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!
 

Two moves announced today:
Missouri State to C-USA - appears to be football-related which doesn't seem smart but I guess it's now or never like UMass. They hired Cuonzo Martin as a basketball coach this offseason.

Grand Canyon & Seattle to WCC - Seattle makes a lot of sense but was reportedly blocked by Gonzaga for a long time. Wonder if that signals the Zags potentially leaving for a bigger conference? GCU certainly bought their way in but the results lately don't lie. Both programs are departing from the WAC, a conference which may not exist in the near future much like the Pac-12 if schools continue to be poached by other conferences.
 

If they finish this off by adding UNLV and Nevada, that isn't a bad little conference for football or basketball.  If they could then poach Gonzaga and St. Mary's as non-football members, that could be a pretty solid Pac 10.

A few Pac12 rumours being floated (maybe just trial balloons from interested parties or bored speculation being pulled from rears or maybe legit):
Sacto St and Davis upgrade their football teams and join (maybe even sharing a stadium at CalExpo).
Nevada-Reno and Utah St get poached.
If the conference hits 10 teams and the ACC loses the lawsuit with Fla St and Clemson, Cal and $tanford rejoin.
San Jose St and an upgraded Portland St join (two traditional Pac12 markets if not traditional Pac12 teams).

Whatever the outcome in the west, the Big Boys are circling their waggons and there is either going to be less of pie to share or they are just going to take their pie at eat it themselves. The next key moment is what happens with Florida St/Clemson, if they can ditch the ACC it will really be a Big10/SEC duopoly with everyone else begging for crumbs.
 

Last edited by GW Alum Abroad (9/27/2024 2:27 pm)

From what I have been hearing (from the sports media, I am no insider), it won't be long before the football powerhouses leave the NCAA altogether. At that point, all the schools will probably realign into geographic conferences again, as this realignment will not affect the power football programs. It just makes no sense for lacrosse and volleyball teams to be flying across the nation for their games... What will be interesting is what happens to basketball. While basketball also makes a lot of money, it's not anywhere close to what football makes and most of the money is from the NCAA Tournament, not the regular season. And one of the principal draws of the NCAA Tournament are the David vs. Goliath matchups. So what seems to be coming for NCAA football might not be right for NCAA basketball. We shall see...

Last edited by DC Native (9/27/2024 4:46 pm)

Well, duh. Once they finish monopolizing the football money to make sure the Akrons and North Texas and Utah States of the world don´t get a slice of the pie, they are then going to make sure the MEAC and NEC and Big Wests get screwed out of their share of the CBS/Turner money. Capitalism. I´d say fans of the schools hurt by this should just boycott any and all companies (sponsors included) involved, but since students, alums and fans of the "smaller" schools make up a minority of the eyeballs (and gambling accounts) paying attention, that ain´t gonna work. College sports were nice while they lasted, but much like rotary telephones and the use of spitoons, it is part of a bygone era.

Last edited by GW Alum Abroad (9/30/2024 2:59 pm)

Don't sell us short, Dude. We have 4 NCAA Tournament wins...