Yeah the bedwetting over not being in the PAC is weird. It's like people don't realize that nobody in the midwest, south or east see a huge difference in playing Fresno or New Mexico. They don't. Like some east coast media pollster is going to dock UNLV massively for not playing in the PAC instead of the MWC. It's frankly, laughable.
I get it, but most, if not all of the argument for UNLV going to the PAC are centered around the “long term”. So now you have to define “long term”.
Let’s call the next 2.5 years as short term and everything after that as long term.
In the short term, UNLV will make more money than any of the other MW or PAC schools. How much remains to be seen, but even if it gets settled to half, it’s gonna be a large amount of new money. Add to that NOT losing money by leaving and it’s a HUGE difference. On the low side it’s a difference of at bare minimum $15-$18 million difference.
Is the PAC media contract going to be $5mil more per year? I doubt it, but if it is then you’ve cost yourself an extra $35 million minus $15-$18 mill over the course of 7 years… $17-$20 million, so $2.5-$3 mill per year.
So to me that’s the worst you could do over the course of the next 7 years. I don’t necessarily see that as a HUGE mistake but maybe some will, which is fair.
But that also assumes that everything else in the college football world stays static, and no one believes it will. That’s also only factoring dollars statically as well.
Cash NOW is way more important than longer term and it would take a full 4 years or more before the dollars catch up and start to cost.
Flexibility in the short term is also huge. Going to the PAC would have handcuffed UNLV to not just be able to leave, but to be able to continue to build a product worthy of being invited to leave.
Who knows what dominoes are going to fall, but they are sure as hell going to be falling in the next couple years. I’d rather be in position to be able to take advantage of those moves. Worst case is we’d end up in the PAC in 8 years.
