So much in this thread. Couple of my thoughts, then off to bed.
Media rights - Agree that any deal will be far, far less than what WSU is used to, but that is just reality. No point in looking back or comparing. Any deal would be better than the basically $-0- the Pac-2 is looking at in FY 24 and probably FY25 if we renew. I kind of question that 9/1/24 2nd year renewal deadline. We looked at that language a while back, and I was confused. May find and read through it again.
Our 2-year grace period as a conference ends 6/30/26. At this point, all that may matter is the subsequent loss of the $30M in NCAA BB $ if we cease to exist. But that is $15M each for WSU and OSU. Not chump change. We are basically independents now. for all other purposes.
A PacMtn-14 media deal - so what's to stop the league from structuring a deal where the upper half gets all the desirable games, and relegate the "no-eyeballs or interest" schools to the poop schedule? That's more or less what we had in the Pac-12. USC, etc in primetime on the big networks, WSU playing at 7PM on the Pac-12 network. Not always but to some extent. Not sure how that would work financially among the schools.
So much more, but I stick to the notion of a Pac-8 being stupid. And what about the MW's NCAA 6=year allocations? they stay with the remaining teams like ours did? How much is that? And all the poaching penalty money? Shit the bottom feeders probably are hoping a handful of you bail.
They could structure the schedule for the upper teams, they could even have an unbalanced revenue structure for the contract like the B12 has done in the past, but that didn't work out well and steered TAMU to the SEC. Hell, the MW is still salty about Boise's deal.
But you still have to pay those weak market teams something. Adding them drives down per school revenue no matter how they slice it. You could make the argument that they may be worth it for NCAA tournament dollars, but SDSU are the only team that can win games. So there is that.
It's about the bottom line, just like every other conference alignment decision.
The more I look at it, the more it looks like this may have been the plan for quite some time now. Why set up the 2 year agreement with the MW? Why not just merge right away?
To wait and see if the ACC blows up? Perhaps, but that is risky. I am no lawyer, but those ACC signed the contract agreeing to those ridiculous buyouts. I'm not sure what kind of argument these teams suing really have. So that is a risk in counting on a NoCal reunion, especially those schools who have made their decisions without any logic. I would say it could be less than 50/50 that they would rejoin anyway of the ACC did blow up.
But the 2 years lines up perfectly with the MW contract. If the 6 MW detectors announce on 8/2/25 the large fees are gone, perhaps all fees, and the New PAC 8 starts in 2026 fall without much of a financial hit.
You could argue that they wanted to wait until the MW is over to develop a new TV contact with a reverse merger, but these contracts are being amended all the time with this realignment stuff, so that argument is weak. FOX and CBS are good partners. Its not like the MW are playing on the CW and Apple TV. I'm sure they would have amended the contract by creating a new PAC already if it was going to be a traditional merger/reverse merger.
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