San Diego State hasn’t officially left the Mountain West, but it has declared its intent to do so.
Why haven’t we heard about the Pac-12 inviting San Diego State or extending a formal offer to the Aztecs as of early Saturday morning? The answer is complicated in terms of George Kliavkoff’s negotiations, but it’s not complicated in terms of understanding what’s going on here.
“While the Pac-12 — as of Friday at noon — had not yet extended an offer to the Aztecs to join the conference, everyone in the college sports industry is waiting for that to happen. One very obvious point raised by the San Diego State story is that it puts the spotlight on the Pac-12’s pursuit of a new media rights deal. Have media rights conversations been conducted behind closed doors with the expectation that San Diego State would be part of the conference? Was that the holdup here? Is that why no media rights package has been finalized? Everyone will speculate, but now we wait to see what domino will fall next.”
There are a few specific points to make about the Pac-12 media rights deal. Let’s explore them below in the form of tweets from other observers and some written commentary of our own: