If Knight has enough liquid assets to prop up the PAC 12, he could set up an endowment for OU's AD, and basically Oregon could offer up to join the Big 10 at a crazy discount indefinitely. A $2B endowment probably gets them in the Big 10 range. So I don't think for Oregon it is about the money, it's about maintaining exposure, relevance and playoff access. So I don't think propping up the PAC 12 makes much sense.
What I don't get at his point is that if you are Colorado and Arizona, what do you have to gain by staying. IMO the writing is on the wall. Those two have to be really close to making the jump, which will force Oregon and Washington to maker a decision.
If you are NW, Illinois, Maryland, Iowa,etc, you vote down unequal sharing for UO. Once you open that door……..
Typical from this guy. His points on what he learned were like listing a bunch of the most reasonable options from a message board.
How would that even work? Purchasing some equity in the conference, okay, interesting idea, but I'm confused as how this would work for the PAC unless their "equity partner" was just pumping several million into the conference to prop up their distributions. Is there something I don't understand?
Pretty sure every new B1G member not named USC or UCLA has entered at a reduced cut that increases yearly until eventually getting a full cut.
The only thing I can think of is he's trying to set up a deal where the remaining Pac-12 schools (and potentially some more schools) sign a new GOR-like agreement to stick together and he floats them short-term (to make sticking with the conference and other appealing schools join), then he gets back-end later in the deal. He would work in conjunction with the ESPN and conference to get their revenue up short-term (probably including some kind of Nike deal and potentially even cold, hard cash) to basically will the Pac-12 to be the third major conference. In exchange, he would get some of the TV money later in the deal when the Pac-12 is established as the third major conference.
Okay, I looked it up and Phil Knight is worth quite a bit more than I imagined. I mean, I knew he was rich, I just didn't realize he was coming in at 24th in the world with $43.8 billion.
USC and UCLA do not have a buy in period, they are coming on board as full member schools when they join in 2024.
but $50M just to Oregon doesn't do anything for the rest of the PAC, so border/other schools should still be looking. Unless PK wants to drop $500M annually to the conference to placate the other schools.
I was just throwing a rough estimate of the Big XII making $5-$6m more than the PAC per school, per year. Knight could "donate" or "invest" to close the gap for each of the schools - $50-$60m per year, whatever it is.
I’d be curious how much of his net worth is spoken for though, given his charitable donations and partnership bid on the trailblazers among other things.
Exactly this. He could also give the schools premium Nike deals when their current gear deals are up, maybe even some kind of conference gear deal where they're collectively negotiated as well to placate shareholders (starting when each individual school's deal is up).
I think Phil is scared to death of UO being left out and possibly relegated to a MWC situation. Obviously that would look bad for UO, but more importantly, that would look bad for Phil Knight.
