The Hotline mailbag is published every Friday. Send questions to pac12hotline@bayareanewsgroup.com — and include ‘mailbag’ in the subject line — or hit me on Twitter: @WilnerHotline.
*** Please note: Several topics related to Pac-12 media rights and expansion will be answered separately, in forthcoming articles.
(Some questions have been edited for clarity and brevity.)
Is SMU to the Pac-12 closer to 75 percent complete, or 100 percent? — @smu_football
The former, for sure. The Pac-12 presidents have discussed adding two schools, four schools or zero schools but have not made a final decision.
SMU and San Diego State are believed to be atop the list, but at least two more are under consideration. (We cannot confirm their identities. Our only option is to speculate, and my hunch is Rice and Tulane.)
The reason to add any schools is bulk — there is something to be said for strength in numbers during these roiling times.
Within the numbers comes inventory. You can play 13-15 more home football games per season with 12 teams as opposed to 10, and those extra games could carry value to media partners.
Enough value to make it worthwhile for the 10 existing members?
That’s the key. The presidents are intrigued enough to have authorized the exploratory process — hence commissioner George Kliavkoff’s visit to SMU last week — but that’s far different from voting on membership.
Our current estimates:
No expansion: 50 percent
Two schools: 40 percent
Four schools: 10 percent
(If the conference decides to expand by two, SDSU and SMU are the heavy favorites. But the pairing of SMU and Rice would be intriguing on multiple fronts.)
A week from now, those numbers could change. It’s a fluid process.
If you’re a Fresno State fan, should you basically forget about Pac-12 membership this round? — @LAWomensHoops
That’s the most pragmatic approach with regard to the Pac-12. However, I suspect the Big 12 might have some interest in Fresno State.
We know Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark wants to add a campus in the Pacific Time Zone. If San Diego State joins the Pac-12, the Bulldogs would become the prime candidate.
That guarantees nothing, but it’s more likely, perhaps, than entry into the Pac-12.
Take the likelihood and money out of it. Which schools would be the most fun for you to see join the Pac-12? — @bryanmiller513
Great question.
Personally, the Hotline would love having both UNLV and Nevada in the conference, along with Western Nevada College, Truckee Meadows Community College and Great Basin College.
If you cannot cover a sporting event, then grab a $2.99 steak and eggs, what is the point of living?
Also, we would love to see the Pac-12 add San Diego State, Tulane and all branches of the University of Hawaii system.
And one more: The University of British Columbia. Great school. Great campus. Great city.
How many votes are required to approve a new media deal? — @bogeycat85
Momentous issues (i.e., those impacting the future of the conference) require a super-majority vote for approval, and USC and UCLA do not vote on momentous issues.
So eight of the 10 schools would have to support membership invitations.
Whatever the vote, if there’s a vote, it will be described as unanimous.
Are we waiting on the new media partners to decide which expansion candidates provide the most value to them to present to the presidents for consideration? — @beckarabecka
Commissioner George Kliavkoff has said from the outset that the conference would sign a media rights deal, then a grant-of-rights agreement (that binds the schools together), followed by a decision on expansion.
But those issues were always headed down parallel tracks. The media partners would know the expansion scenarios before settling on a final contract, just as the presidents would know the parameters of a media deal before deciding on expansion.
I have no reason to believe that process has changed.
None of the potential expansion targets are directly accretive. They don’t have the market size or brand value to make media partners swoon.
Instead, the value from expansion comes primarily from game inventory, in our opinion.
What impacts did firing the Pac-12 Networks president (Mark Shuken) and the CFO (Brent Willman) have on the media rights negotiations? I would have thought they were central to the process? Did this set the conference back several steps along the way? — @TJAltimore
This topic came up in conversation last week with a Hotline source and is worth addressing here.
My sense is that any impact on the mechanics of the process was minimal, if nonexistent. Neither Shuken nor Willman was involved in the negotiations in a material fashion.
However, in the weeks since we reported the news that Comcast had overpaid the Pac-12 Networks by approximately $50 million over the course of a decade, it has become clear the issue carried a psychological effect.
It could have empowered potential partners to take a more circumspect stance. An embarrassment of that nature — and it was a whopper — inherently shifts leverage during negotiations.
“It wasn’t helpful,” the source said with a hefty dose of understatement.
Can you verify that the Pac-12 offer is $100 million from Amazon for Tier 1 rights for two years and $100 million from ESPN for Tier 2, along with $10 million a year for some Tier 3 with a small escalator for two expansion teams. — @RoggeAd
Here’s what I can verify: The entire college sports world is speculating about the fate of the conference, but only an extremely small circle of people actually know the details.
My guess is that only 10-12 people really know the state of play.
That doesn’t mean this will end with a laudable media deal for the conference. But it means that most of what fans are reading and hearing is either semi- or completely unfounded.
I have read from credible sources that CBS & Turner are out of Pac-12 negotiations. Fox will only take games on the cheap. Some Twitter rumors say Amazon only wants a game. What’s true, what isn’t? — @realwebtraveler
As I was saying, only a few people know the details, and I am not one of them.
However, the Hotline can add context on this topic:
— Fox got what it wanted on June 30, when USC and UCLA flew to the Big Ten. In fact, Fox orchestrated the deal, according to multiple sources in the sports media industry. (One of them referred to the Big Ten as “Fox Inc.”) At best, Fox would want to maintain enough Pac-12 inventory to fill the Saturday night slots on FS1. The company was never a serious candidate for the primary inventory.
— NBC wasn’t an option, not with Notre Dame and the Big Ten’s night games. Other companies were potential candidates, including Turner and CBS.
— All along, this has pointed to ESPN and Amazon as the major players, and I don’t have reason to believe that’s changed. But my hunch is that a third entity is involved, with Apple as the most likely.
If the media deal ends up being majority-streaming, rather than just having a streaming component like originally thought, would the Pac-12 be better off just negotiating an MLS/Apple-style deal instead? — David May
Major League Soccer partnered with Apple last summer on a 10-year deal — it’s reportedly worth $250 million annually — that gave the tech giant exclusive streaming rights to every game.
In our view, the Pac-12 should partner with Apple or Amazon for streaming content in some fashion. Those companies rule the world and are deeply embedded in the fabric of the West Coast.
However, the conference needs exposure on ESPN, not only for the event audience but also for the narrative piece. If ESPN isn’t under contract with the Pac-12, its analysts will have little reason to talk about the Pac-12.
Our guess is the media deal has a linear broadcast element, with a package of games on ABC and ESPN.
Whether ESPN’s inventory haul is more or less than 25 percent of the Pac-12 total, which would match the current commitment, we cannot say.
Do you think the media deal, when completed, will contain elements of what you suggested in your Amazon Partnership Plan (APP) piece? By the way: Kudos for one of the most imaginative ideas I’ve read on the subject. — @pfnnewmedia
Thanks for the kind words.
For readers who missed the original, we suggested in late September that the Pac-12 go all-in with Amazon and partner not just on sports broadcasts but every facet of university business:
Amazon food services, Amazon IT and telecommunications services, Amazon transportation, Amazon merchandise sales, etc.
That’s the only way an exclusive broadcast deal with Amazon works — if the company is wholly tied to the universities and invested in their growth.
I have no reason to think anything along those lines is pending. And admittedly, there were massive hurdles to the APP, starting with the existing contracts that all universities have for those services.
But the Hotline has not ruled out the possibility of the Pac-12 going all-in with a media partner, which would own the full sweep of football and basketball inventory and, perhaps, sublicense games to other media companies.
Let’s say the Pac-12 ceases to exist in this cycle. What happens to each team? Another conference? Independent status? Ending of athletics? — @draywilson29
It’s far, far too early to speculate on a breakup. That feels a tad irresponsible on our part, in fact.
A future together remains the most likely outcome.
Until we have evidence of a rupture, the Hotline will refrain from speculating on the next step for each school.
When it’s all said and done, how many Pac-12 teams make the NCAA tournament this year? And who are they? — @Robservatory
Three: UCLA, Arizona and USC.
As long as the Trojans don’t suffer another bad loss, they should sneak in. The Auburn win looms large for them.
Oregon and Utah are on the fringe, desperate for quality wins while avoiding bad losses.
Arizona State has fallen off the bubble entirely.
The conference’s fate for March was sealed in November, when it suffered a string of terrible results that lowered the collective’s NET ranking.
It has been unable to escape mediocre metrics ever since.
Which are better pets, cats or dogs? — @KoolEconomics
I grew up in a cat family.
The answer is dogs.
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