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Pete ThamelESPN
The shock and awe portion of realignment appears to have hit a pause. We’ve transitioned from the searing range of emotions in the immediate aftermath of USC and UCLA hopscotching to the Big Ten to the cold calculations of the next steps that will shape the future of college sports.
Talk of poaching, mergers and arrangements — notice an aversion to using the word “alliance” after the ACC/Big Ten/Pac-12 pairing quickly became a punchline — is quickly followed by chatter about consultants, projections, revenue share and per school payouts. Want to know where your school is going next? Follow the money.
“Everyone is an accounting major right now,” joked an industry source.
As the media consultants and CFOs crunch their numbers in preparation for the next flurry of moves — or perhaps the data drives folks to stay put? — let’s take account of what’s looming in the near future and the factors shaping the next wave of realignment.
Can a bicoastal ACC/Pac-12 arrangement really work?
There’s been a thesaurus leafed through on conference calls to find the best non-alliance wording to describe a potential long-distance arranged marriage between the ACC and Pac-12. Partnership? Loose scheduling consortium? Bicoastal arrangement?
They likely won’t have to pick one that works, as sources indicated on Thursday that there’s little chance of this happening in the form it is being discussed.
In what’s being discussed, the leagues would keep their form. And they would be bonded together through the power of large quantities of television inventory and the occasional sexy cross-country football matchup between, say, Miami and Oregon. (Sorry, Mario Cristobal.)
How creative can the leagues get? One idea being discussed, per sources, is a four-day in-season basketball tournament between the leagues as a way to drive up value. Perhaps there’s some football scheduling creativity? It sounds fun, but not all that lucrative.
The real play here is geography and quantity, as ESPN already owns all of the ACC rights through 2036 and would benefit from a presence on the West Coast, in particular for Saturday night football inventory.
But no one should hail this potential partnership as some sort of financial haymaker, especially for the high-end ACC schools worried about falling way behind the SEC and Big Ten. It’s novel, but unlikely to be a game-changer.
One of the appeals to the Big Ten going into Southern California was turning millions of television homes into “inner market,” which should command a significantly higher fee for the Big Ten Network. But that isn’t expected to be the case for the ACC Network in this arrangement, as the Pac-12 schools aren’t going to be recognized as actual ACC schools. Therefore, no significant financial bump.
“It’s really hard unless they’re going out and getting those schools to flat-out join the conference,” said an industry source. “Absent institutions coming in individually to the ACC or a flat-out merger, the value created would be marginal.”
So how much value could be created? How much would the Pac-12, whose TV deal is coming to market after the 2023 football season, command on its own? And would schools in the ACC already worried about cash flow compared to the SEC and Big Ten find enough value in the arrangement? It’s hard to find where the significant money would be.
That’s where there’s some bottom-line skepticism. The numbers are supposed to be floated by the schools next week. And the notion, at the least, gave everyone in conference offices a breath from the dizzying game of Realignment Risk.
“It’s early, and schools are curious to what the finances would indicate,” said a source familiar with the talks. “Is the lift significant enough for ACC schools to close some of the gap with the SEC and Big Ten?”
Skepticism would be the obvious position on this potential arrangement, without more exploration of fiscal upside.
What else could the ACC do?
The word merger has trended out of any conversations. That would involve a league giving up auto bids, a seat at the College Football Playoff table and some commissioner making millions giving up his job and endangering the dozens of employees in the conference office. Those appear to be untenable roadblocks.
If the number crunching on the ACC arrangement with the Pac-12 come back underwhelming financially — and that’s the expectation — things could potentially go from collegial to predatory in a number of directions.
Here’s the question that ACC commissioner Jim Phillips must answer through the context of this potential move. The ACC already has a large amount of low-wattage inventory in football schools like Syracuse, Boston College and Duke. Why take on the Pac-12’s have-nots, too?
Would the ACC just be better off selectively poaching a few schools in major markets new to the ACC? That list could include Cincinnati, TCU, Houston, Washington, Oregon, Cal, Stanford, Arizona State, Colorado and Oklahoma State? (Only Oklahoma State has a limited market, but it has a strong program.)
This would seemingly drive more revenue via more inventory, which could open up the current ACC deal and give a decent boost to the ACC schools crying poor compared to the Big Ten and SEC. The bonus here would seemingly be an ACC Network with juiced-up inner-market rates thanks to the addition of a flurry of high-population areas. Cable plays are always tricky, just ask former Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott. But the combination of better inventory and more ACC Network money would seemingly go a longer way pacify the high-end ACC members who are clamoring for unequal revenue share.
Ultimately, the ACC’s binding grant of rights running congruent to the television deal that expires in 2036 is seemingly going to take ugly and aggressive legal action for schools to escape from. No one appears likely to be the first to run to the courthouse.
Could that cause eventually lead to a recalibrated ACC that helps appease the concerns of the league bell cows?
What’s the Big 12 going to do?
The extent of the Big 12’s discussions with Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah were overstated in reports this week. But there’s certainly been back channel conversations and interest, as new commissioner Brett Yormark has followed through on his vow to be aggressive. A commissioner can only be as aggressive as his pocketbook, and that’s where the next step comes.
The Pac-12 has basically convinced the four schools being courted to slow down and see what the numbers look like on a potential ACC partnership before they make any decision. “Everyone is kind of waiting,” an industry source said.
If that proposed deal is as financially flimsy as expected, the Big 12 conversations with those four schools could heat back up. If one of those schools breaks away from the Pac-12 and commits to the Big 12, a domino effect could soon follow. And that domino of four schools could end up being six, with Oregon and Washington following for safe ground.
Hence the flurry of chatter this week about media consultants, who are common in conference television agreements. The Big 12 needs to sell schools on a robust financial future, and it has the option of pitching a short deal to the new members to see how it all works. Utah, Arizona, Arizona State and Colorado need to decide whether sticking with Oregon and Washington until they are eventually lured away or look east and build an identity facing that way.
The Big 12 is in the thick of those media rights projection conversations, or at least finding the folks to dig them up. It is exploring media consultants to run out the numbers on what the league’s television deal could look like after it expires following the 2024 football season.
With the landscape so volatile and with so many unknowns around streaming, there’s inherent ambiguity on where the Big 12 numbers could end up that far out. Ultimately, the Big 12 is going to get some projections, and so will the ACC/Pac-12. (The Pac-12 is also running numbers about staying at 10 or adding schools, too.)
Essentially, a spreadsheet is going to point to the future. And for the Big 12, the valuations can help fuel the league’s aggression.
Is Notre Dame going to make a move?
Any chatter about the Big Ten making more moves in this cycle quiets by the day. The clear target for the league remains Notre Dame, but the urgency and interest in any imminent arrangement doesn’t appear to be reciprocal.
Notre Dame still has a chance at a blockbuster television deal on its own when its NBC deal expires in 2025, as the Irish are attractive to streaming services because they offer a boutique product without all the bulbous inventory that comes with conference packages. In other words, a nimble streaming service could part a truck in South Bend for six home games instead of being saddled with a lot of Oregon State vs. Utah basketball games on a Tuesday night. (Also, NBC/Peacock could get a piece of the Big Ten and package that with Notre Dame for a day of strong football.)
“They don’t need them,” said an industry source of Notre Dame and the courtship by the Big Ten. “The market is going to be very vibrant for Notre Dame. They’re going to do very well or extremely well.”
The only obvious lever for Notre Dame remains playoff access, and it’s harder to envision the SEC and Big Ten shutting them out.
One interesting nugget is that if Notre Dame does eventually go to the Big Ten — and with consolidation all the rage, that day may come at some point — it would need to do so with a partner. Notre Dame would prefer that partner be Stanford, which it has scheduled an annual game with since 1997. They are synchronized in educational missions and Stanford poses less of a recruiting threat to the Los Angeles schools than Oregon or Washington.
Notre Dame would need to be forced to the Big Ten by a restricted television market or by getting squeezed out of the playoff, and it’s important to remember that Notre Dame doesn’t like being pushed around or told what to do.
The day may come when Notre Dame joins a league, but that day doesn’t appear imminent.
Has this changed the future of the College Football Playoff?
A lot has changed in the world of college football since SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, outgoing Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson and Notre Dame AD Jack Swarbrick began exploring the options in June 2019. That process eventually yielded the 12-team model that got shot down last year. (This exploration happened because Penn State president Eric Barron and Washington State’s Kirk Schulz pushed for it, and those leagues got in the way of it happening.)
Oklahoma and Texas have announced they are heading to the SEC, college athletics have essentially become professionalized via NIL and USC and UCLA have declared they are headed to the Big Ten. Amid that time, an alliance between the Pac-12, Big Ten and ACC formed and then crumbled as Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren left his co-alliance founders bumbling for answers and those other leagues — the ACC and Pac-12 — scrambling to secure their futures.
In retrospect, those who voted against or provided obstacles to the 12-team playoff left their leagues vulnerable. And amid the sport recalibrating, where will it all land the next time the group gets together and discusses options? Remember, this time there doesn’t need to be unanimous approval for the next iteration of the College Football Playoff.
But after all that, what’s the most likely model to replace the current four-team version when it expires after four more seasons? Probably still a 12-team playoff. But there needs to be some clarity on what leagues look like to determine who deserves what’s essentially an automatic bid. The CFP plan that got shot down was the best six conference champions and six at large schools. Could that number be reduced to the five best champs with seven at large schools to appease the Power 2 leagues? That neighborhood feels right, but there’s a lot of time left for change.
Could a 16-team model get more discussion? That would provide 15 games of inventory, which would be appealing to get chopped up among major networks and potential streamers. This would still have a long way to go, but the ample amount of at large schools — think 10 or 11 — would be of interest to the Power 2. So far, it’s only been talk and with any playoff expansion so far out, CFP brass haven’t even met to discuss plans in detail. “People have chattered about 16 teams, but it’s nowhere near a groundswell,” said an industry source.
One drawback to 16 teams would be the amount of games players would be asked to suit up for, and one certainty is that no power conference will give up their league title game for the playoff. Even though those games could decline in relevance with an expanded CFP, they are too valuable monetarily to sacrifice and already baked into contracts.
Don’t expect any decisions soon, as there’s really two years before a plan needs to be in place.