The elite academic stuff is very nice, but the Big Ten needs to win a national title in hoops and football.
Cal & Stanford as B1G members
- Thread starter MADHAT1
- Start date
revenue sports
USD Toreros =/= UCSD TritonsActually UCSD does have football.. as does SDstate, SJstate, god knows how many..
UCSD had D3 athletics up to about 30 years ago and elevated to D2 sometime in the 90s, and then finally moved up to D1 only about 5-6 years ago. No football program sponsored, at any of those levels.
USD is a private school that's played 1-AA/FCS football since the 90s but was D3 prior to that and has had a football program going back to the 50s.
USD is also where Jim Harbaugh was the head coach in the mid-2000s and his rapid success at the FCS level garnered the attention of Stanford.
Will be interesting to see how this unfolds with Cal and Stanford.
Would be a similar situation as when the B1G first added USC/UCLA (travel etc).
Two excellent academic institutions which are AAU members
Gets the ACC/ACCN into California with a population of 40 million.
Don't know but think ESPN may be a party to this addition.
Stay tuned.
HAIL TO PITT!!!!
The B10 has a bunch of schools in the midwest, 3 in the east as of now. The ACC has most of its schools in the east. The biggest revenue boost would be the carriage rates of the ACCN. Is that enough? Well when they were exploring more schools from the PAC with better tv profiles the consensus was no. Has anything changed or just desperation? From both sides lol.
Stanford and Cal have no other options. They may be that desperate.
Again the population of California is 40 million and the Bay Area alone has a Nielsen rating of #6.
The entire state of California only had 2 state schools in the Pac 12 (Cal and UCLA).
The BiG took Rutgers because of their proximity to NYC. They may be interested in joining the conference maybe at reduced share as Rutgers did when they joined the B1G.
What I do know is that the ACC Presidents and ADs are meeting Monday and Tuesday and the Cal Board of Regents is holding a meeting today.
The Big 12 added 4 schools Utah (population 3.2 million) Colorado (population 5.7 million) and ASU/Arizona (population 7.1 million) for a total population of 16 million. Will those 4 additions be economically viable.
Adding just 2 schools may be worth it to ACC/ACCN/ESPN but will have to wait and see how it plays out.
Cal Board also has an article on this subject.
HAIL TO PITT!!!!
The B12 additions were economically viable if the story is correct that the conference had been promised by ESPN and Fox thatP5 additions up to 16 would be added prorata.
ESPN can do the same thing here if they think these additions strengthen the conference if a few teams leave.
Or, the maybe stories about FSU wanting the B1G means this is the first step in ESPN orchestrating FSU and Clemson to the SEC instead.
The fan bases *hate* all those options. Independent is the best one -- except that putting together a schedule is an independent is very hard except for a very prestigious program like Notre Dame's. The growth of conferences means that each school needs fewer out-of-conference games, and the ones they do play tend to be against doormats. Cal/Stanford's situation is especially difficult because they have to find schools willing to travel to the West Coast.
Saw a somewhat interesting youtube video .. bit of a blow-hard but the angle in the discussion is interesting... says it was the PAC total ownership of their network offering that did them in. Basically says because they did not partner with a big player (like BTN did with Fox) that cable distribution systems screwed them on negotiations so they made a lot less money than expected and since they had just switched from USC/UCLA getting bigger shares to even shares for all.. that drove USC/UCLA out. And teh Big 12 beat them to the punch in this go-round of finding a distribution deal and there are no dance partners left.. so PAC TV got screwed yet again (or screwed themselves). So Colorado just found a life raft first.
Stop and ask yourself what Cal brings to the conference that we don’t already have. If you want “academics” with absolutely 0 sports success or investment or willingness to get better and no support from the university, add Princeton.
I've seen stuff like that before and I agree that's a big part of it. It's hard to get distribution and a decent carriage rate without the heft of other channels being packaged along with it because you're partnered with a larger media company.
Larry Scott wanted to keep all the conference network money for themselves but didn't realize the risks that actually go along with that. ESPN actually offered to partner with them and they turned it down.
edit: I think part of it is hubris because they just signed the richest media deal in CFB at the time, so thought they could do it all.
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As a Cal graduate (twice), I find this hard to disagree with. But note that Stanford, which has done better historically and which cares more about success, is in the same boat as Cal.
It is a bit of a shame.. but hope it is a win-win for the Big Ten and the teams that come our way. Still.. gotta wonder if they all stayed together whether some streaming-only solution with a subscriber fee might have been the way to go as streaming channels have exploded.. or perhaps in the near future as cord cutting increases. But are cord-cutters sports fans? college sports fans? Guess we'll never know as PAC without USC/UCLA is just not the same.
It was a chancy deal because no one knows the future of streaming, or how many people would add on a subscription to their streaming service to watch the Pac-10.
Not sure if it was posted or not, or in the video GoodOl' posted, but IIRC in a recent article in The Athletic it was stated that PAC 12 Commissioner Kliavakoff (sp?) hired his UVa law school buddy as the media rights consultant, while the Big 12 hired a big name outfit. That was listed as one big reason the PAC12 media rights options were limited and crappy.
The hubris in 2012 can at least be rationalized.
The fact that they turned down an offer in 2018, AFTER the PAC12 network was obviously failing, by ESPN to manage the network in return for an extension on their rights deal was complete idiocy.
Everyone thinks going OTT with sports is coming and it may but I don’t know if it’ll be any time soon or to the extent some make it out. Disney is looking to go that way eventually with ESPN but Fox is steadfast in holding their ground. Only one that didn’t launch a steaming service and consequently they weren’t bleeding money like the others.
If you go OTT how many subscribers will pay 20-25 bucks a month for ESPN to make up for the lost bundle. Personally, I wouldn’t all year round and I’m actually one who pays more for the Netflix 4K package which is about that price. Maybe I’d just do it for CFB season and that’s it. So the pool of subscribers will certainly narrow.
Really I didn’t see that. I mentioned here the B12 hired IMG WME which is a big firm. Didn’t know who GK or the PAC went with until you just mentioned. That’s just crazy.
I'll have to dig it up, if I can. I spent more time on this nonsense in the last few days than work. That's nuts.
That friend ,Doug Perlman, is head of Sports Media Advisors and they have worked with the NFL and NASCAR
From Wikipedia: Doug Perlman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Perlman
You can be my partner in crime. What's another lost 10 minutes at work? Money I can't earn to put towards NIL?
"The first sign of trouble passed largely unnoticed: Whereas then-brand new Big 12 counterpart Brett Yormark brought in the big guns — WME Sports and IMG Media — to work on the league’s media strategy, Kliavkoff hired a boutique firm, Sports Media Advisors, run by a guy named Doug Perlman. It just so happens Kliavkoff and Perlman were classmates at University of Virginia law school. Within months, the Big 12 and its schools, whose current contract runs a year longer than the Pac-12’s, managed to jump the line and secure extensions with ESPN and Fox that gobbled up potential time slots and put a target — $31.7 million per school — on the Pac-12’s back."
Friends don't let friends hire them when they are in over there head.
Just found the excerpt for the Athletic.
Whatever the case, doesn’t sound like he did a good job advising on being realistic and quick in what was a zero sum game with media companies pinching pennies.
From the article:
The first sign of trouble passed largely unnoticed: Whereas then-brand new Big 12 counterpart Brett Yormark brought in the big guns — WME Sports and IMG Media — to work on the league’s media strategy, Kliavkoff hired a boutique firm, Sports Media Advisors, run by a guy named Doug Perlman. It just so happens Kliavkoff and Perlman were classmates at University of Virginia law school. Within months, the Big 12 and its schools, whose current contract runs a year longer than the Pac-12’s, managed to jump the line and secure extensions with ESPN and Fox that gobbled up potential time slots and put a target — $31.7 million per school — on the Pac-12’s back.
Signs of trouble began leaking out last fall. Kliavkoff and his advisers reportedly opened talks with ESPN and Fox asking for an entirely unrealistic number — closer to the SEC’s than the Big 12’s. He naively held out hope the UC Board of Regents would block UCLA’s exit. And to the befuddlement of media consultants everywhere, he insisted on completing a deal before inviting potential new members, leaving San Diego State and others hanging in the wind.
won't argue about the better hire.
The proof is in the pudding the Vitamin Conformance brought in name brands and it showed.
The PAC brought in a good store brand that lost the taste test run by the commish's friend who wasn't up to the challenge and the PAC went poof
because of it.
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This is an overstatement, but get your point that football and basketball in recent memory has not been successful. That said, they are moving on new basketball facilities (part of deal to bring in Madsen). I think football will now be fasttracked given the current situation. This was essentially Rutgers before Pernetti started to lay the foundation for Big Ten a decade ago. Also for Olympic some sports Cal is further ahead than most schools in the Big Ten. For Football and Basketball they have had success in the last 20 years, though up and down. That success has been better than some schools in the Big Ten.
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Kliavkoff and Scott will be Business school case studies in idiotic leadership.
Klatt is basically correct. The Pac 12 Network never got the money that they had assumed to get. I've lived in Nor Cal for over 35 years. Pre-Pac 12 Network, Cal and Stanford football and basketball were nearly always on TV - whether is was ESPN or local channels. Since the Pac 12 Network started, I only rarely get to watch Cal or Stanford. There is no local option and the networks show the schools that are winning and USC/UCLA. Cal and Stanford need to at least be more available for local viewers.
It’s economically viable if the networks say it is lol…and for now they said it was for the corner schools. That’s why they paid a pro rata rate for at least two of those 4, if not all 4.
Population is just one aspect of it. Population matters, brands matter, engagement matters, I say often everything matters. Every school has their own mosaic made up of these attributes that have to be weighed against each other.
Does the extra carriage fees make up enough for the extra travel etc…I don’t know. Even Washington was a little hesitant because of their estimated 10M extra travel costs but down the line eventually they’d be a full member which would take care of that. Can’t say that for the ACC on a 13 yr GOR.
From the former Fox sports prez:
This latest ACC expansion talk reminds me of when the Big East was trying to add TCU and Boise St.
The expansion candidates have value if added to a conference that already has a western presence, but for an east coast conference to be talking about them just reeks with desperation.
The expansion candidates have value if added to a conference that already has a western presence, but for an east coast conference to be talking about them just reeks with desperation.
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This is a pipe dream, these teams (Cal, Stanford) were worth less money in a league where they had plenty of natural rivals. They are not suddenly becoming worth more money by partnering with schools on the opposite coast that they have nothing in common with. If no one was watching Cal vs UCLA, even fewer people will watch Cal vs NC State.