Mandel with some juicy mailbag information...
Here is Mandels mailbag from this morning...some juicy information he sounds confident in...summary...
-If PAC expands he feels confident it would be SDSU and SMU
-If one conference is poaching...much more likely it is the PAC taking from the Big 12...not the reversal.
-Also very possible they stay at 10.
Here is the Q & A....
I am a lifelong Southerner, but pulling for the Pac-12 to survive and prosper. After San Diego State, are either Nevada or UNLV acceptable candidates? — Mark C.
Nothing against either of those two fine institutions, but if the Pac-12 brought either of them in, the remaining schools would basically have to write them a check from their own bank accounts, because they’re bringing zero new dollars to the league’s next TV deals.
Based on the conversations I’ve had, and reading between some tea leaves, the only remaining Group of 5 schools on the Pac-12’s radar are San Diego State and SMU. The former is fairly obvious, both due to its location and its strong athletic department. SMU’s appeal is part getting into the Dallas recruiting and TV market, and part that it’s highly ranked in academics (No. 68 nationally in US News) — which Pac-12 presidents really do care about. However, it’s also debatable whether either or both will add enough per-school value to prevent the existing 10 from getting their slice of the pie.
I would not discount two other possibilities for the Pac-12. One is the league stays at 10 programs. It would be much the same strategy the Big 12 followed from 2011-21, which benefitted its schools financially but then of course left them a sitting duck when Oklahoma and Texas left. This to me is the likely outcome if they end up landing a less-than-desired number from their next set of media rights. (If that happens, I’d also expect to see Oregon and possibly others push for a bigger slice of the revenue).
Or — they do better than expected, and try to use it as incentive to add schools from the Big 12.
Obviously, the Pac-12 had that opportunity a year ago and declined. (The LA Times recently reported that of all people, USC president Carol Folt put the kibosh on expansion at that time.) I’ve been told the conference did its diligence and found that only a couple of the Big 12 holdovers would have added any value. But circumstances have changed, and if commissioner George Kliavkoff and/or his presidents deem it important to get into Texas, it would make sense to pursue TCU and Baylor, or perhaps even Houston, before turning to SMU and San Diego State.
The tricky thing is that the Big 12 Grant of Rights goes for a year longer than the Pac-12’s, so it wouldn’t line up with the start of the Pac-12’s next TV deal. But that could also work to their advantage. The Pac-12 is going to know its post-USC/UCLA valuation a year or more earlier than the Big 12 schools find out their post-Oklahoma/Texas fate. Probably before the end of this calendar year. That guaranteed money could be tempting to a school like TCU that will still have no idea the new Big 12’s value. And, if they wait until 2025, they can defect without having to pay an exit fee.
To be clear, I would not place the likelihood of this scenario particularly high, though certainly higher than anyone going in the reverse direction.
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