Colorado had enough.
The vote happened this afternoon, and Colorado is set to rejoin the Big 12, leaving the Pac-12 after what will have been thirteen academic years as a West Coast institution. The Buffaloes are Plains creatures once more.
We’ve been waiting for a year for something to happen on this front, the Pac-12 situation in the post-USC and UCLA world looking instable at best and untenable at worst. From what we can tell, the final straw was Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff and his team failing to bring any concrete offer for a TV rights deal to officials from the ten Pac-12 schools ahead of the conference’s media day last week. Arizona’s response was to continue to say they’ll wait to see the numbers when they eventually do come. Colorado’s response was to tersely answer questions, then go home and call the Big 12.
This doesn’t necessarily sink the Pac-12. The Pac-12 could hold together at nine schools for a few years, or it could get SMU in the door quickly to get to ten, or it could wait a little longer and bring in San Diego State, who would have gladly joined a month ago but now costs seventeen million extra dollars because the Pac-12 failed to get a TV deal on the table. (The Pac-12 could also bring in both, along with someone like Boise State or Colorado State or UNLV, getting back to 12.) But the league’s nine schools are hardly eleven months from the expiration date of what’s effectively their contract to one another to remain a conference, and negotiations just got even more complicated. Colorado isn’t the biggest brand of those ten schools left after UCLA and USC’s departure. Denver isn’t the biggest media market of those six to nine media markets left after UCLA and USC’s departure. But neither CU nor Denver is the smallest in its respective category, and the negotiations are already taking forever. In the very immediate term, the question is probably whether Kliavkoff can scrabble together some numbers to bring to the remaining nine schools before another one follows Colorado out the door and into the arms of the waiting Big 12.
To reiterate some things we’ve arrived on over these last thirteen months:
- We think the Big 12 would take all seven Pac-9 schools not named Washington State and Oregon State, and that it might even take those two depending on what came as a package deal and what did not.
- We believe that the Pac-12 can get a dollar number on its media rights deal that rivals that of the Big 12, but we’re under the impression that it will come more from unique streaming services (things like Prime and Apple TV) rather than traditional cable and network television. We’re under the further impression that streaming is associated with lower program visibility, and that program visibility is already a concern for many in the Pac-9.
- For the six West Coast schools—Washington, Oregon, Stanford, Cal, Washington State, and Oregon State—travel to places like Morgantown and Orlando and even Ames is not appealing, and the first four among those six have reason to believe the Big Ten might eventually let them in, making them all the more reticent to commit to a Big 12 world. For Utah, the Big 12 seems an offensive thought for reasons that are unclear but may have to do with BYU’s membership in the league (that’s my own speculation). For Arizona and Arizona State, the history only goes back to 1978, not the 1910s, and geography’s a little kinder. Plus, there’s the basketball angle for Arizona. In short: Arizona is the most friendly to the idea of Big 12 membership for clear reasons, and Arizona is probably followed by ASU, but it gets very hard to tell.
Colorado was probably wise to make this decision and to not wait further to make it. As what appears to be the third-lowest revenue athletic department in the current Pac-12, the Buffs are not the hottest commodity available at auction, making finding a stable home more essential for them than it is for Washington. There was real risk for the Buffs of getting jumped by, say, an Arizona–Arizona State combined Big 12 entry, and with so much happening behind closed doors, there was likely no real way to confirm that wasn’t imminent.
Another wrinkle here, one we haven’t mentioned as often, is that even if the Pac-12 (or Pac-10, or Pac-9, or Pac-8 again) were to hold together beyond this football season, it’s unlikely it’s long for this world. The ACC has what appears to be an ironclad grant of rights holding its top brands prisoner. The Big 12’s top brands are all more middle-class in nature than Washington and Oregon and Stanford, and therefore less appealing to the Big Ten (and the SEC, but none of the 22 schools in question are great SEC fits right now). What’s left of the Pac-12 has no such steely bond. For the Pac-12, the situation is that Washington and Oregon want to be in the Big Ten and are using the Pac-12 as a placeholder until they can follow UCLA and USC to the East. This puts the rest of the conference’s schools in a precarious situation. If Washington and Oregon leave in 2030, what becomes of those left behind? Colorado answered this question for itself, fleeing as it did a decade and a half ago for higher ground.
Now, we return to the same question we’ve been asking, but with a twist. The question is: Who moves next? The twist is that Colorado is off the list.
One name getting a lot of momentum in media hypothesizing is UConn, with the explanation often being attached that Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark thinks they’d be a great pickup. The problem with UConn is that Brett Yormark doesn’t decide whom the Big 12 adds. The Big 12’s member schools decide who joins their ranks. UConn would bring a TV rights pay cut in the short term as a non-Power Five school, and having just added a Power Five school, Big 12 institutions are unlikely to want to take that pay cut for these Huskies. Colorado? Proportional increase in total TV revenue, nobody loses money. UConn? The increase is smaller, schools have to make a short-term sacrifice for the sake of basketball and New York City, only one of which has traditionally driven conference realignment for football-invested schools (and it’s not basketball, and it isn’t even really NYC because when the Big Ten added Rutgers, they were doing it for the money NYC brought). If push came to shove, our guess would be that the Big 12 will not add UConn, but we also thought Colorado would leave eleven months ago.
Of the remaining options, it would still seem most natural for Arizona to leave the Pac-12 and join the Big 12, and my question there is whether Colorado’s departure affects Arizona’s patience. I don’t think there’s a world in which the Big 12 wouldn’t take an interested Arizona, but it also may begin to feel inevitable to the folks in Tucson, and they may decide that even if the risk of losing their place is minimal, they should avoid unnecessary danger of being left behind. After that, I’m still struggling to see how it doesn’t make sense for the six other schools of power conference value to join the Big 12. The more schools that leave the Pac-12, the worse its potential TV deal gets, and it’s hard to see inviting mid-majors doing anything but adding stability, something that was a big deal for a lot of Big 12 schools when the Big 12 was going through this after Texas and Oklahoma’s departure (which is why they added three and a half mid-majors) but isn’t as big a deal for Washington, Oregon, Utah, Arizona State, Stanford, and Cal, reason being that at least five of those six schools will always be more attractive expansion targets than most of those who made the decision in the Big 12 in 2021. Does Arizona State want to sit in a holding pattern waiting for Washington and Oregon’s crush to call, or does it want to find stability itself? Does Utah really loathe the idea of the Big 12 this much? Would Washington and Oregon rather wait for the Big Ten in a rotting Pac-12 that’s crushing their brand or join the Big 12? Stanford and Cal are intriguing, their calculus is so different from the others because they’re so unusual as power conference schools (kind of like Northwestern), but I personally still think it would take a series of odd decisions for the Big 12 to not end up with at least 18 schools at the end of this. If everyone acts in their best interests, that seems like where this is headed, with Washington State and Oregon State probably in the Mountain West in the scenario outlined. It appears likelier that Stanford ends up an independent for a few years than it does for the Pac-12 to continue to exist. It appears likelier that Washington ends up in the ACC than it does for the Pac-12 to continue to exist.
The ACC question remains valid, and I’ve yet to see an explanation of what happens to that imprisoning TV deal of theirs in the event the league expands. Is it a jailbreak? Does the entering school have to acquiesce to the damaging terms? Are the terms really damaging everyone or are they just keeping UNC from holding a boombox outside the Big Ten’s offices by O’Hare?
The Pac-12 could still hold together.
But it would be a dumb thing to do for seven of its remaining schools, and it would run in conflict with five of those schools’ apparent goals.
We’ve frequently been wrong about the pace at which this wave of realignment will happen, and I’ve been thinking a lot today and last night about why we missed that angle. I think it’s this: We’re used to realignment being a linear jump. We’re used to seeing big fish jump to larger waters. This is what happened with Texas and Oklahoma. This is what happened with USC and UCLA. This is what happened with most of the pillaged Big East (now AAC), and it’s more or less what happened when Nebraska joined the Big Ten. It’s not exactly what went down with Maryland and Missouri and Texas A&M, and it’s not really what happened with Colorado, but a theme of conference realignment is upward mobility, and the theme of this Pac-12–Big 12 cold war is stability, which is a very different game. This is also why we’re seeing the Pac-12’s third-smallest brand serve as the tipping point. It’s a weird situation when Colorado has this much leverage.
As far as what happens next: The rumor mill will spin hard. It finally caught some food, it’s not going to stop looking. You’re going to hear a lot about conference realignment over the next few weeks, I’d imagine. If there’s nothing concrete happening, you’ll probably hear a lot about UConn. Maybe I’m wrong, but I strongly doubt the Huskies get a Big 12 invite. If there’s something concrete happening, look at the Arizona schools, look at Stanford, look at Washington and Oregon, look at Utah. Each of them (plus Cal but Cal might be a little dysfunctional) holds a lot of power at the moment. It could take another year. It could happen any day.
Tommy Tuberville Returns to College Sports
I was fooled.
When Senators Moran, Blumenthal, and Booker introduced their NIL legislation last week, I thought it would be the only framework on the table. Then, Senators Joe Manchin (D–WV) and Tommy Tuberville (R–AL) introduced their own this week.
The biggest difference between the two proposals is that the Moran, Blumenthal, and Booker one (let’s call it the MBB proposal) would assign governing power over collegiate eligibility to that CAC organization we talked about, a new entity separate from the NCAA, and in this Manchin & Tuberville proposal (let’s call it the MT one) that duty would remain with the NCAA, but with help from the Federal Trade Commission. There are other differences—one that’s gotten a lot of attention has been the MT proposal’s inclusion of a provision mandating athletes can’t transfer within their first three years at a school outside of specific circumstances—but our thought on this is that what matters most is the framework around the enforcing body. Only once the Senate decides on one vision or the other (or a third, there’s no guarantee something else won’t be proposed) can it begin hashing out finer points, finer points which will then have to survive any potential challenges in court. (Should the Supreme Court run college sports? I jest, but I’m not joking, there is stuff in here that seems like it will find its way to those nine people.)
As we said last week about the MBB proposal, this faces a long road before it actually becomes a law. It needs not only to persuade enough senators (and representatives, and the president) but also to get the attention of leadership in both chambers so that they put it on the floor. Personally, I’m skeptical of that happening very quickly, but I know less about Congress than I do about conference realignment, and the latter continues to surprise me.
Good for the Angels
The Angels announced last night that they’re “going for it,” not through a press release or even a leak but by trading arguably their two best prospects for Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo López. The leak came too, though. Tom Verducci reported shortly before the Giolito trade that Shohei Ohtani was no longer on the trade market.
It was always suspect whether Ohtani was really on the market or whether the Angels were at a stage of just trying to figure out what his price was, something justifiable even if done purely out of curiosity. The reports that the Angels were shopping him always sounded more confident in the headline than in the text of the piece, baseball media getting its clicks by making us all confirm the best player in the game wasn’t actually going anywhere. Now, we have our answer.
The playoff push for these Angels is unlikely to work. It might work, there’s no guarantee it won’t, but Anaheim would have to pass two or three teams out of a possible eight and make up either five games in the Wild Card race or six and a half games in the AL West, and they’d have to also hold off two more teams not far off their heels. They’ve started the effort strong, they’re on the verge of sweeping a doubleheader against the Tigers as I write this, but it’s not likely that the Angels actually make the playoffs.
Still, it’s fun to see teams go for it like this, and there are a few owners who not only sell at the deadline but don’t try to win ever, so credit to Arte Moreno for not being one of those. It’s a low bar to clear, but he’s cleared it, and for as poorly as he’s run the Anaheim Angels, it’s never seemed to be a lack of trying that’s held his franchise back. It’d be great if it worked out for them.
The Cubs Didn’t Hear No Sell
Sitting in a very similar position to the Angels but without holding a generational talent on their roster are our Chicago Cubs. The Cubs have rallied these last two series, taking five of six games to climb within a victory tonight of returning to a .500 record. Simultaneously, all four of the Giants, Phillies, Diamondbacks, and Marlins have crashed to varying degrees, suddenly opening up a Wild Card path where previously only the division was an option.
The probabilities are close to equal. FanGraphs has the division route at roughly 1–in–10 likely entering play tonight and it has the Wild Card route at roughly 1–in– 13. The core difference is that to win the division, the Cubs have to pass the Reds and the Brewers, while to earn a Wild Card spot they have to pass at least three out of a possible six teams (while holding off the Padres and the Mets). The nice thing about the first is that the Reds and Brewers aren’t all that good on paper and the Cubs play each of them a lot, correlating the Cubs’ potential success to those teams’ potential failure (and vice versa). The nice thing about the second is that the Cubs have a lot of options. They could pass the Reds, Phillies, and Marlins. They could pass the Brewers, Diamondbacks, and Giants. They could pass the Reds, Diamondbacks, and Phillies. There are a lot of iterations here.
Where this matters is the impact it’s had on the Cubs’ overall playoff probability, a number which could believably hit 1–in–5 with another win tonight. A week ago, it looked like only the division was an option, and the gains were much smaller. Now, the Cubs can play two hands at once. With the outcomes mutually exclusive, the Wild Card opening up has nearly doubled the Cubs’ chances.
Why Can’t the USWNT Finish?
Among the four Women’s World Cup favorites (at least that I’m seeing in the markets), the United States ranks third in what I suppose is shooting percentage after again managing a ton of shots last night but again failing to put pretty much anything in the vicinity of the net. Here are how the four break down, with England looking at an opportunity to gain ground later tonight:
- Germany: 37.5% (6 for 16) – only one game played so far
- Spain: 11.8% (8 for 68)
- USWNT: 8.7% (4 for 46)
- England: 4.8% (1 for 21) – only one game played so far
It’s not entirely abysmal in that context, the numbers are so scattered and over such a small sample and over such different competition so as to appear meaningless, but nobody is feeling *good* about the United States’ scoring performance so far, and it’s already cost them two points, turning what should have been safe advancement from the group into something with at least some degree of risk heading into the final match of group play against Portugal. Making matters worse, Spain has taken nearly 50% more shots than the U.S., and while Spain still has to face its toughest group opponent (Japan) while the U.S. already faced its own (the Netherlands), that’s a big margin for the U.S. to make up. The team should be fine, but it’s dug a hole, and the culprit is an obvious one.
Brock Purdy Lives
In a mild surprise (especially over the long term), Brock Purdy has been fully medically cleared for 49ers training camp. San Francisco is still going to manage his usage, but he is evidently physically fine after undergoing Tommy John surgery this offseason.
One consequence of this for Purdy is that if he underwhelms, the public and the industry will be less charitable towards him than they would be had he not had the capacity to take full reps in camp. That, though, is not how Brock Purdy should think about it or is probably thinking about it. It’s how one cautious Iowa State blogger is seeing the world.
One consequence of this for the NFL is that the 49ers are able to do a big zig against their counterparts’ zag. They love doing this with offensive scheme, but this is a positional pivot. The 49ers are, whether this is the goal or not, saving a lot of money at quarterback. They’re looking out at a world where the Chargers are paying Justin Herbert an annual salary nearly equivalent to the GDP of Tuvalu and asking what happens if they instead start a quarterback unlikely to garner 20% of that if he were on the open market. A friend texted us about the NFL QB bubble, and it’s one of the most interesting salary situations in sports, but all we can offer about it today is that the 49ers are playing moneyball with the quarterback position. Trusting Purdy is different from building around him.
Does Iowa State Have a Gambling Problem?
I continue to not be terribly worried about the Iowa State gambling investigation, but I’m beginning to worry that I should be more worried about it. One development this week? Former Cyclone and current Denver Bronco Eyioma Uwazurike was suspended indefinitely by the NFL this week as part of a gambling investigation of his own.
There is no indication that Uwazurike’s suspension is linked to the one around Iowa State (and Iowa) athletics, but the coincidence is noteworthy enough to note. Uwazurike was drafted in 2022, and the suspension is reportedly for betting on games during the 2022 NFL season.
