Tag: Pac-4

Twitter reaction to Stanford, Cal and SMU joining the ACC

Stanford and Cal will play conference games vs Florida State, Miami, Clemson, Boston College, and Syracuse. Really smart, right?

Stanford and Cal-Berkeley will soon be in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Few sentences in the English language sound more absurd or ridiculous. Yet, that will be the new reality of college sports before too long.

The Trees of Palo Alto and the Bears of Berkeley will be part of a conference which includes the cities of Coral Gables, Florida; Tallahassee, Florida; Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts; Syracuse, New York; Pittsburgh; Clemson, South Carolina; Blacksburg, Virginia; Charlottesville, Virginia; and four locales in the state of North Carolina.

Normal, rational, logical stuff, right? None of this is logical, but it was the obvious play for Stanford if we assume the Big Ten Conference simply wasn’t interested in adding the Cardinal. The rationale from the ACC side is not as readily obvious for most college sports fans, but the conference will get some more television money from ESPN with these additions. Florida State fans would respond by saying the added money is nowhere near enough for the Seminoles to be satisfied with their current position in the ACC.

Welcome to the absurdity of college sports realignment. Reaction on social media, as you can imagine, was all over the map, which is a great way of describing Stanford and Cal going to the ACC:

Former Fox Sports executive explains how Pac-12 miscalculated and killed itself

The executive noted that the $ ESPN and Fox are paying to relocated #Pac12 schools is more than the $30M per school the Pac turned down in 2022.

Bob Thompson is a former Fox Sports television executive. He is a voice of experience in television negotiations, particularly in college sports media rights battles such as the recent Pac-12 theater of the absurd that wound up killing the conference.

When the Pac-12 rejected ESPN’s 2022 deal, it ignored Thompson’s specific advise and expertise. Thompson had estimated the value of a Pac-12 package without USC and UCLA at $30 million per school per year. That dollar figure is what the Pac-12 rejected last year in the hope of a $50 million moonshot. If the Pac-12 had taken ESPN’s deal, it would be alive and stable today.

Thompson cited that $30 million per school figure in an illuminating set of social media posts. Let’s share that thread and offer a few other notes from fans in ACC markets who are thinking about whether inviting Stanford and Cal is a good idea:

Pac-12 presidents, George Kliavkoff ignored widely available industry expertise

In July of 2022, after USC left for the #B1G, a consultant estimated a #Pac12 media deal could get $30M per school. He was ignored.

You know by now that the Pac-12 presidents rejected a 2022 offer by ESPN which, if accepted, would have paid out $30 million per school and likely saved the conference. That’s really bad. It’s yet another embarrassment for a conference which is on its last legs and has been reduced to just four schools.

Yet, it gets worse. It always gets worse in the Pac-12. This is how the conference operates. There are always a few more details which make a bad situation even more embarrassing than we all appreciated 24 or 48 hours earlier.

The latest damning details come from Pac-12 insider John Canzano. In his report about longtime sports executive and administrator Oliver Luck being brought in as a consultant to the remaining Pac-4 schools, Canzano also included some notes on a media industry expert the Pac-12 presidents very clearly ignored over the past 13 months.

We have details on that and a lot more below. It’s going to be even more of a headache, but you have to read these details to get an even fuller picture of how badly the Pac-12 presidents messed up:

Pac-4 schools push aside George Kliavkoff, hire separate consultant

The man the Pac-4 schools hired is Oliver Luck, Andrew Luck’s dad and the former AD at West Virginia (among many other things).

George Kliavkoff never fully earned the trust of Pac-12 presidents. That’s not a good thing, but it’s also not a final and damning verdict against Kliavkoff himself. The Pac-12 presidents, not Kliavkoff, rejected an ESPN offer which would have paid Pac-12 member schools $30 million per year and likely saved the conference. Kliavkoff did make mistakes, but he didn’t turn down ESPN’s deal.

Nevertheless, the Pac-4 schools left behind after the mass exodus of recent weeks is not consulting George Kliavkoff for advice. It seems pointless to even try. Instead, Stanford and California, along with Oregon State and Washington State, have reportedly hired sports executive and administrator Oliver Luck.

John Canzano has the story:

“Luck declined comment for this piece but I’m told by sources that he’s been hired to serve the Pac-4 schools in an advisory role. The four remaining members are in a dicey spot with limited options, but Luck’s involvement in the dilemma is interesting.

“Could Luck help save the Pac-4?

“It’s a long shot, but I sure feel better about the conference’s chance to survive with him around.”

There are several layers to this story, but the main one is that the Pac-4 schools are at least exploring the possibility of sticking together. It’s not a likely outcome, but the Pac-4 wants to see what is possible.

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George Kliavkoff’s biggest mistake as Pac-12 commissioner is beyond dispute

The debate is over: Kliavkoff made one fatal error, now that we know the #Pac12 presidents rejected a conference-saving ESPN deal.

The news on Friday was infuriating and depressing to anyone who cares about the Pac-12 and wanted the conference to survive. The Pac-12 presidents reportedly rejected an ESPN deal which would have paid each member school $30 million per year. That figure would have kept the conference together and alive. The number would have been very competitive with the number the Big 12 eventually arrived at, which was $31.7 million per year.

The Pac-12 getting $30 million per year for every remaining school without USC and UCLA would have been roughly as impressive as the Big 12 fetching $31.7 million per year for every member school with Texas and Oklahoma out the door.

There’s a lot to process here, but we begin with the simple truth that the Pac-12 presidents are more responsible for the destruction of the conference as we knew it (maybe it will survive as the Pac-4 plus some Mountain West members; we will see) than George Kliavkoff is. The deal was there and the presidents shot it down.

However, this doesn’t let Kliavkoff off the hook. In fact, it exposes his biggest and most obvious mistake as Pac-12 commissioner.

It’s actually not that hard to pin down.

Kliavkoff, with that 2022 ESPN deal in hand, needed to tell the Pac-12 presidents, “You must take this deal. It is as good as you can reasonably expect. You wanted me to deliver a media rights deal. This is it, take it or leave it. If you reject it, I will resign my position immediately.”

Leaders need to lead. They sometimes need to speak tough truths and tell people what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. George Kliavkoff was unwilling or unable to tell Pac-12 presidents the truth. He was unable to put his foot down in a moment of great consequence.

Let’s continue to process this story by gathering reactions from across the Pac-12 and the nation, as everyone continues to wonder how Pac-12 presidents could be so shortsighted and out of touch with reality:

Michigan regent offers great insights on NCAA failures, travel problems and more

A #Michigan regent named Jordan Acker won widespread and deserved praise for a viral thread on the broken state of college sports.

Jordan Acker is someone you very likely had never heard of before this weekend, unless you live in Ann Arbor or the state of Michigan.

Acker, a member of the University of Michigan Board of Regents, has been taking in the news along with the rest of us about the new West Coast schools joining the Big Ten Conference.

There also is speculation the Atlantic Coast Conference might invite two schools from the San Francisco Bay Area, Stanford and Cal-Berkeley. Arizona State and Arizona have just joined the Big 12 and will make road trips to Morgantown, West Virginia, and Ames, Iowa.

Travel for athletes is accepted as part of the big-money world of college sports, but whereas it’s part of the price for football and men’s basketball players, the Olympic sport athletes plainly did not sign up for professional-level travel in sports where their income-producing opportunities are limited.

Acker’s thread is timely, detailed and informative. It’s worth reading. Wolverines Wire knows this, but we’re going to make sure you get to read the full thread as well.

Here it is, in full:

Pac-12 presidents went into panic mode as George Kliavkoff swung and missed

Details from the final, franctic moments before 5 #Pac12 schools abandoned ship add to the humiliation for this dying conference.

What does panic look and sound like?

It sounds like Pac-12 presidents in the days and hours before five conference schools abandoned ship, leaving behind four schools: Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Washington State.

You have probably heard that University of Arizona President Robert Robbins destroyed Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff in public for his woefully inadequate Apple TV deal.

That wasn’t an indicator of panic. That was an indicator of the dissatisfaction that ran through the members of the Pac-12 CEO Group. The dissatisfaction, however, can be connected to the sense of panic that emerged from one (undisclosed) Pac-12 school president, who expressed the hope that seven Pac-12 schools could be invited to a Power Five conference … but that Oregon State and Washington State would be left behind in the cold.

Solidarity and sticking together … except for those two schools in the Northwest without any power. It’s such a bad look for the Pac-12.

That’s basically what the Pac-12 is all about: making itself look worse, and worse and even worse.

Here’s the reaction to another astonishingly embarrassing part of the Pac-12’s collapse and implosion, and the absolutely nonexistent leadership that brought about this disaster:

University of Arizona president roasts George Kliavkoff over Apple TV deal

Arizona’s president hammered Kliavkoff’s bad deal, but keep in mind: #Pac12 presidents rejected an ESPN deal last year. What a clown car.

We all know the Pac-12 fumbled, bumbled and stumbled in failing to get a media rights deal done.

We know this was a horrible process with a horrible, worst-case outcome, the death of the 108-year-old conference.

We know this was a train wreck.

Yet, each new report and revelation that drips out from a reporter makes it all seem worse. It’s very Pac-12. Everything can always get worse. Everything continues to look worse than it did a day ago or a week ago.

The latest “drip, drip, drip” revelation — Chinese water torture for anyone who loves or cares about the Pac-12 — comes from University of Arizona President Robert Robbins, who dropped a truth bomb on the Apple TV deal presented to the Pac-12 CEO Group by commissioner George Kliavkoff a few days ago.

The quote is a forceful takedown of the deal and the thought process behind it, but as one Phoenix-based media commentator noted, if the Pac-12 CEO Group knew this deal was so bad, why wasn’t it focused more on getting a better deal and on making sure the conference didn’t die?

Let’s dive into the reactions and criticisms that accompanied Robert Robbins’ takedown of George Kliavkoff in a Pac-12 that is going down in flames … and flame wars:

Trojans Wire and Ducks Wire examine how the Pac-12 ultimately died

We examine what ultimately finished the #Pac12 with @ZacharyCNeel, the editor of @Ducks_Wire. @IanHest produced the show.

The Pac-12 as we know it is dead. Maybe the conference continues in a very technical and official way, but when a conference is reduced to four schools, and at least one of them is likely to leave, that’s no longer a conference. That is a collection of refugees looking for a home.

The past few weeks in the college sports industry have given us another realignment whirlwind. If you had asked Pac-12 observers two months ago what was going to happen this summer, you would have been told (most likely) that San Diego State was going to join the Pac-12. You also would have been told that the conference was not doing to die this ugly public death we witnessed on Friday, when five schools left the conference and essentially ended any last hopes of survival.

Yet, San Diego State was never added. Colorado got mad. The television deal fell apart. The Apple TV deal was nowhere near sufficient. RIP, Pac-12.

We invited Ducks Wire editor Zachary Neel on our podcast to review how the Pac-12 met its untimely end. Ian Hest produced the show.

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Olympic sport athletes are not happy about moves to Big Ten, Big 12

Athletes didn’t have a say in this. Do we really want cross-country runners and swimmers flying across the country for meets?

This isn’t a big question in terms of money, but it is a big question in terms of the well-being and care of athletes who did not sign up for a specific set of circumstances.

Imagine you’re a swimmer or water polo player or gymnast at a school that  has moved to the Big Ten or Big 12. You’re not part of a revenue sport. You very possibly went to a Pac-12 school because the Pac-12 — as weak as it has been in football over the past several years — is world-class in the Olympic sports. When USC and UCLA went to the Big Ten, questions emerged about the logic and wisdom of having non-revenue-sport athletes fly long distances, but those questions were more isolated because only two West Coast schools were part of the equation.

Now it’s different.

Oregon and Washington have joined USC and UCLA in moving to the Big Ten. Meanwhile, Arizona and Arizona State have joined Utah and Colorado in moving to the Big 12.

A lot of Olympic-sport athletes went to schools in the Northwest, the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Arizona to compete in Pac-12 environments and get a Pac-12 culture of competition for Olympic sports.

Some of these athletes are speaking up, which invites a very important discussion about whether the Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-12 need to work together to keep Olympic-sport athletes at home in the West.

Reaction on social media has been fierce and contentious. This is a discussion worth exploring further: