and Oklahoma City.
I also push back on the oft-cited time zone issue. Long-term, the Pac-12 has a power conference *monopoly* on the entire Pacific and Mountain Time Zones. We're talking about a region with Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Phoenix, Denver and Salt Lake City and they have a *monopoly*. Regardless of how many homes might be in the Eastern and Central Time Zones, 4 power conferences have to fight directly with each other for that territory while the Pac-12 doesn't have to fight anyone in their region that has *massive* fast-growing markets.
Add on to the fact that these schools are *fantastic* institutional and academic fits with each other (arguably better aligned than any other P5 league, including my Big Ten). Even if you took away the 4 most valuable Pac-12 schools (let's say USC, UCLA and any other two schools), you're still going to be left with a power conference that's going to have flagship schools in fast-growing states and top academics (e.g. Stanford, Cal, Washington). In contrast, all it takes is for Texas to get itchy (which has *directly* happened with the breakup of the SWC in the 1990s and their own flirtation with the old Pac-10 in 2010) and the rest of the Big 12 starts scattering for cover. Texas (both the school and state) has mega-power, but people seem to have such short memories of how much that mega-power masks so many underlying issues with the Big 12 overall.
Now, the fact that the Pac-12 hasn't managed their demographic advantages and time zone monopoly well at all is an entirely different issue. Pac-12 Network management was always a problem from day one. I thought from the beginning that it was a mistake for the Pac-12 to "go it alone" as opposed to partnering with ESPN or Fox for distribution. They saw the Big Ten making a lot of money owning 50% of the BTN, so the Pac-12 got starry-eyed about what they could get with 100% ownership of their own network. It's a classic story of "pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered". The Pac-12 wanted 100% ownership to be a hog and it backfired on them.