Joe’s Notes: Still No Conference Realignment

Finally, someone has made a move.

Or have they?

From Pete Thamel at ESPN:

San Diego State gave the Mountain West written notice this week that the school “intends to resign from the Mountain West Conference,” sources told ESPN.

In the letter, it asked the Mountain West for a “one-month extension given unforeseen delays involving other collegiate athletic conferences beyond our control.” As of now, there does not appear to be an invitation to San Diego State from a Power Five conference.

The withdrawal letter, which came from San Diego State president Adela de la Torre on June 13, comes with complexities and prompted a terse back-and-forth between the league and SDSU. That included San Diego State subsequently informing the league that the June 13 letter was “not the official notice of resignation,” according to sources.

The article goes on. It details again how San Diego State needs to exit the Mountain West by June 30^th if it wants to be in the Pac-12 next fall and avoid paying an extra seventeen million dollars. It clarifies that San Diego State was merely asking for an extension and that all this headline clickbait is merely headline clickbait. It also includes the following quote:

“They’re trying to find out what we’re willing to do,” said a Mountain West source briefed on the exchange. “They want to see if the Mountain West Conference is going to handle this nicely. Well, that’s not going to happen. Everyone wants to find the best financial path for themselves, and it’s clunky.”

What can we take away here?

Firstly, San Diego State can leave the Mountain West. What’s the Mountain West going to do? If San Diego State eventually wants to come back, the Mountain West will let its most desirable athletic program come back. This is conjecture on my part, but it is very hard to imagine a world where the Mountain West cuts off its nose to spite its face. It might be an ugly negotiation, the Mountain West might not play nice, but if San Diego State doesn’t get picked up by a Power Five conference, the Mountain West would be reckless to not eventually allow the Aztecs back in.

Secondly, this is not a good sign for those rooting for the Pac-12 to survive. What this is actually telling us—the one piece of information here—is that San Diego State definitively does not have an offer from the Pac-12, nor does it feel confident that it’ll have one before the end of the month. Maybe the Pac-12 has a media rights deal it likes and is merely playing hardball, knowing if it wants SDSU it can have SDSU in a matter of hours (again, conjecture on my part, but come on, that’s gotta be the case). More likely? The Pac-12 still holds no cards, is still bluffing, and is still trying to find a way to grab an ace from the deck despite every ace already sitting on the table.

What, then, is going to happen?

Our best guess at the situation is that the following is going on (we’ve said much of this before over the last twelve months, but, well, that stuff still applies):

• Forget the ACC. It’s stuck. Also, forget the Big Ten and SEC for now. They’re pretty well set until streaming gets big enough to really change the TV economics.
• The Big 12 would happily take any of Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, Washington, Oregon, Stanford, and Cal, together or as individuals. The Big 12 would happily take even merely one of those eight schools. Destabilizing the Pac-12 is worth a little scheduling headache for the Big 12, because the Big 12 and the ACC are the only realistic landing places for Pac-12 schools, so any Pac-12 weakness benefits the Big 12.
• I’m not sure the Big 12 would take Oregon State or Washington State unless it were as part of a full conference merger/annexation or a package deal involving Oregon or Washington. Those schools are along for the ride at this point, and it’s to be determined whether or not they keep their Power Five status when this is said and done.
• Oregon, Washington, Stanford, and Cal do not want to join the Big 12.
• Utah probably doesn’t want to join the Big 12. Its athletic director has made an unnecessarily convincing case about that, and to speculate on our own speculation for a second: That might be about BYU. Regardless of motive and true feelings, Utah isn’t dumb. It has a functioning self-preservation instinct. The same can be said of all remaining Pac-12 schools, too, which is worth remembering. The lone exceptions in terms of how this could play out, were the choice Zombie Pac-12 vs. Join the Big 12? Stanford and Cal. I’m not sure how much those schools really care about big-money sports, and in Cal’s case I’m not sure how much that school cares about sports at all. It would depend on situation, no doubt, but it’s possible those two actually do not want to be in a conference with UCF and are willing to leave the Power Five to hold that boundary. It’d be surprising, but they’re the ones where it’s possible.
• Colorado, Arizona, and Arizona State might be down to join the Big 12. They are not the most powerful figures in the Pac-12 overall, but they have a lot of leverage here because they 1) are a more natural geographic and cultural fit for the Big 12 than Oregon, Washington, Stanford, & Cal and 2) wouldn’t face pushback from their state legislatures for relegating a fellow state school to mid-majordom the way Oregon or Washington might.
• The Big 12 is intrigued by the ideas of Gonzaga and maybe someone like Creighton (my personal pet cause here), but that’s dessert. It would be fun, but it will not affect football, and football’s where the money’s made. This is not the Big 12’s focus.
• The Big 12 will not add UConn or Memphis or San Diego State or any of the other Group of Five hopefuls because if they do that, every already-signed Big 12 member will lose money thanks to the ESPN deal dictating that all expansion teams must come from Power Five leagues to proportionally increase revenue.
• Eventually, the Pac-12 has to bring a media deal to its schools. When that happens, either 1) the ten schools will collectively accept and then make the subsequent decision on whether or not to add San Diego State and SMU or 2) at least one school will defect.
• If even just one school defects from the Pac-12, it’s going to be very hard to stop two or three more from joining them. Part of this is the sinking ship effect, but part is that each school will be looking at the same deal. If Colorado doesn’t like it, it’s likelier Arizona and Arizona State and Utah also don’t like it.
• The Pac-12 doesn’t have to wait on San Diego State. San Diego State is not the key to all of this. The Pac-12’s media deal is not going to magically be worth a lot more (or anything more) if San Diego State is included. San Diego State is not worth that much money. What San Diego State and SMU provide the Pac-12 is stability more than any of that bullshit about useful recruiting markets. A ten-team league is closer to suffering an avalanche than a twelve-team league is (that’s what we’re seeing right now, in fact), and San Diego State and SMU would hurt the Pac-12’s revenue equation the least of all the schools the league could add.
• San Diego State is in a pickle. It’s very possible San Diego State will have to make a leap of faith, officially leaving the Mountain West before June 30^th even without an invitation waiting. If I were San Diego State, I’d wait until the eleventh hour, but I’d make the leap. You might lose some money, but the Mountain West will take you back.

All of this leaves us with maybe six scenarios:

• Scenario A. The Pac-12 sticks together and adds San Diego State and SMU.
• Scenario B. The Pac-12 sticks together and adds no one.
• Scenario C. Exactly one school leaves the Big 12, but the rest of the Pac-12 sticks together and backfills with San Diego State. (I’m not sure how realistic this scenario is, but it doesn’t seem like something you can rule out.)
• Scenario D. The Pac-12 loses two or four schools but manages to backfill without losing Washington, Oregon, or Stanford among those two to four. (This is the most interesting because we’d have to see how the “power conference” question plays out.)
• Scenario E. The Pac-12 loses six or eight schools, effectively dissolving and leaving some combination of Washington State, Oregon State, and Cal in the wilderness. (Stanford, again, is playing a different game. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing if they went fully independent for a minute. They have powerful friends. That helps.)
• Scenario F. The Pac-12 and Big 12 do ultimately merge. (This basically amounts to Oregon State and Washington State begging for mercy and then receiving it.)

I am doing a lot of guessing, but you all are used to that by now. I really don’t know what’s likelier between A, B, D, E, and F. Here are thoughts, though:

• I don’t think F makes economic sense for anyone *unless* Washington and Oregon would really take a meaningful amount of heat for abandoning Washington State and Oregon State *or* Stanford wants more West Coast teams in their league to ease their travel and therefore academic burden.
• I think E makes the most economic sense but I don’t know how badly Washington, Oregon, and Stanford want to avoid being in the Big 12, something which probably depends on how much they actually believe the Big Ten will one day want them.
• I’m curious about D, and if that’s really why the Pac-12 has San Diego State and SMU in the wings. When Texas and Oklahoma jumped to the SEC, the Big 12 showed us the importance of fast action, backfilling within two or three months. There’s no reason the Pac-12 can’t backfill within hours in an attempt to keep everyone besides the earliest defectors on board.
• C seems wacky, but Colorado is so traditionally flighty (for good reason, that school’s revenue numbers are not very good) and everyone is doing so much posturing that it’s hard to rule anything out.
• A and B seem equally believable, but it’s hard to believe the deal which prompts one or the other could be anything more than a short-term patch designed to give Oregon and Washington an earlier out if they do somehow manage to convince the Big Ten they’re worth its time.

The one thing I’ll change my mind on? Since USC and UCLA left the Pac-12 last summer, we’ve been of the “any minute now” mindset. We have repeatedly been shown that this is not true. I don’t think any deadline is a deadline. I don’t think this has to happen by June 30^th, and I’m starting to suspect that it won’t.

Other Thoughts

Miscellaneous things, heading into the weekend:

• The Cubs taking this series from the Orioles would, of course, be great, and I think the Cubs want the Pirates to beat the Brewers right now. The Brewers are a bigger team to overcome and have more to sell if they go that route. I’m starting to get worried about the effects of the London travel, but that’s still a ways off.

I’m sorry. I thought I had more thoughts than that. I’ll try to write about the Bulls and the Heat and other things next week. I don’t have the heart to tackle Oakland vs. Las Vegas or the Marcus Stroman extension question right now. Have a good weekend. We’ll be around.