What the immediate future holds for Pac-12 among media rights and expansion talks
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With the college football world on the edge of their seat to see what the future holds for the Pac-12 and the sport, the conference out West has been as quiet as a church mouse.
We do know that there are three confirmed programs that the Pac-12 is considering on the expansion front in San Diego State, SMU, and Colorado State and we also know of a fourth mystery school that has yet to be made public. The biggest question right now is what will happen next for the Pac-12, which is something that a few of ESPN's college football analysts discussed recently.
When asked what the next domino to fall will be, Bill Connelly broke down what should be happening any time now saying:
The next logical move will come when the Pac-12 figures out the valuations for its next set of media contracts. If it's competitive enough to what the Big 12 has arranged to pull in, then one assumes the Pac-12 will add two programs -- with San Diego State and SMU being the rumored front-runners (and UNLV, Boise State and others still hoping for a shot) -- and everything will potentially stabilize for a bit. If the Pac-12's estimates end up far short of expectation, then I guess we'll find out exactly how serious the Big 12 is about potentially adding the Colorado-Utah-Arizona-Arizona State quartet of programs. Looming over all of this, of course, is whether the Big Ten decides to expand past 16 programs and add whatever combination of Oregon, Washington, Cal and Stanford is most attractive. But since the Big Ten doesn't even have a commissioner or a full set of college presidents at the moment, we'll hold off on wondering about that.
Adam Rittenberg also agreed with what Connelly had to say, and went on to explain that the Pac-12 is essentially the domino that everyone is waiting for.
The only issue with the Pac-12 being this domino is they can fall one of two ways, which is into a media rights deal and further expansion, or they fumble the negotiations even more and end up having their programs picked off by the Big 12 and Big Ten. Contrary to the idea that we will be getting a massive sport changing move, Heather Dinich explained that the next move may not be as big as we expect saying:
One lesson learned after about two decades covering college football is that realignment is never over, but it wouldn't be surprising if the next move wasn't as seismic as the speculation might indicate. The Pac-12 could add San Diego State and SMU following its next television deal and that could be the extent of the "next round of realignment." These decisions are made by the university presidents and chancellors, and unless there is a great disparity in revenue, they aren't going to move their academic institutions, period. The question is, what's the gap in revenue that would prompt Pac-12 presidents to seriously consider the Big 12? Ten million? Twenty? More? In the Big Ten, are there enough university presidents who would be willing to share the revenue with 18 schools? The Pac-12's television deal holds the crux of these answers.
However, even with her belief that the move may or may not be as big as most are making it out to be, there was one commonality that she shared with the others. The Pac-12 television deal essentially decides the fate of college football as we know it.
If it goes well enough to where programs opt to stay and the conference expands, the national expansion fire is put out for now. If for some reason the deal does not tickle the fancy of the four corner schools or the two flagship programs up North, the conference could be dismantled in no time.
