USC and UCLA to leave the PAC 12

[bearcatbret]

The two most attractive teams in the PAC are Washington and Oregon. Would the Big 12 take a chance and invite them? Would Washington bail at the first time the Big 10 comes calling? I believe that the Big 12 should invite the best 4 teams available. I have been reading a lot on the Big 12 blog and many of them think that a merger between the PAC and Big 12 is the best solution. The next popular route seems to be Colorado, Utah, AZ and AZ State.

[Carin's Dad]

FOX:

Arizona
Utah
Oregon
Kansas
Cal
Stanford
Washington
Colorado

ESPN:

Pitt
Georgia Tech
Duke
UNC
Tulane
Virginia

.

The most attractive media markets would be Cal or Stanford (San Fran and San Jose), Georgia Tech (Atlanta), Colorado (Denver), Washington (Seattle) and maybe Arizona (Phoenix is more ASU than UA). The others are more marginal.

[swilsonsp4]

Per theathletic.com ($), the P12 presidents voted this afternoon to explore expansion options. The article is brief and doesn't mention potential targets. I'd imagine they'll take shots at OK State, Baylor and TX Tech, perhaps other B12 schools. They certainly should try, but I wouldn't like their chances.

[Lobot]

The ESPN article mentions ACC and Big12 as expansion targets... but I don't really see that happeneing. Big12 is stronger at this moment than the PAC is and ACC doesn't make sense either. I'd guess the top 3 as Boise St, Colorado St, SDSU... nothing really to get excited about.

I agree for now but this is a seismic shift probably more so than UT and OU leaving for the SEC. USC and UCLA are not geographically connected to anything else in the Big 10 which mean all the things we know about the football map from past realignments is probably out the window.


This is a list of AAU schools that play FBS football and are not in the BIg 10 or SEC currently:

Arizona
Utah
Kansas
Oregon
Pitt
Georgia Tech
Cal
Stanford
Duke
UNC
Washington
Colorado
Tulane
Virginia

Tulane is the outlier here.

The outlier in the Big 10 is Nebraska and they were an AAU school when they joined and got punted out for some academic reason I can't recall. (anybody?)

I think the first things to consider are, does the school fit the academic footprint and football footprint for the Big 10? All of these schools do with the possible exception of Tulane. Oddly Tulane was once a member of the SEC and left years ago.

Lets divide them into FOX and ESPN for fun. This is based on current tier 1 media rights.

FOX:

Arizona
Utah
Oregon
Kansas
Cal
Stanford
Washington
Colorado

ESPN:

Pitt
Georgia Tech
Duke
UNC
Tulane
Virginia

The outlier here is Pitt becuase they don't own their own stadium?


FOX owns the majority of BTN so I would say that the schools in the FOX list are the most likely targets for the Big 10

ND doesn't fall anywhere in here and they have an existing contract with NBC through 2025 at which point it's all up in the air for ND, the Big 12 and the PAC 12 contracts as well.

How this shakes out is anyone's guess at this point. I think Kirk Herbstreit and LSU guy are correct in that we're headed for an NFL model, each on it's own network, with two conferences and divisions.

[Chewbacca2099]

The ESPN article mentions ACC and Big12 as expansion targets... but I don't really see that happeneing. Big12 is stronger at this moment than the PAC is and ACC doesn't make sense either. I'd guess the top 3 as Boise St, Colorado St, SDSU... nothing really to get excited about.

[bearcatbret]

Several
Pac 12 has already announced they are going to try and expand

Will they go after Mountain West teams or try to poach the Big 12? At the same time, the Big 12 may be trying to poach the PAC.

[Lobot]

Several people now reporting that Oregon and Washington have been told no by the Big 10 , at least for now. The focus seems to be on ND.

Pac 12 has already announced they are going to try and expand

[richard k.]

Think about what's going through Bowlsby's head right now. "You mean i could have gotten USC and UCLA instead of Houston and BYU?"

NO - he couldn't!

[swilsonsp4]

Quote from an LSU guy: "I think we could ultimately end up with two conferences: One called ESPN and one called FOX."

[bearcatbret]

If you are interested in what Big 12 fans are saying, here is one of their forums. Should Big 12 merge or acquire remaining Pac schools? (247sports.com)

[Chewbacca2099]

Here's hoping the ACC wises up and sees if we're interested in switching along with WVU... Seems like 16 is the magic number and there's no chance ND commits to the ACC for football. They are running out of time though, it could even be a mutual thing with no financial penalty between us and the Big12 since they can pickoff some of the PAC now

[swilsonsp4]

This isn’t a particularly unique perspective, but if I were part of the B12 brass, even during this transitional leadership period, I’d argue for an aggressive posture to strengthen the conference. First, check with OR and WA to see if they’re pushing to join USC and UCLA, despite comments from the B10 that they aren’t raiding the P12 “at this time”. Or, if they plan to work through rebuilding the P12.

Whether those two schools, which are the biggest remaining plums, show interest or not, I’d try to grab AZ, ASU, CO and UT. The B12 must get to at least 16 members before further poaching, if any, of B12 properties take place and hope that the media contracts and GOR can be codified before that might occur.

No matter what the B12 eventually do, the media money still will pale compared to the B10 and SEC, but it should be decent. I’m not sure what networks and/or streaming services would put up the best offers, but this is where Yormark comes in. The problem is that the B12 media contracts don’t expire until 2025, with negotiations supposedly set for 2024. The P12 contracts run out a year earlier but, if the P12 is eviscerated, there would be no viable contract.

[leo from jersey]

Gene Smith at TOSU is in the media stating that he hopes ND considers the Big 10. He’s an ND grad I believe.

To me, ND is the big (pun intended) domino.

[Lobot]

If you scroll further, you will note that our favorite guy, Kirk thinks that this will come down to a NFL style two conference league of 50 total teams. Also, the PAC is blaming FOX for this similar to the Big 12 blaming ESPN on TX and OK.

The PAC is correct as far as I can tell.

[Lobot]

Gene Smith at TOSU is in the media stating that he hopes ND considers the Big 10. He’s an ND grad I believe.