Paul Finebaum Ranks the Big 12 Ahead of the ACC and Pac-12

On Saturday, the Big 12 officially welcomed four new members into the fold: BYU, Cincinnati, UCF, and Houston. With the four newcomers on board, the Big 12 is set to embark on a new era without Texas and Oklahoma. Since the announcement of the eventual departure of Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC, the Big 12 has secured its future by expanding and securing a media rights deal. For at least the next seven years, the Big 12 is on secure ground. According to one analyst, the Big 12 is on better footing than both the Pac-12 and the ACC.

ESPN's Paul Finebaum joined the Marchand and Ourand podcast and ranked the Big 12 as the third best Power Five conference behind the Big Ten and the SEC. "To the Big 12's credit, this was a league that I wouldn't have spit on two years ago when Oklahoma and Texas went to the SEC. I mean, it looked like they were broke. They had nowhere to turn and give Brett Yormark credit. He walked in there, he really inherited a dumpster fire and he has turned that into, I think, the third most attractive conference in the country right now behind the big two, the SEC and the Big Ten."

"[The Big 12] has a lot of momentum," Finebaum added when asked why he puts the Big ahead of the ACC and Pac-12. "Some of this may be prisoner of the moment with TCU having played for the national championship...I think there's a lot of momentum. You don't have Big 12 schools looking around, you have schools looking to the Big 12. I think Jim Phillips, who's now the ACC commissioner, is somewhat handcuffed, because of the previous deals, they seem to be a little bit stuck...I think the ACC is trying to find itself."

When asked if he believes Arizona and Colorado will leave for the Big 12, Finebaum said, "I think it's possible...I would not want to be part of the Pac-12 anymore because I think their future is bleak. We already have an issue in college athletics with the SEC and the Big Ten having literally left everyone else behind from a television standpoint. So the race is now to be number three. The Pac-12 has no shot at that. And the ACC is really struggling."

Finebaum continued, "If you're a member of the PAC 12, I mean, you're literally going to the dollar store looking for other schools...But why would you want to be in that league if you could get out?"

Even if the Pac-12 signs its long-awaited media rights deal and maintains its membership, Finebaum believes this will be a recurring issue for the Pac-12. "There were rumors that Arizona and Colorado were heading to the Big 12," he said. "You have the continual Oregon-Washington rumors. I don't think they'll ever be able to put those fires out even with a new deal, even if it's with Apple or Amazon or some cobbled-together group, they're still in big trouble."

The Big 12 overcame the odds. It almost collapsed in 2010 when Texas nearly left for the Pac-12. Ironically, it was the Pac-12 deciding against expansion in 2021 that kept the Big 12 together again. When BYU joined the Big 12 back in 2021, the future of the conference was still murky at best. It was unclear what future media deals would look like, and it was widely viewed as the fifth best conference among the Power Five.

Analysts like Stewart Mandel projected the Big 12 media rights to be worth as low as $8-$12 million per year - an idea that's laughable now that the Big 12 has signed a deal reportedly worth $31.6 annually. Other analysts projected somewhere in the ballpark of $20M annually, a number that would be dead last among the Power Five.

Instead, the Big 12 leapfrogged the Pac-12 to negotiate its media rights and is set to earn more than the ACC through at least 2031. It's increasingly unlikely that the Pac-12 will earn the same amount of money as the Big 12 with its new media rights deal. In the same podcast, John Ourand reported that "[The Pac-12] is gonna know where they're gonna go in probably a month and they'll have an actual announcement around Labor Day for the next deal...we always love to talk about, you know, ESPN is out, NBC is out, CBS is out and a lot of those talks have cooled. I don't like to say that they're out because they're just cooling. They're waiting until a deal comes that, that, that they can afford."

A deal "[the networks] can afford" translates to less money for the Pac-12. Once the final deal is on the table for the Pac-12 presidents to sign, it will be decision time for schools like Colorado and Arizona that have been considering a move to the Big 12.

The Big 12 has momentum on its side, and it will ride that momentum into the Fall where it will debut its new-look league for the first time. BYU waited years to be part of the Power Five. The Cougars have not only joined a Power Five conference, but it appears they have joined a Power Five conference with the potential to be third in the college football pecking order.

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