The big 12 is very solid now. Think of their markets. Dallas Denver Houston Orlando Pittsburg KC Salt Lake. They have put together a very formidable group.
The Pac12 needs to fire everybody and start over. The fact that games are so late for the rest of the country, the app never having a subscription service, and its failure to promote its own schools have led to this. Gonna be crazy when Oregon and Washington leave. Colorado jumped ship at the right time.
@@mrboss2315 Utah would absolutely not fit well in the Big Ten, they don't recruit well enough or bring in enough money to be worth while to the Big Ten.
Once the Pac 12 chose not to merge with the Big 12 at the bequest of the TX executives the writing has been on the wall. The prorata clause in the Big 12 TV agreement was designed to drive the ultimate outcome that is now being realized as CU, plus more Pac 12 teams, move to the Big 12.
Congratulations on adding a 1-11 team. Their last bowl win was 20 years ago. That doesn’t improve the Big 12 football product. Remember these are long term decisions. Coaches can and will be gone in a few years. Then you’d be left with….a 1-11 team with no shiny coach.
Brett Yormark and the rest of the Big 12 leadership deserve a ton of credit for solidifying their position. When they lost OU and UT they worked fast to add the best replacements possible ASAP. They then went out and made the home run hire with Yormark and gave him the freedom to operate the way he needed to. It lead to the conference securing their TV deal and securing their future. Meanwhile, the PAC slept on expansion and went about their TV negotiations like they were in a position of power, which they were not. They had absolutely no sense of urgency and it's killed the conference.
Bowlsby added the four teams, it was his last big move and it created stability in the conference. Although there were a ton of mistakes under Bowlsby, he did hand over a stable conference to Yormark to work with. My opinion of him has softened a bit in hindsight.
Good point! This disaster with regard to the television situation even predates Kliavkoff. Larry Scott and his "leadership" helped create the conditions that Kliavkoff inherited. Scott's pathetic stance on the Pac-12's television rights left the Pac-12 on the outside looking in for years! Now, Scott has been gone 2 years, and Kliavkoff obviously could have been much more proactive, but one wonders where the Pac-12 would be had they had different leadership, or even axed Scott long before he left!
Probably the most insightful and conscientious podcast I've listened to for a long time, a very long time. Joe, I'm sure for you to get to this point was a long, difficult and painful journey - much of which only seen and perceived by you and loved ones. For what it's worth, I extend to you my highest commendation...
This will help because similar to Nebraska when they left their conferences they lost a large part of their recruiting base, this brings them back to that area
This is so on. Dead on. Been waiting for a big picture analysis and this is it. This is all WAY bigger than teams and TV markets. I have PhD in marketing and these are all the things I’ve been thinking about that very few are discussing. So great work. The Pac12 is just the last one in line due to these huge shifts that they have no control.
How can you say markets is not one of if not the biggest thing in all of this? You really don't think the PAC losing the LA market didn't create the crisis for that conference?
I have a PHD in college football (Bama class of 92) and Colorado is THE HOTTEST TOPIC leading in to the season. Biggest coaching hire......biggest buzz and an AD with stones the size of bowling balls. The "George football complex". Start building it now.......
I also think it'll be an easier schedule. Colorado schools (Colorado State, Air Force, Colorado College, Northern Colorado, Denver U) have to travel at least two hours by plane for every game, except for in state rivalries. Midwest and east coast schools can bus it, or take very short plane flights. Also, the Big 12 as a whole, isn't as competitive as the PAC 12. The PAC 12 had six (6!) teams in the top 25. More than any other conference. 100% not throwing shade, but if you look at CU's 2023 schedule they're only winning between 3 and 5 games. Still a massive improvement from the 1 win season last year, but all their games are against top 25 schools. Big 12 next season will be a lot less competitive with only TCU, TX Tech, K State in the top 25
@@atkaschayou can’t base a conference strength off one season lol in 2021 both conferences had 3 finish in the top 25 and the year before the Big 12 had 4 to the pac 12’s 2. Big 12 has cincy now as well so that’s another top 25 school, Iowa state and Baylor usually finishes top 25. So it’s TCU, Texas tech, Oklahoma State, Cincy, Baylor, Kansas State, Iowa state, West Virginia. All good football programs. Pac 12 has Utah, Oregon, and Washington. Oregon state is by no means a football power despite there success last season. USC and UCLA are gone regardless.
@@cjboyer4355 Iowa State was good when Purdy was there. They haven't been good for a while. They haven't won 10 games in forever. Neither has WV, or Baylor. I'd take the PAC 12 teams straight up over Big 12 for the next couple years. You are 100% right that there are ebbs and flows and sometimes the SEC gets a tad weak or the ACC and then has a resurgence. But right now, and for the next couple years, PAC 12 is stronger
Agreed but everyone else in talk radio is giving the business angle. Theyre in an echo chamber. What once seemed contrarian is now common. Sports talk has been infiltrated by tech and business nerds. And don’t get it twisted they’re angry and bitter and they’re bullies
As a CU alum. I thought it was a mistake when CU left the big 12 originally all with Nebraska. Its been a disaster since joining for both teams leaving. Atthe time the big 12 was arguably on par with the SEC at the time. Its a big deal because they were an original BIG 8 and 12 member any success over the last 60 + years has been in that conference. CU belongs in the big 12 thats there true home. Its a big deal because CU is the most talked about college football program that i can remember being a 1-11 team with coach prime. Its a big deal because in my opininon CU was the lynch pin to finalize the pac-12 's demise. Like Joel said if there was a media deal to be had the pac-12 would have seen it by now. News Flash.. Its not coming or at least a respectable deal. Finally its a big deal in my opinion that the Big Twelve wanted CU to come back after leaving and its nice after the last 12 years of the disaster the football program has been that any conferences would want you. As Klatt said its a no-brainer
And the crazy part about it is that Nebraska has lost all of the revelency it once had in the big 12 and it also started when choose to fire Bo Pelini ….
So teams that are on par with the SEC go 1-11 while they play in the pac12. Must mean the pac 12 is stronger than ppl like to admit. Congrats your just picked up the west team in the pac12
PAC9 ARROGANCE is mostly to blame. They literally thought they were better than other Conferences, Schools, Teams & People. Karma god-smacked them to the ground. The BIG12 has a real position of Strength. They're without a doubt the 3rd best football conference on many levels & The Best Basketball Conference. With Yormark at the helm it may continue to rise. Interesting how great leadership & pragmatism pay off.
Colorado to the Big 12 is good. Not good for the pac 12 but good for the team. Big 10, SEC, and Big 12 will be the only power conferences in the next 10 years. PAC might not be around 4 years from now and ACC will implode once lawyers find a way for the teams to exit
@@kitten8444 Aside from Georgia and Bama, who is a power in the SEC? Aside from Michigan and tOSU, who is a power in the B1G? They're both top heavy conferences that rely on two teams to do the bidding for them every year.
It will be the Super 2 Conferences (B1G & SEC) and the Leftovers League (Big12). The Leftovers League will be used like a minor league to develop the underrecruited football players to get poached by the Super 2 schools because they can pay their players more, so they will have the best ones. Eventually the 40+ most valuable schools will be in the Super 2 Conferences and all the leftovers will be in the Big12 (the Leftovers League).
@@eclecticcowboy5784They’re not actually top heavy. In 2024 TCU would have the #1 most talented roster in the big 12 but they would only be #8 in the big 10 and #16 in the SEC based on the 247 talent composite.
Colorado cut its ties to Texas recruiting by going to the Pac 12 that hurt their depth. But it was the best move at the time. Now coming back to Big 12 they will have access to not only Texas but Florida. Prime can work with that. Colorado will be getting better recruits which will bring better depth in all sports. Not to mention the national exposure in three time zones. As well get full payout immediately. Colorado connects BYU to Kansas/KSU/OSU to the Big 12, great locatiion for the conference. Big 12 is the best decision for Colorado in this era.
Totally right on cutting off there ties to Texas and Oklahoma too. Even back then I was skeptical but man it really burned them. I get the hate towards UT but look at what those 4 that left have accomplished: nothing. All money driven, followed by spite. Who knows long-term how things look but in terms of winning, Colorado now has the best chance of the 4 who left back in 2010-2011.
1 thing I keep hearing on other videos: Deion Sanders is a genius for making this happen. Granted, he has Colorado football going in the right direction but Deion had no say in this move. He is a HC, not part of the Board of Colorado. B12 has a power vacuum with Texas and Oklahoma leaving. There is a frontier ripe for pickings. Makes sense to go back. Iirc, Colorado and few other former B12 teams left because of money not being split to their liking. Colorado lost money with the move going to the Pac12 and now going back to their Ex because the Pac12 grass wasn't as green as they thought it was.
Didn't you know that President Prime runs the entire university? Actually Colorado made an average of $500M more yearly in the Pac12 because of the conference's superior academics and all the money they make from research.
The PAC has better brands at the moment, but the Big 12 has better fans. The latter can actually get 45,000 folks to a game regularly, and football is driving the bus.
The Big Ten has laid an egg in both basketball and football the last couple of years, it would be very easy for the Big 12 to flip the script with the next media deal as long as the Big 12 continues to do well in both sports.
What is NOT talked about that hurts the Pac-12 is geography. This is huge in an era of non-stop college football telecasts. If I have watched college football on a Saturday, I am kind of done by 9pm CDT/CST. Certainly not going to stay up for Cal-Stanford. Big12 is middle of the country. Easier for anyone anywhere to watch. Suspect the rating numbers bear this out. Geography matters. Pac-12 likely done at least as a power 5. Suspect 5 more schools are out.
BIG12 will probably end up getting a couple of the following schools, Oregon, Washington, Miami, FSU and Clemson. Not to mention this make the Big12 the best college basketball conference in America. CU needs to bring baseball back because that could be a + for them.
Why would any of those schools want to join the Big12 (the Leftovers League) to make less money when they can join the B1G or SEC to make more money, get better exposure, and remain relevant?
I don’t expect any of these schools to join the BIG12 just because the B1G and SEC media deals are so massive. Oregon, Washington and Miami were all vetted to join the Big 10 earlier this summer. The SEC wants Clemson and FSU. There is a scenario where they join the BIG12 though! A lot of the lower ranked schools in both the SEC and B1G are against further expansion.
@@dragonsurge1 The bottom feeders in the B1G and SEC have to vote to accept new valuable schools because they are lucky to be there. The valuable majority of schools can always disband their conference and instantly create a new one without the bottom feeders and with the valuable schools they want.
No I believe The BIG 10 will end up with orgen and Washington do to the fact that we got USC AND UCLA and there all by themselves it does not make since to just have those two teams so that it help balance out everything
@@rogerhayes4055 They can't afford to wait for the BIG10 if Im head of those school I would look for an exit now. BIG10 isn't taking anyone right now but BIG12 will
He kinda alluded to how the PAC was led into the Gingerbread house to be slaughtered because of their proximity to Silicon Valley, which is right in a way but it's the whole state of California that was and will be an issue. If you look at the PAC 12 conference moves, or lack thereof, over the last decade, it's clear they don't look at this through a Football prism, they hung their hat on their supposed academic superiority and pretentiousness. The pandemic is what laid it all out because you could tell what conferences, and fanbases, actually loved Football and did all in their power to play the game they love, the PAC was the last one who realized the train was leaving the station and even when they oh so reluctantly joined the train they did so with more rubbish attached than all the others.
Well done Joel!! This is probably the best most insightful and comprehensive discussion of what happened with the Colorado decision. I look forward to future shows and see what the Big 12 will do next.
No surprise Joel has this nailed down which is why I came here first. Especially with him being an alumni. So I won't cover his expert opinion/facts cause he said it all perfectly. What I believe helps IS recruiting, though. Colorado cut themselves off from many states that made them who they were. How many Texas kids wants to play away games in Oregon, Washington, Utah, California, even Arizona, while never going back home to play a single game, while before COL was in TX at least twice a year? It's no coincidence and it matters. Same for Nebraska. Games in New Jersey, Maryland, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania? While NOT playing in Texas and Oklahoma at all?! And playing lesser opponents with no ties and rivalries?! Not happening and it showed for the last 10 years more often than not. Also there's this: do you want to play away games at Stanford, CAL, WASH St, Oregon St, Arizona with little fans around, or them coming into your place? Or play West Virginia, KSU, OK ST, TTU, Baylor, BYU, ISU( right now at least) with sold-out away games and bringing them into COL home stadium? Not to mention if KU gets going, and Cincinnati and UCF having big sold-out potential. It's pretty easy for me to see this move from those perspectives as well. The real shame is that the conference broke up the the first place cause they probably would of passed the B1G some time ago with some additions like USC, Oregon, Washington, and UCLA, along with possibly 2 to 4 others. They all have some blame, even if Texas has more of it.
Deion was one of Pac12’s key assets / negotiating chips. They should have proactively offered him whatever he wants to keep Colorado until for X years.
Proud of the moves Colorado has made. Can't lie the Alum were losing faith in leadership. Way to make a come back and re-establish the direction of the whole institution Academics, Athletics and Culture. #GoBuffs!
Pay TV subscribers peaked in 2016 at 101 million households (not 120 million as you stated). Also, at that time ESPN charged $6 per subscriber to cable operators. By 2020, ESPN was charging $14 per subscriber. I haven't seen what they charge in 2023 to cable opertors. In 2023, there are 74 million pay TV households. So the revenue for ESPN has gone up dramatically during this period of falling subscribers because they more than doubled their price to cable operators. I get the point you are making, just clarifying some statements that were not accurately stated. By the way, it is projected pay TV (cable TV) subscribers will fall to 50 million households by 2030. Disney CEO Igor said the TV model of their networks (FX, ESPN family of channels, Natural Geographic, etc) is broken. He said that last week.
Great summary - The PAC-12 did not realize the pie doesn't just magically grow. League officials need to understand basic economic fundamentals. I think the universities should all close their business programs.
My apologies to you Joel, but I've never heard of you before I started following coach prime to CU. I'm glad I started following your channel bc you bring FACTS to your opinions and show alot of professionalism in your analysis!!
How much does the PAC 12 commissioner make a year, to let the conference go down the tubes, sign me up, I’m sure with my limited skill set I can destroy a conference for multimillion dollar payout.
Question: If the Big 12 were to add schools that greatly increased the value of the conference (say Oregon, Arizona, and Washington); would they be able to renegotiate their media rights deal before it expires in 2031 to give each school a larger chunk of money?
I don't think so. They have a clause in the contract that says any new Power 5 schools added get a full share. I think that's it. But for schools in a collapsing conference getting a full share immediately in a new conference is huge.
To be clear; I have zero insight to the media deal. That being said, I’m of the belief that revenue for adding members to the B12 is built in. P12 is not getting a deal from either ESPN or Fox so they can take revenue they may have spent on the P12 and add revenue to the B12 deal for each added team up to a certain number of teams. Is that number 14, 16 or 20? Don’t know, time will tell. Again, this is pure conjecture on my part.
Well, your future is clearly going to be on a board of directors or making these decisions for media at the management level. That being said, you are correct, the university of Colorado basically rolled up and pushed all of their chips out on the table and hit 21 then they turned around and pushed them all out again and hit 21. They should build a statue to Rick George and put it right next to the one for Joel Klatt
The Pac-12 needed SC, period. Without SC the conference is irrelevant. UCLA is also a big loss. Only SC and UCLA play intersectional games (SEC and Big-10) and win. Oregon is irrelevant. All flash and no substance.
The PAC 12 did all of this to themselves. They had a chance to expand in 2021, but followed USC guidance to not expand since none of the remaining 8 Big 12 teams were worthy to join their conference. The USC wanted a bigger share of its next TV contract and when the other conference members said no…they took the LA market to the BIG 10. The nail in the coffin was it over valued itself when negotiating its next TV contract after losing the LA Market. Luckily for the Big 12 it’s commissioner understood the market was changing and took the deal the PAC 12 turned down.
This was alllllll part of the plan for dieon and Rick George. This was put in stone once they got texas out of the big 12. Colorado now becomes the face of big 12. Rick George and prime out here playing ZONE DAWG DEF…..
I would challenge that assumption. Colorado was a Big 7/8/12 institution for 63 years before Texas ran Nebraska and Colorado away. Regardless, we would have welcomed Colorado back to the family, and it is Coach Sanders at CU.
@@vernonsheldon-witter1225 College don't care about tradition these days, or the Pac 12 wouldn't be going under. They care about 💰💰 and CU numbers since coach Prime has gotten there is undeniable. Coach Prime is going to be there for at least 5 years... The TV Content for the Big 12 is 6 years it makes perfect sense... Even if Prime leaves, CU had to sell that we was going to be here to strike while the irons hot.
They would because they know they need the PAC 12 to die in order to survive and this move gets them one step closer. Arizona is next it is reported that they just didn't want to be the first to make a move but now that Colorado did it zona will be coming as well. ASU and Utah will be left behind because yormark days he wants to stay at 14 for now but will probably make an exception for Oregon and Washington to get to 16
I think that Fox and ESPN would up the payout to $50M per team should Arizona, Oregon and Washington decide to join the Big 12, its only $800M and still a drop in the bucket between them, it would create a substainable product for them to promote with good viewing windows and regional coverage.
I’ll say the next school to join the Big12 will probably be SMU or Tulane. Both are great G5 schools that possibly want the exposure. Now for the Pac12 the only team i feel like that can save them is Notre Dame and maybe invite fresno state to join as well. ND is hated but loved by everyone who knows College football and they could bring an NBC package deal alongside with them for the conference. We all know NBC loves ND so them finally joining the conference would bring huge revenue to wherever they go. But i feel like ND if they wanted to go to a conference it would possibly be B10, ACC or P12 because that is the conference that they play the most year in and out
Sports media needs more personalities with a similar style and substance to Joel. Talent like Huard and Klatt make the CFB experience more enjoyable than the NFL. Joel is the antithesis of a “dumb jock”.
Utah is way down the list if they're on it at all. The Big 12 is already in Utah, and the state, though growing, is too small for a league to double dip in it. Same for Arizona. Just one is necessary.
