You might have missed a detail in regards to what you’re talking about. I’m trying to understand “when for the exact same amount of money, you’d have their TV rights and effectively kill their league.” I don’t understand the alternative you seem to have proposed. If OSU & WSU wait until 2026, they’d lose the Pac-12 loot. By getting to 6 now and trying to secure more practically this week (so it seems), they jump in front of the MWC for TV negotiation priority. Maybe the disheartening part is whispers that the Mountain West without the four jumpers are, according to insiders, worth “zero” in a contract. Rather curious to know how zero they’d be compared to CUSA and their $800,000 per school per year.
So what I mean by "For the same amount of money, you'd have their TV rights and effectively kill their league" is that it's just basic math.
Once they fell to two members, the smartest thing to do was MERGE with the MWC: Operate as the Pac-12 with the MWC commissioner in charge. Just change the logo on their office. The Pac-12 conference office fired for incompetence and their HQ closed and sold. (The Pac-12 offices are in downtown SF with enormous rent). Merge the assets of both conferences and operate as the Pac-12 or Pac-14**
There'd be 13.7 members (Hawai'i football is 0.7 because that's how the value distribution generally breaks down).
Instead of merging, they signed the scheduling deal which had a $43m penalty clause if they raided 4+ MWC members (which they did.
The MWC has a $17m exit fee if you give over a year's notice, but a $34m exit fee if you give less.
The reports are that:
A) The Pac-12 can get a $11m per school TV deal
B) They want 9 members for now (making it $100m total TV deal)
C) They didn't add UNLV because of politics (Can't leave Nevada behind) AND because
D) They can't take another MWC member until he MWC "reloads" or they risk litigation. Leaving MWC with 8 leaves their status as a conference intact, which means the MWC has no grounds to sue the Pac-12.
E) The Pac-12 doesn't want San Jose St (bad facilities, not competitive), Wyoming, Utah State and New Mexico (small markets not good enough) or Hawaii.
With me so far?
Okay. assume the AAC members won't join the Pac-12.
The Pac-12 waits until the MWC announces their replacements, THEN the Pac-12 will invite UNLV, Nevada and Air Force.
But the MWC knows that, and thus can wait until July 1st to announce UTEP and whomever. Which means the exit fee doubles for those three.
So we can now total up the burden that the new Pac-12 members will owe the MWC: First Four $17m each, Next three $34m each. $43m Raid Penalty = $213 million.
That money going to San Jose State, Wyoming, New Mexico, Utah State, and Hawai'i left behind in the Mountain West.
NOW, let's do the math on a merger Pac-14. I agree with you on the "If C-USA is worth $800,000 each" thing. So let's say PAC-14 would be a TV deal of $104 million to be divided among 13.7 schools.
Instead of $11.1 million each, the "Pac-12 First Nine" would only get $7.6 million each so they can pay the "Unwanted 4.7 MWC Schools."
The unwanted 4.7 MWC schools would be getting $31.5 million combined per year in TV money in the Pac-14.
Over 6 years, that's $189 million going to the unwanted MWC schools from the TV deal
Over 7 years, it's $220.5 million going to the unwanted MWC schools from the TV deal
But not merging is $213m going to the unwanted MWC schools from exit fees and penalties.
In other words, it's roughly the
"same amount of money, you’d have their TV rights and effectively kill their league."
You'd also save money by using the MWC conference office instead of Downtown SF ($13m rent per year!).
By eliminating a conference, you're also creating more money from the sources that divided among the conferences: CFP payouts baseline fee to MWC is gone; the NCAA Tournament loot to the MWC auto bid is gone (You're making it easier by one at-large to make every NCAA Tournament).
AND you're keeping every FCS school -- some of whom are in your backyard -- in the FCS because the MWC doesn't exist to take their calls.
Do Boise St, Washington State, Colorado State and Fresno State really want Idaho, Eastern Washington, Northern Colorado and Sacramento State/UC Davis calling the Mountain West and joining FBS?
Even with the new Pac-12 schools likely maintaining superiority over the new MWC, it's still diluting all the shares of sources that conferences divide. There'd be another 6 to 14 FBS schools when the MWC and C-USA call up reinforcements.
It was and is smarter for the MWC/Pac-12 to just do a full merger than to pay $213 million to a weakened and rebuilding MWC.
(** - And after the merger, the Pac-14 should offer Gonzaga a spot to offset Hawai'i, but I didn't want to complicate the math with that so waited until now to say it).
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