There isnt a perfect solution and thats what the Pac 12 are finding out as well. They all chose to cripple themselves potentially vs conference opponents by the terms they signed on for, with unbalanced payouts for CFP and NCAA credits. Their banking on a trade off that the teams included in the deal will help drive up the media market price, but they failed to factor in that just about every team not named Boise they added are awful this year when they need to be out negotiating the TV deals. They had to give away the equal tournament credit distribution to attract Gonzaga and SDSU. Now they are finding out same as us, that there arent a lot of valuable dance partners across the G5 landscape and the ones who are, are locked into their current spots and arent willfully budging. Were lucky in that we only needed 2 new partners to legitimize our conference in the NCAA eyes and from a dollars and value perspective, it was easy to add UTEP and potentially make Hawaii a full sport partner. That doesn't necessarily cripple the MWC, while it wont be the standalone top tier as it currently really is across both football and basketball, its still a potentially top tier G5.
Meanwhile the Pac 12 needs to add 1 team, but theyve already compromised their original values to create the top tiered conference, the product they brought is woefully underwhelming this year, and they couldnt secure the bigger fishes they wanted and now that the contract terms are public, theyre probably going to have a harder time attracting filler tier programs. It sucks that instead of being the best conference far and above, they thought they could cut the dead weight, give themselves competitive advantages financially, and everyone would just play ball and join in...
