Congratulations to Stanford, Cal, Oregon State, and Washington State for making it to the 2024-2025 conference tournament semi-finals.
The Pac 12 fizzle is a case study for the GW School of Business Sports Management program.  The conference’s leadership failed to negotiate along with competing media interests.  Take for example, UC Berkeley’s (known as Cal) Chancellor Carol Christ.  GW has had its scandals in the past but nothing compares to the fiscal dread that Cal alumni and student athletes will face for a generation.  The importance of striking a lucrative media deal was an absolute necessity for the sports program’s survival.
It goes back a long way.  In 2012, Cal’s Memorial Stadium finished a $321 million renovation that transformed an old football stadium that resembled the Roman Coliseum to a facility that was up to code.  By adding a new student athlete performance center the school took on debt of $455 million.  Alumni pledges and advanced season ticket sales never materialized.  Interest alone consumes 20% of the athletic department’s annual budget.  One Berkeley business professor calculated that it will take 100 years to pay off the debt.  The venue had a nice ten year naming rights deal.  It was called FTX Field..briefly until the Sam Bankman-Fried takedown.  The stadium is mostly accessible to students on campus, but no one else.  Other than home games and a few concerts the building is empty.
Compare it to San Diego State University’s Snapdragon Stadium.  Home to the Mountain West SDSU Aztecs.  The construction cost was slightly below Memorial Stadium from ten years before.  It opened on time and through a partnership with Qualcomm is fully digital.  It’s built for college football but has amenities that you would expect from an NFL stadium. The school is enhancing revenue by bringing in professional sports and local area restaurants.   A new major league soccer franchise expansion team will start play in 2025.  It’s already home to the women’s national soccer league San Diego Waves FC.  Recently, it hosted the 2023 World Lacrosse Championship.
Cal’s Chancellor Christ did not focus on the need for stable revenue from a traditional broadcasting partner.  After long delays the Apple streaming proposal was appealing because of the promise of a new and different user experience.  One that let subscribers tailor and manipulate how they wanted to watch games.  It promised to deliver a format that could bring up stats on demand and other features that no one has yet to experience.  The problem was that each Pac 12 conference school’s revenue was based on an algorithm dependent on clicks, sale of personal information (marketing), and other third party licenses.  Hey, let’s see how this works out and if it’s a bad deal then there is an escape clause in two years. A batch of schools had enough and sought “stability” with another conference’s media deal. One that made sense.
Now the remaining four are left to take any deal they can get.  Cal’s Christ has always fit the elitist attitude.  Several years ago, when then Senator Harris cancelled as the University commencement speaker five days before graduation Chancellor Christ stepped in as a fast substitute.  Harris refused to speak in support of the school’s janitor union which was planning to strike.  Tough for Christ to come up with a polished speech on short notice.  Instead of assigning a speech writer to bring hope and encouragement to the graduates she screamed about Trump for thirty minutes.
The result of poor leadership is that Cal will have to cut some of the 28 athletic programs to stay afloat.  Cal’s athletic programs had produced more Olympians than any other school, in any country.
Recruiting will absolutely suffer.  Do you think that DeMatha’s Malcolm Thomas will still show any interest in being a Bear in 2024? Cross Cal off.       

Great insight…thank you!

Is there anyone with a pulse in the front office of the NCAA? Haven’t heard a squeak.
I realize that college football has been run by ESPN for decades, and now there’s a bidding battle by Fox, NBC, Apple, Prime, etc. going on.
Sad to watch this unfold while the NCAA sits on their hands and thousands of “student athletes” are manipulated. Tough times!

Cal, SMU, and Stanford are joining the "Atlantic" Coast Conference
https://www.espn.com/college-sports/story/_/id/38304694/sources-acc-votes-invite-stanford-cal-smu

Poor Oregon State and Washington State. You have to think they are MWC bound now.

The "Atlantic 10" is more than 10 and includes such "Atlantic" locales as Chicago, Dayton, and St Louis. The "Mountain West" is in those "mountain" cities of San Jose and San Diego. The "West Coast Conference" is best know for its member in Spokane (but also had that coastal school BYU for a while, too).
Cal and $tanford are taking about a $20 million hit to TV revenue and who knows how much of an increase in travel costs just to keep their crummy football programs afloat (although the move should boost basketball and baseball ticket sales, so maybe that is their upside?), and when Clemson and Florida St bolt it will only become a bigger financial hole. 
GW´s decision to drop football in 1966 looks better and better every day (although it still does not absolve Marvin for his refusal to desegregate). Heck, with the money from t-shirt sales alone every year, GW´s football team is probably one of the more profitable in the country!