College football conferences make most of its income through TV contracts, which is why the likes of Fox and ESPN became the game’s puppet masters (h/t Jon Wilner).
Thanks to former commissioner Larry Scott, the Pac-12 is currently reeling from a poor TV contract he helped negotiate. Other Power 5 conferences — primarily the Big Ten and SEC — are enjoying significantly better deals, ultimately helping push USC and UCLA to the aforementioned Big Ten. Now with George Kilavkoff leading the Pac-12, a new, desperation-fueled round of media rights negotiations are underway.
Kilavkoff still has a few of the country’s biggest markets at his disposal, but losing Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest TV market, is a gut-punch.
Columnist John Canzano recently used data from Nielsen to analyze the Pac-12’s markets. Below is how the conference’s nine current major markets (San Diego and Sacramento were included) rank: