We got our latest update from realignment oracle Pete Thamel, and I have a question.
We’ll get to it in a minute.
First, per Thamel, there’s no actual new movement on realignment since we spoke on Thursday. We’re waiting on movement involving the remaining Pac-12 schools, and we don’t know what that movement will be. Oregon and/or Washington wouldn’t bring in enough money for the Big Ten to want them, Oregon and Washington will likely be dissatisfied with the offers the current Pac-12 (and one with projected additions of two Mountain West schools) will garner, someone will likely want Oregon, Washington, Stanford, Cal, and possibly more schools. Someone, of course, is the Big 12 and the ACC, but Thamel doesn’t mention the Big 12 (we’ll get to that when we—uncoincidentally—get to my question), and he does mention that the Big Ten or SEC could theoretically strike first on a valuable school to prevent said school from joining the other league. For that to happen, there would have to be mutual interest between both the school and the SEC and the school and the Big Ten, which might narrow the field a bit. As Thamel puts it, “the SEC doesn’t feel like it would mean more in Eugene or Seattle,” or translated: It’s hard to see the SEC and Oregon/Washington linking up, which makes the Big Ten the only eventual desired outcome in a two-conference system, which takes away any pressure on the Big Ten to try to scoop up Washington tonight.
So, again, it’s still all eyes on the Pac-12 schools, with Oregon and Washington getting the most press but our personal suspicion keeping Stanford in the picture.
Now, the question:
Why did Thamel not mention the present Big 12? At all? Why was this column only about the ACC?
Per Thamel, the ACC’s grant of rights should bring in roughly $40M per school in upcoming seasons, while the Big Ten’s and SEC’s should be “north of” $70M. These are helpful numbers. We’ll come back to these numbers. First, though, the Big 12 is already north of $40M, per the conference itself. And the ACC is down around $30M, per Navigate’s March projection. What’s going on? Well, Texas and Oklahoma are leaving the Big 12, so the number has to drop below $40M, but the discrepancy between Navigate’s projection for the ACC and Thamel’s reported number is massive. That’s a 25% or 33% difference, depending which direction you go. It’s odd.
This seems to be the justification for the ACC getting to move before the Big 12 does, and indeed we’ve also talked about the ACC moving before the Big 12 moves. But the ACC’s grant of rights is being described as a disaster, and the Big 12’s is not, and that doesn’t really jive with the idea that the ACC is clearly the preferable choice. If we want to estimate the Big 12’s new value, going off of the Navigate projections and Thamel’s (now-suspect) $70M number, the SEC rising from $54M at 14 schools to $70M at 16 schools implies Texas and Oklahoma are responsible for $364M in revenue themselves, which would leave the remainder of the Big 12 generating just about $8M per school, which is obviously not the case. Thamel seems, then, to be looking five or more years in the future with these numbers. The Big 12? Yeah, it might be below the ACC without Texas and Oklahoma (and with its new members, who might not sweeten the pot but do add stability). But it can’t be by much, and again: The Big 12’s grant of rights expires in 2025. Join that league, you get flexibility. Join the ACC, and you better hope they treat you differently from everyone else in the conference, which feels like a very short-term move.
Thamel does note that the ACC really might be willing to treat certain schools differently from everyone else in the league. He mentions the possibility of NCAA and College Football Playoff units—money won by conferences based on their teams’ postseason performances—going, at least in large part, to the schools who earned it, rather than being split evenly amongst the whole league. The funny thing about this setup is that to get the money, you have to earn the money, and of the eight schools Thamel mentions as possible ACC targets—Oregon, Washington, Stanford, Cal, Arizona State, Colorado, TCU (!), and Cincinnati (!)—none are imminent threats to earn it in a major sport. Cincinnati possibly aside, none of those eight should be expected to bring in a large share of national championship-adjacent revenue in the imminent future. None are presently all that good at a major revenue-generating sport save for Cincinnati, and none are historically good enough to be expected to make a run. TCU has historic and regional ties with most of the rest of the Big 12. Why would they even consider the ACC? Unless the ACC is going to straight-up “buy” teams—take money from Boston College/Wake Forest/Pitt/etc. and just give it to TCU/Oregon—it’s really hard to believe TCU especially would leave the Big 12, and it’s not entirely clear the ACC truly would be the preferred destination for someone like Washington.
Why, then, is the ACC clearly the preferred destination to the Big 12? I don’t know. I really don’t know. Why would Thamel imply it is? There are a few possibilities.
One possibility—a very good one—is that Thamel knows something I don’t. There may be an angle here I’m missing, or a fact about this I’m missing, or a behind-the-scenes tidbit invisible to me to which he’s earned access.
Another possibility is that Thamel is wrong, either because his sources are wrong or because his sources are misleading or because with nothing happening but clicks coming in, he’s being asked by his employer to speculate and his speculation isn’t as good as his reporting.
A third possibility is…
*WHAT FOLLOWS IS PURELY SPECULATION*
…that Thamel, an ESPN employee, is carrying water in some fashion here for ESPN, or for a source. We’ve mentioned, most times we’ve talked about Thamel, that he works for ESPN, and that ESPN is an active participant in conference realignment. We’ve mentioned, with other “scoops” reporters, that water-carrying for sources is a fairly evident practice (that, or Jon Heyman’s brain is even weirder than we’ve assumed).
What interest does ESPN have in this? Well, there’s the piece where ESPN tried to destroy the Big 12 last year, which probably doesn’t bode well for ESPN/Big 12 negotiations post-2025, especially with Dennis Dodd reporting for CBS Sports today that the Big 12 could serve as the “shoulder programming” for Notre Dame as NBC tries to get more involved in college football (two notes: 1- Dodd had a stupid take yesterday, but this reporting seems legitimate, and you kind of have to separate takes from reporting with these guys when you can; and 2- Dodd mentions the Big Ten future payout as north of $80M, not north of $70M where Thamel pegs it—remember this).
There’s also the piece, though, where the Big Ten has been in alignment with Fox, and the SEC is in alignment with ESPN (this is why it’s interesting that Thamel would downplay the Big Ten’s value, but he may not have meant anything by it). Want to get really conspiratorial with me for a minute?
If North Carolina and Miami don’t add whole unique media markets to the SEC, like they do to the Big Ten, and if the SEC would only add someone if scared of that school joining the Big Ten, and if ESPN would benefit from the SEC being stronger and the Big Ten being weaker, what does ESPN want North Carolina and Miami to do about their dead whale of a TV deal? If the price to break the grant of rights is really $120M, as Thamel estimates, and if the gap between this year’s ACC revenue per school and the projected Big Ten revenue per school is at least $40M, and possibly $50M (or $70M), and if UNC and Miami would add more value to the Big Ten than to the SEC and thereby keep more value themselves, couldn’t UNC or Miami break the grant of rights? Couldn’t UNC or Miami join the Big Ten? It’s a move that would, to use Thamel’s numbers, pay for itself in four years (if you use Dodd’s most conservative numbers, it could still pay for itself in a decade), with the added benefit of more strength in the long term and better recruiting advantages in the short term. And yes, it goes for the other “desirable” ACC schools as well. UNC and Miami are only the ones I’m guessing are the biggest prizes.
UNC and Miami aren’t in a rush. For one thing, they get more leverage if they try to join the Big Ten or the SEC at a time when those conferences want to expand, as opposed to a time when neither league wants to expand. For another, every year closer those schools get to their ACC grant of rights expiring is another few million dollars they can chop off what’s effectively an exit fee. They can afford, then, to wait and see if the ACC makes a move that helps them, just as Washington and Oregon and Stanford can all presently wait and see what the Big 12 and ACC offer each of them (and what they can do if they stick together with the current remaining Pac-12 schools).
Everyone can, for the time being, afford to wait. But soon, the Pac-12 won’t be able to afford to wait. When that happens, a move will happen. It really seems likely that move will not be the Pac-12 filling back up. But, for all our caveats about me probably being wrong and Thamel certainly knowing things I don’t, I’m starting to doubt that the move will be the ACC getting its 15th and 16th football-playing members before the Big 12 gets to go through the buffet line. And I’m starting to doubt that UNC, Miami, or someone else won’t look at the landscape and decide to try their luck in court regarding their ACC situation. The numbers don’t add up.
The Kentucky of Home Runs
The Home Run Derby’s tonight, and as with the Kentucky Derby, it seems like a very fun gambling event. We won’t be publishing any bets on it, but I feel like there are two possible interpretations of the landscape:
On the one hand, Pete Alonso has won two straight Home Run Derbies, implying this is about more than being the best home run hitter. Pete Alonso, great though he is, is not the best home run hitter in baseball. Pete Alonso might have a secret, and that might make him extremely likely to win tonight.
On the other, Pete Alonso’s only won two straight Home Run Derbies. The odds of a repeat winner? Well, if there’s even just a 50% chance the defending champion is back in the field, and if the odds are perfectly split between competitors, they’re 1-in-16. Eventually, a repeat winner is bound to happen. We’ve gotten repeat winners three times now in the 35-derby history of the event. At 1-in-16, three occurrences isn’t statistically significant in 35 tries, especially when in the last two instances, the repeat winner hasn’t won in Year 3.
I lean towards the latter perception, and that makes me think this thing is either very random or very tied to who the best home run hitter in the event is. If it’s the latter, Kyle Schwarber should be the favorite. But the possibility Alonso’s figured this out, and the weight the market seems to be giving both that theory and the theory that Schwarber’s prowess will make the difference, makes me think the real value lies with guys beyond the +700 mark. Besides probably Albert Pujols, because of fatigue. But then again: At some point, the price is right.
**
We’ll catch up on more sports as the week goes on and we enjoy this All-Star Break. Have fun with the Derby tonight if you watch. Recommended pairing is a root beer float. You want this to feel like childhood. 8:00 PM EDT, ESPN (unless it joins the Big Ten first).
