Report: OU & Texas reach out to join SEC

[AuH2O]

How about all of the above? You have to remember that the death of BOTH the PAC12 & the B12 would create a massive revenue vacuum for sports rights. A ton of money would then be available for the B1G's rights. CBS currently has no premiere rights to CFB after losing the SEC's Tier 1 deal to ESPN.

If CFB morphs into a true AFC/NFC mini-NFL style league, the B1G has to respond to this move by the SEC or tOSU/UM probably eventually leave and join the SEC super league. If the membership of the B1G want to become the Ivy League 2.0 eventually, that's fine. Doing nothing at this juncture is exactly where that leads.

The SEC will eventually kill the ACC to continue growing its membership IMO, that will include UNC/UVA/FSU/Clemson IMO. If I were the B1G commissioner, my first step would be to grab:

USC
UCLA
Oregon
Washington

Secure those four first, then go to Notre Dame and make the following pitch: the SEC is likely to demo the ACC at some point and that they better either join the B1G/PAC now or plan to join and compete in the SEC later as the only Yankee school in that conference. Let us know if you think that you're a better fit in a conference that brands itself as being truly national - from the Atlantic to the Pacific (the new B20), or if you fit better with a bunch of schools from just the south? If the latter, good luck to you, and the B1G's only play is to add two more from the PAC12.

If ND gets on board, you have one spot left - I think you go to Texas and ask them if they've made their mind up for sure or not. They likely have, but I think you need to at least offer them spot #20. If they say no, then you ask the 19 members who they want as #20, probably from the P12.

If everyone wants to eventually submit to the SEC, then doing nothing eventually ends up there. The B1G is the only conference that's positioned to create something that could compete with it, even without UT at #20, that's a conference that will compete for playoff spots year in and year out.

If the B1G executes the above plan, it creates a pretty competitive landing spot for ISU with the remnants of the P12 & B12 teaming up together in a 4th super conference. The B1G adding ISU or Kansas at this point is the same as telling tOSU to go to the SEC, it needs to make a huge counter punch to the SEC grabbing UT/OU.

I think going big and swinging for the fences is certainly something the Big 10 is considering. However, due to ACC GoR I think that's going to be a really heavy lift.

But you are correct that the Big 10 is going to run into a problem with OSU, but it's probably a lot more feasible and easier to accept an uneven revenue sharing model rather than try to use expansion as a sole means to keep OSU happy financially. Simply put, you aren't going to expand your way using an even distribution to make significantly more money, if any without absolutely hitting it out of the park in terms of poaching. And they may run into the requirement to expand for media inventory, so they don't have the luxury to stay at 14. We don't know yet.

But people need to give up this idea that they are going to only expand if a team is worth an extra $50M on a TV contract because 1. No one will be, 2. They may not have a choice, and 3. They can and will probably have a different set of contracts and model in a few years, which may include uneven distribution. So...

Adding Oregon and USC would increase the total media contracts value by $X. Adding ISU and KU would increase the total media contracts value by $Y.

But it's not as simple as $X>$Y. The fact is KU and ISU are probably going to be far more willing to forgo money than any of the PAC members, certainly a USC or Oregon. The ACC GoR is such that Clemson or ND probably couldn't forgo anything from the Big 10.

 

[BryceC]

Absolutely not. If Nebraska had stayed they may be relevant today and have a chance now to ascend to the top of the pecking order as the flagship program in the Big 12. Instead they are an afterthought.

They wouldn't be because they've made terrible coaching hires and would be getting thumped just as bad in the Big 12.

The best case scenario for them in this situation would be to get into the Big 10, where they already are.

 

[AuH2O]

I’d also add that the SEC and the ACC aren’t talking about ditching brands right now and purging the Vandy’s and Wake Forests of the world.

Of course they aren't talking about it publicly. That would be problematic. Kicking teams out of a conference is probably damn near impossible. Getting enough teams "leaving" the league to dissolve it and make GoR void is easy. But what makes it hard is that it probably needs to be done in concert with at least a couple other conferences.

 

[NorthCyd]

I think going big and swinging for the fences is certainly something the Big 10 is considering. However, due to ACC GoR I think that's going to be a really heavy lift.

But you are correct that the Big 10 is going to run into a problem with OSU, but it's probably a lot more feasible and easier to accept an uneven revenue sharing model rather than try to use expansion as a sole means to keep OSU happy financially. Simply put, you aren't going to expand your way using an even distribution to make significantly more money, if any without absolutely hitting it out of the park in terms of poaching. And they may run into the requirement to expand for media inventory, so they don't have the luxury to stay at 14. We don't know yet.

But people need to give up this idea that they are going to only expand if a team is worth an extra $50M on a TV contract because 1. No one will be, 2. They may not have a choice, and 3. They can and will probably have a different set of contracts and model in a few years, which may include uneven distribution. So...

Adding Oregon and USC would increase the total media contracts value by $X. Adding ISU and KU would increase the total media contracts value by $Y.

But it's not as simple as $X>$Y. The fact is KU and ISU are probably going to be far more willing to forgo money than any of the PAC members, certainly a USC or Oregon. The ACC GoR is such that Clemson or ND probably couldn't forgo anything from the Big 10.

We could agree to take our projected conference money through 2025 and it would be a HUGE discount to the B1G.

 

[1UNI2ISU]

I read that the PAC Network owns rights to 35 games. That’s not the majority.

Correct. They've also got games on ESPN and FOX. They're set up very similarly to the Big 12 except you can actually watch ESPN+.

 

[surly]

 

[CarrollCyclone]

Absolutely not. If Nebraska had stayed they may be relevant today and have a chance now to ascend to the top of the pecking order as the flagship program in the Big 12. Instead they are an afterthought.

They weren't winning in the B12 they arent' winning in the B10. They were extremely lucky in hindsight to land where they did when they did.

 

[Statefan10]

This is why keeping the Big 8 together and adding on isn’t a viable option.

 

[CydeOut]

The reason we are in this situation is the Big12 approached ESPN/Fox last fall to see if if they would negotiate early. The response was NO.

Pretty obvious ESPN & Fox weren't prioritizing the Big12 and that was when Texas and OU were in the Big12.

Although, it would not surprise me that ESPN was already part of the UT/OU to SEC move.

I think your last sentence answers your 2nd sentence. It must have been known UT/OU were ready to go so they had no need to re-up the GOR.

 

[NWICY]

There's too much left to be decided but this could backfire as some have said. What makes sense in this snapshot of time may not make sense once the fallout leaves schools and fans behind. Making 100 teams plus of CFB into a 40 team big time NFL college hybrid would bring fewer eyes and money I think eventually. I feel like this how I feel about analytics in baseball. You take a snapshot of what should make you win, but when you apply it the game is less watchable. So, at some point you may win a WS, but your attendance dropped in half because nobody likes to see it. You focused on one metric today and forgot where that puts you in 5 years.

Well I'm not the typical fan, I'll watch whatever ISU ends up in and probably won't tune into the Super SEC.

 

[AuH2O]

We could agree to take our projected conference money through 2025 and it would be a HUGE discount to the B1G.

Exactly. That's what people need to grasp. There's a lot of real estate between what we'd get from a zombie B12 and a full-fledged Big 10 member. If ISU gets in the Big 10 it's likely forgoing plenty of media share for a while.

 

[surly]

In a couple of years, ESPN will own all the SEC rights including OU and Texas. Their customers in the southeast are going to be paying for this dismantling.

 

[cyrocksmypants]

I think you to the B1G is a no brainer.

I don't see any good outcomes for my school. We should fit with the Pac 12, Competitive in almost everything.... 3 NY6 Bowls, 2 B12 championships and a close title game loss in the last 8 years, MBB and WBB National Championships, Good Baseball which P12 likes. Ranked higher by USN&WR than every non-California member except UW. Allegedly on track to be R1/T1 by 2024....

but alas, Stanford will never allow it.

We are going to end up in an improved but still minor league AAC.

I feel bad for you, because you’re a good person, but I wouldn’t feel bad for Baylor officials and all of the fans happy to ignore all of the sexual assaults the football team had in the name of wins.

 

[AgronAlum]

I hope wherever ISU lands, they’re off the ESPN platform. I will gladly switch to a streaming service that doesn’t have the ESPN markup. Let those SEC ***** pay for their own ****.

 

[MeanDean]

All this talk of unequal distribution for the future of the B1G should be scary to all the middle and bottom schools in the conference... AND those bottom dwellers in the SEC. Does anyone NOT think that in a decade or so after other conferences are doing that - that TEXAS won't insist on a mega share of the SEC revenue? Pushing Vandy, Miss St and UK into the new KSU, TCU and ISU?

Once that door opens it's a road to conference infighting and ultimately, death.

And Texas will do what they've always done. Kill the host that took them in.

 

[Halincandenza]

BIG can afford to be picky with who they add. Going to be interesting for sure.

 

[cyIclSoneU]

This math doesn’t make much sense to me. It’s $370M to $72M with the loss of Texas and OU. So it’s saying that UT and OU are worth $150M each… while the other 8 schools are worth half of that combined.

Is the SEC’s TV deal going to increase by $300M a year with the addition of these two? If not then it’s hard to figure out how this works.

I would guess based on nothing that an 8 leftovers + Houston/UCF/Cincinnati/one more league would be in the neighborhood of $15-20M a year per school. That’s 2-3x the American and half the Pac-12 and ACC.

 

[surly]

Is the SEC’s TV deal going to increase by $300M a year with the addition of these two? If not then it’s hard to figure out how this works.

I've seen projections of a $20 million per year increase in SEC per school revenue, yes, from fifty to seventy million each.

 

[knowlesjam]

I'm thinking that the days of simply dividing a total payout by the number of schools is going to end. Why should the SEC, if it is driven by the schools in it, pay the same to Alabama and Vanderbilt? You might end up with one school (Bama) getting $100M per year while Vandy gets $40M. I definitely could see that as being a stipulation to membership in the BIG. We are far from the drawing power of OSU...why should we get the same allotment? But, that is for the conferences to deal with.

Maybe that is a good question to address here...would you, as Iowa State, take membership in the BIG at say, 50% of what OSU will get? Yeah, I know, dumb question, of course we would. Especially if the alternative is $10M per year in the AAC.

 

[CyrideAllstar]

Can't disagree more. Since having kids, Covid, etc I watch zero live tv with the one exception being sports. I couldn't care less about what's on ABC or any other network

With all this crap/screwing isu and ESPN pulling the strings...I'm going to be "sailing the 7 seas" to watch this upcoming season