We haven’t talked about realignment in a minute.
A few days after reports emerged that the Big 12 was finalizing its new media rights deal, we’ve got reports of the league’s commissioner, Brett Yormark, meeting with Gonzaga’s athletic director in Dallas. Let’s dive in.
The situation with the media rights deal seems, to me, to be as follows: The Big 12 opted to stick with its current partners, ESPN and Fox, instead of playing the field, and by doing so they were able to quickly extend their deal with college sports’ primary broadcasters while also increasing revenue per school, even in this world where Texas and Oklahoma are leaving. They did not, crucially, get so much money that the Pac-10 is definitely going to come up short. The current thought seems to be that the Pac-10 will get a similar revenue-per-school number, but that it will come through partnerships with Amazon and Apple that will further limit visibility to the casual fan. In other words, it’s expected to be fine financially in the short term, but in the long term it’s possible—maybe even probable—that it hurts every brand involved. Amazon and Apple are willing to overpay, because they want their foot in the door on live college sports, and the Pac-10 is willing to take a visibility hit because it’s already invisible and its other choice is annihilation via offering Oregon, Washington, and Stanford less money than they can get in the Big 12.
The situation with Gonzaga is more straightforward. The Big 12, like the Pac-10 and the Big East and maybe even the ACC, would like to add Gonzaga. Gonzaga, in terms of scheduling, is an easy team to add: They don’t play football, so they don’t need an expansion partner, because it’s mostly fine to schedule an odd number of teams in every sport but football, where it’s hard. It’s possible that this is one of those situations where we’re about to get “it’s a done deal” confirmation in a few hours, as happened with the Texas/Oklahoma SEC move and the UCLA/USC Big Ten move, but it’s likelier that someone with an agenda—the Big 12, by default—is pushing this. The Big 12 leaked all summer. I’d guess they’re the leakers here, unless Gonzaga’s trying to use this for leverage against the Pac-10, but…Gonzaga doesn’t need to play the public game to get leverage. They can tell the Pac-10 directly, if they want the Pac-10 to know.
Who, then, does the Big 12 want to know? The Pac-8, or put otherwise, the eight remaining Pac-12 schools who would add some form of value to the Big 12: Oregon, Washington, Stanford, Cal, Utah, Arizona, Arizona State, and Colorado. The Big 12, I’m guessing, wants to erode these schools’ trust in Pac-12 leadership. “The Big 12’s gonna add Gonzaga? Shit. Let’s pack our bags.” Or so this could theoretically, in the Big 12’s dreams, go. Who else does the Big 12 want to know? Amazon and Apple. The Pac-10 is in those meetings saying they’re pursuing Gonzaga. The Big 12 wants Amazon and Apple to think Gonzaga isn’t going to happen. The Big 12 wants this so that Amazon and Apple don’t give the Pac-10 enough money for Washington, Oregon, and Stanford to be satisfied. Who else does the Big 12 want to know? TCU, and a few other schools. The Pac-10 probably isn’t joking about pursuing Big 12 members, and the Big 12 wants its schools to feel like they’re in a growing power, not a fading one that will treat them well for a few years before disintegrating.
A thing to note, with all of this: There’s a lot of talk that the Pac-10 is “courting” San Diego State, or “pursuing” San Diego State, or things like that. They’re not. That can’t be happening. If that was happening, San Diego State would be in the Pac-10 already. Why would San Diego State say no? More likely, San Diego State and some other school (maybe Boise State?) are going to get invitations to join the Pac-10 in the event the schools with power (Oregon, Washington, Stanford) sign off on it. This would restabilize the Pac-10, turning it back into the Pac-12, but it would presumably come at some revenue cost, and if Oregon/Washington/Stanford doesn’t care about stability, planning to leave once the opportunity arises (and having the Big 12 as a ready landing spot should someone else somehow jump and start the avalanche), they won’t sign off on an invitation. If Oregon/Washington/Stanford cares about stability, wanting the Pac-12 to last, we’ll see an addition. That is probably what’s going on with Pac-10 expansion, though this is all my speculation. The Pac-10 is probably hoping UCLA somehow gets pressured back to the Pac-11 by the UC board of regents (not happening, experts seem to think, but the Pac-10’s sure making a lot of noise about it), and it’s probably getting its numbers from Amazon and Apple, and Oregon and Washington and Stanford are all watching, deadpan, knowing their Big 12 invitations are just a few phone calls away if they don’t like the offer the Pac-10 procures.
Where does this end? I don’t know. I still don’t know. My best guess is that the Big 12 really will add Gonzaga, because why would you want to join the Pac-10 or the Big East if you’re Gonzaga and the Big 12’s an option? All you care about is men’s basketball. The Big 12 is the best men’s basketball league. You have the money to send your baseball team to Orlando every fourth year, and renewing your rivalry with BYU shouldn’t hurt anyone involved. Since the SEC and Big Ten don’t want Gonzaga, and since Gonzaga wants more money, the Big 12’s the logical fit. I could be wrong, but that’s where this seems to be going.
My best guess is also that the Pac-10 hangs together for a few more years, but that it doesn’t expand. Much like Texas and Oklahoma back in the Big 12’s ten-team days, I don’t think Oregon or Washington or Stanford gives a shit about the future of their conference. I do think, though, that Oregon and Washington are still hoping the Big Ten will add more teams before the decade’s up, and they’d prefer to wait for that, so if they can get the same amount of money from Apple and Amazon that the Big 12 would get them from ESPN and Fox, they’ll take it and bide their time.
Will the Big Ten eventually add more teams? I don’t know. I really don’t know. My best guess there is that it hinges on whether America really mostly shifts from cable to streaming, and when that happens. If it happens, expansion comes back on the table, but right now nobody makes the SEC or Big Ten more money except for Notre Dame, and Notre Dame is laughing at the Big Ten’s pseudo-invitations. Eventually, this could lead the Pac-10’s most valuable brands to say, “Screw it, let’s get into the Big 12 before some mid-major rises on the East Coast and takes our place,” but at least Oregon and Washington still seem hopeful (Stanford has less usual incentives, kind of like Notre Dame and the Ivies), which I’m interpreting to be the reason they haven’t jumped ship yet.
What would I like to happen? Well, I don’t actually want this in totality, because I don’t want Oregon State and Washington State hung out to dry, but that feels unavoidable in the long term, so I think the funniest thing would be the Big 12 adding Gonzaga, Gonzaga trying its luck at football, and the Big 12 then adding seven teams from the Pac-10, with Colorado the new odd man out. Colorado becoming a mid-major after famously fleeing the Big 12 to avoid becoming a mid-major would be the best. I don’t think this will happen—I don’t think Gonzaga’s adding football, and Denver’s too valuable a commodity to make Colorado’s inability to make money or get its fans to watch games matter—but it would be the funniest outcome.
That’s a lot of guessing, though. And this Gonzaga thing doesn’t sound like one where there’s a big fire and we’re just now seeing the smoke. It sounds preliminary, and it sounds like a strategic leak. But. It gives us something else to watch for, in addition to waiting for the Pac-12 to wrap up its media deal.
The Phillies Take the Lead
A 2-1 lead is bigger than a 1-0 lead in a seven-game series. With a 1-0 lead, the trailing team needs to win 67% of the hypothetical remaining games. With a 2-1 lead, the trailing team needs to win 80%. With that in mind, here’s where the FanGraphs systems and the betting markets now see this World Series lying:
- Depth Charts: 65.5% Phillies
- ZiPS: 63.4% Phillies
- Betting Markets: 58.5% Phillies
The surprising number here is the betting markets one. After Game 1, if memory serves, they only saw the Phillies as a 53.5% favorite, and the proportionality of the coin flip situation (with each game a coin flip, 1-0 leaders only win about 65% of the time while 2-1 leaders win more like 69% of the time) therefore implies the Phils should be only a 56% betting favorite.
What happened? Well, some of this might be Game 7 forecasting. If Lance McCullers is tipping his pitches and the Astros don’t bench him, they may be sending him into a massacre on Sunday night. A lot of it, though, might just be that people watched the Phillies obliterate Houston in Game 3 and now believe in a way they didn’t previously believe, hokey as that sounds. The Phillies have been undervalued this whole postseason. We may finally be seeing a small correction.
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Viewing schedule tonight:
- 8:03 PM EDT: Houston @ Philadelphia – Game 4, Javier vs. Nola (FOX)
