camel at sea

Yeah. My assumption was that Stanford and/or Cal would go independent if the academic standards of the conference dropped too low.

PAC West: Washington St, Oregon St, Stanford, Cal, SDSU, Hawaii PAC East: Tulane, Rice, SMU, Colorado St, Wyoming, Air Force/Tulsa This looks about right to me.

I think if SMU started winning at a high level, consistently, they'd start drawing casual fans to games (we saw it play out that way at TCU and Baylor.) They've never strung together enough success to get any fan momentum going. They're set up in the revamped AAC to win that league a lot and they'll have a good chance to make the expanded CFP as a result. Counter-intuitively, they'd probably be better off staying where they are than jumping to the PAC where they won't win as much.

Oregon does well on TV and has a relatively good national brand. They give back financially to their conference TV deal. The problem for the Ducks is that they don't give back enough to get a B1G invite. But f you're the Big 12 and you can get the Ducks boosting your Tier 1 slate of games, you take them gladly.

Yeah, no matter what, SMU is better off with Stanford and Cal than the AAC. And if the PAC gets heavily raided and starts backfilling, there's a decent chance that Rice and Tulane get a look, too. The Bay Area schools will probably do what they can to keep the academic standards as high as possible.

The original Big 12 was just mismanaged badly. The worst thing they did was the football schedule / division alignment. It essentially made the North schools non-existent in the big Texas media/recruiting markets and consequently damaged their per-team value. I think it was hard to envision it playing out that way when the league was formed - with Nebraska and Colorado so strong - but it was dumb not to adapt when the obvious became obvious a decade in. By the early to mid 2000s, there should have been discussions within the league about rearranging the divisions on the basis of something other than geography. OU, Texas,, BU, KU, KSU, OSU NU, A&M, TTU, MU, ISU, CU Something like this ^ would preserve most rivalries and it would distribute media/recruiting exposure more evenly for all 12 teams in the conference's big markets. Big 12 1.0 had the North schools basically invisible in DFW and Houston during football season. None of those schools were part of the conference standings that mattered (the South standings.) Under a different divisional alignment, you probably also get support for the cross-division rivalry game that was working really well in the SEC. The Big 12 left money on the table by not having OU play Nebraska every year. The Huskers might have been less willing to jump ship if they were actually playing their only real rival every year and getting more exposure in Texas, too.

I was going to agree, but then I thought about it some more. Two HS classes and two portal cycles have happened in that span of time. The roster churn makes sense. It's going to take me a while to get used to how the portal impacts all of this. Having watched OU's defense over the last several years, Venables probably couldn't churn out Alex Grinch's recruits fast enough.

This sounds like wishful thinking to me. I don't get the impression that the Big Ten is interested in this (or that SC / UCLA are interested in this.)

The extent to which UVA is coveted is probably overstated. When the revenue model was based on cable subs, they added more to the table than they do now. UNC is similar though their hoops fanbase will probably be among the most reliable cbb streamers in the country. Both of them likely will need a stronger partner to open a door for them (Notre Dame to the B1G, FSU to the SEC.) My guess though would be that if ND goes all in on the B1G, the Irish would prefer other partners before those two (Miami, Georgia Tech.) That said, I'm not at all convinced they want to go anywhere.

That 9 to 1 situation doesn't matter too much if Oregon knows that leaving will guarantee several of those 9 decide to follow. It's just a question of whether Nike wants to bury its investment in Oregon athletics on Amazon Prime, or not. Maybe they'll do it but I have a hard time believing it.

Everything is negotiable. If the Big 12 didn't mind them going, the exit money would be low.

Yeah. The ACC also has an advantage of having fewer schools that move the financial needle for the B1G or SEC than people seem to think. If Oregon and Washington weren't takes... which ACC schools are Big Ten takes? FSU and Clemson would both be in the bottom half of the SEC with respect to fan support and financial resources. Do they add enough to split the pie into more slices?

The longer this drags out, the more likely this seems. Oregon can't let its football program be buried on Amazon Prime. That map also makes me think the Big 12's eastern flank will eventually end up backfilling the ACC after it loses a few to the SEC.

The SEC ending a bunch of big annual rivalries to do a 1+7 format would be dumb. Bama should play Auburn and Tennessee every year. Auburn should always play Bama and Georgia. Etc. There's no way to make the "+7" rotation fair and balanced, anyway. It's going to vary depending on who is good in any given year. 3+6 gives the fans the games they want and it makes the most money.

If the PAC adds SMU and SDSU before the Four Corners, Oregon, and Washington bolt, then the six schools left behind will be in a better position to poach from the MWC instead of being forced to join the MWC.

If the Four Corners leave and the Big Ten won't invite them immediately, then Washington and Oregon would have very little leverage to make demands. They'd either have to make a back-filled PAC work or they'd have to sign whatever the Big 12 and its media partners told them to sign.

Yeah. The longer this goes on, the more likely it seems that the Big 12 will gut the PAC. Replacing Texas and Oklahoma with Washington and Oregon isn't close to even, but it's a much better consolation prize than anyone expected in July of 2021.

UH is bigger and they're less of a commuter school now than they were 50 years ago. When they were trying to get into the Big 12 seven years ago, I remember their president bragging bout 10,000 beds on campus. The TCU/Baylor/Tech types are a bigger draw now than they were in the SWC. Baylor and TCU are both arguably in the midst of their best 15 year runs in modern program history. Oklahoma State / BYU / etc. are all relatively god draws, too. I haven't been to the Third Ward in a few years but I'm pretty sure that part of Houston is gentrifying (for good or bad or however you want to look at it.) Point is that it's hard to compare their SWC days to the present. I think they'll get a huge attendance bounce in year one. They'll have to win and be competitive to keep it going. Fertitta seems like a guy who will go make a big hire if Dana falls on his face.

Their fanbase is fair-weather. Herman's teams were starting to draw pretty well there before he left for Austin. Then the whole thing kind of cratered again under Major and Dana. Between Briles, Sumlin, and Herman, they haven't been able to hang on to any coaches that started building fan momentum. TCU keeping a guy like Gary Patterson around for two decades was pretty unusual. That part of the fan support equation probably gets better for UH in the Big 12. My guess is that they'll turn out relatively well for Big 12 opponents until the newness wears off. Then they'll turn out for winners after that. But I think there are a lot of reasons to think they'll eventually be winners.

Yeah. I don't understand the doubt about UH. They'll be successful in the Big 12 in football and in a lot of sports. Their facilities are on campus and good. Their recruiting location is as elite as it gets in college athletics. They've got their own Phil Knight / T. Boone BMD to drive things forward.

The original PAC media deal report a while back had CBS picking up "a handful" of the PAC's games. That or something like it has to be the carrot to keep Oregon and Washington from bouncing right now. Neither of those two can really afford to bury their programs from an exposure standpoint, for any amount of time, and I doubt Phil Knight would allow it at Oregon. But if you're Arizona basketball? There is no carrot being offered. Their AD can't let their basketball games get parked on Amazon streaming. It's horrible for exposure in the short term and it's a huge risk for them to not take a Big 12 chair now, if they have one. That spot might not be there 4-5 years from now. I'd guess too that donations, attendance, and ticket prices all go up if KU and company start visiting town. We'll see though. I have no doubt that you're right and that we'll start seeing more leaks soon.

I'd guess that the AAC invitees and BYU are all worth more than either Oregon State or Washington State. WSU regularly draws less than 25K to home games and Oregon State isn't a lot better. The Beavers are renovating their stadium to be between 34K and 39K capacity.

The best case scenario for the PAC is going to be living out a version of the Big 12's 2010-2021 existence. They'll probably add those two and lose two others (Arizona + Colorado.) They'll have a decent chance of keeping Oregon and Washington around for a while if 1) the new Tier 1 media deal gives those two enough football exposure, and 2) if the PAC unequally splits the expanded CFP revenue (something that would probably also make Utah happy.) Most of the rest of the conference has admins that would sacrifice sports on the alter of Stanford/Cal academic association and/or no other options. If the PAC can limit any additional exodus to just Arizona + 1, they'll probably survive in the short term. Obviously at some point Oregon and Washington will leave but if the PAC can delay that eventuality for several years, they can give a heads up to a few MWC schools with "good enough" academics and those schools can get facilities projects built, winning programs on the field, etc.

Yeah, Arizona jumping seems inevitable and it would lead to a whole bunch of other falling dominoes. Oregon ending up in the Big 12 would be very entertaining.