Pac-12 survival guidebook: The strategic merits of an alliance (or merger) with the Major 12

Welcome to the sixth installment in a Hotline sequence on the future of the Pac-12. Inbound links to preceding articles or blog posts are under …

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Eleven months ago, the Pac-12 stood down. Believing by itself steady and aligned, it handed on the option to raid the teetering Major 12 adhering to the announced departures of Texas and Oklahoma.

Now, 319 days afterwards and reeling from the reduction of USC and UCLA, the meeting is susceptible to a rebuilt, aggressive, probably merciless Major 12.

But step back, evaluate the landscape from 50,000 ft, and it’s obvious the conferences are much much more alike than unique:

— Equally are preparing to enter the next section of faculty soccer without having their leading models.

— The two are far at the rear of the improved versions of the SEC and Massive 10 competitively and monetarily.

— Both equally have expiring media rights contracts (the Pac-12 in 2024, the Huge 12 in 2025) that enable for improvements to membership, composition and company products.

— Equally are, like the ACC, scrambling for ways to protected spots in the expanded School Soccer Playoff (starting off in 2026).

“The finest thing (for the Pac-12) would be to figure out something with the Huge 12 and negotiate with ESPN and produce a channel,” claimed Patrick Crakes, who operates Crakes Media consulting and is a former Fox Sports senior vice president for programming, analysis and written content tactic.

A few many years back, the Hotline examined the gains of a strategic alliance in between the Pac-12 and Major 12 that would make both more robust.

Bob Bowlsby, the Massive 12 commissioner at the time, prompt a partnership was “not significantly-fetched,” but nothing at all materialized.

Then arrived COVID and the departures of Texas, Oklahoma, USC and UCLA.

Now, an alliance — or an outright merger — may well be their ideal likelihood for relevance at the highest stage in the sport’s subsequent era.

The conferences are more robust together, not with a person raiding the other but with every single embracing a partnership that would include media worth, warrant slots in the expanded CFP, marginalize the ACC, span every single time zone and generate a credible  counterweight to the SEC and Huge 10.

“Both leagues would make more by performing together than they would separately,” Crakes explained.

“You can say, ‘We aren’t the Massive Ten or SEC, but we have seven or eight large-excellent teams, and we’re entitled to a pair places in the CFP.’ Probably you are 75 p.c of these two, but you could get two or a few slots in the playoff.”

Crakes is not directly involved in the conversations involving the conferences and their media partners, but he is familiar with quite a few of the vital gamers, such as new Massive 12 commissioner Brett Yormark.

His broad perspective is formed by the confluence of four occasions that will catapult school football into its next chapter:

2024: The Pac-12 starts a new media contract cycle
2025: The Big 12 commences a new media contract cycle
2025: Notre Dame’s previous calendar year underneath the present NBC agreement
2026: The first season on an expanded CFP

In other text, the two the Pac-12 and Significant 12 need to move their chess pieces in a way that not only generates media benefit for the next agreement cycle but positions just about every for aggressive relevance in the 12-staff playoff.

The Pac-12 could hunker down with 10 or develop membership to generate bulk. (If which is the case, 1 possibility looks clear. “They could possibly conclude that San Diego Condition is too very good to go up,” Crakes said.)

The Massive 12 could do the exact and stick with the 12 faculties fully commited for the put up-Texas/Oklahoma period, a selection that features incoming customers Houston, UCF, Cincinnati and Brigham Young.

“I don’t assume the Major 12 has sufficient on its own (to be the No. 3 convention),” Crakes reported. (The ACC still has Clemson, Florida Point out and Miami.)

“You add the Pac-12 with Washington and Oregon and the huge sector of San Francisco, and Utah is really excellent, then you are significantly more powerful collectively. You never catch the Significant 10 and the SEC, but you can see them in the entrance windshield if you do that.”

Crakes is conscious of the media reviews indicating the Huge 12 could possibly attempt to include the 4 Corners universities (Arizona, ASU, Colorado and Utah) — a shift that would incorporate heft but not sizeable new media revenue.

And in that situation, Washington and Oregon may feel compelled to come along, thus supplying the Big 12 8 new users and decimating the Pac-12.

But Crakes believes that’s shortsighted, mainly because it leaves out Cal and Stanford and the substantial Bay Place media industry.

“If you are the Huge 12 and you raid the Pac-12 for those six educational facilities,” he mentioned, “maybe you get a 20 per cent (revenue) bump. But possibly that gets to 30 p.c if you carry the (Bay Region).”

Changes in media use have added enormous price to the prime brands in higher education football — the educational facilities that travel rankings and command primetime slots on more than-the-air networks. But market place size continue to things into valuation for the reason that of  retransmission costs (for broadcast) and fork out-subscribers (for cable).

“The Bay Place adds worth,” Crakes reported. “Why would you say no to that?”

Based mostly solely on the variety of substantial media marketplaces within just its footprint, the Pac-12 has an advantage in excess of the Major 12 even devoid of USC and UCLA, specifically if it ended up to incorporate San Diego Condition.

— Selection of Pac-12 markets with at the very least a person million houses in 2021, for every Nielsen DMAs (with countrywide rating):

No. 6 Bay Area
No. 11 Phoenix
No. 12 Seattle
No. 16 Denver
No. 21 Portland
No. 27 San Diego
No. 30 Salt Lake Town

— Amount of Big 12 marketplaces with at least one particular million homes (with national rating):

No. 5 Dallas
No. 8 Houston
No. 17 Orlando
No. 30 Salt Lake Town

Alternatively of the Large 12 grabbing six or eight Pac-12 educational institutions or the Pac-12 churning ahead on your own, why not function collectively to create a super-convention that would incorporate 10 of the top rated 30 marketplaces and eight teams rated in the final VFAB top-25 poll of the 2021 season.

“There are heaps of non-strategic soccer brands in the Huge 10 and SEC,” Crakes explained.

“If you can get plenty of strategic models collectively in the new put together conference, you have received a thing to give media providers, distributors and advertisers. You get ample best-25 matchups in a presented year, and you’d be okay.