It’ll take SMU less than two seconds to accept any Pac-12 invite, I think.
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Asked about the speculation over the future of the conference, Robbins rejected the notion that schools, including Arizona, would bolt for the Big 12 prior to being presented with a media rights proposal.
“It’s heavily dependent on (commissioner George Kliavkoff) and his team negotiating a good media deal for us to stay competitive,” he said.
“I don’t think anybody wants to leave. Why would you move for a couple million dollars a year more?”
But he painted a nuanced picture for Arizona, citing the school’s proximity to the Big 12 footprint and that league’s powerhouse basketball brand as the basis for “some affinities.”
“[Pac-12 academics is] important to us in terms of research,” said Robbins, a cardiothoracic surgeon who ran the Texas Medical Center in Houston before taking charge of Arizona’s campus in 2017.
Asked about discussions between Arizona and the Big 12, Robbins didn’t answer directly but said he has friends in the conference and was in favor of adding the remaining Big 12 schools after Texas and Oklahoma announced they were joining the SEC in the summer of 2021.
“We’re all committed,” he said, “and I’m pretty confident George will bring us a deal that we’re happy with and that preserves the Pac-12 to make the next step together — or with 12 (schools) if we add anybody.”
This is the language of someone keeping their options open, in contrast to ASU and Utah. But sounds like it’ll take a pretty significant gap.
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understandable… Time for poaching may be after a couple of years of dissatisfaction of some PAC schools with the Apple subscription tv deal…
ESPN/Fox dont broadcast you? Guess what PAC… they arent going to talk about you either…Have fun being ignored every week on college gameday.
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Seems likely ESPN will be included. So I think they’ll dodge that bullet.
I’ll be really interested to see how much goes where, though. I’ve seen peojections from everything from 75% streaming to basically 50/50.
So basically, they dont WANT to leave, but will if its more money
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My read is that it would have to be significantly money and/or a big difference in exposure.
Kicking UH to the East is the obvious answer here, as much as it sucks. Of course, I’m not sure judging from this year’s schedule that Oklahoma State to the Plains would be entirely off the table. I’ve been operating under the assumption that the Big 12 was going to make TxTech vs OkSt the new major rivalry in the conference, but they’re not playing this year, so that’s obviously not as important as I had previously thought. It seems like Hateful 8-era OkSt might prefer to stay with their traditional Big 8 rivals.
If they had to do divisions, I believe that is how it would play out. Our division-mates would be ISU, KSU, KU, Cincinnati, WVU, and UCF.
But they don’t have to do divisions and I do not believe it will.
When entities are giving out research dollars, does anyone think they are based on their athletic affiliations? One might think they are really based on the people doing the research rather than who the school’s team is playing against. No wonder Johns Hopkins never gets any research money anymore since they don’t play the power schools. Oh, wait – never mind.
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Like Harvard and Yale, Johns Hopkins is another school that could easily be P5 if they truly wanted to.
Two thoughts if they create divisions:
Create divisions geographically, which in all likelihood would keep the Texas Schools in the same division. I like this idea the best but admittedly, it looks like a watered down SWC.
Create a division that keeps the young turks from the AAC in the same division, preserving existing rivalries both with B12 and AAC teams.
I may be in the minority, but I feel that Baylor is a more logical rival with UH than Texas Tech, if only be sheer geography.
I think I would like to be in a division with TCU, TT, BU, and Ok State because they are geographically our closest opponents. After that, it pretty much doesn’t matter.
| From UH to: | Road Miles |
|---|---|
| Ames, IA | 973 |
| Cincinatti | 1046 |
| FT. Worth | 268 |
| Lawrence, KS | 782 |
| Lubbock | 588 |
| Manhattan, KS | 756 |
| Morgantown | 1346 |
| Orlando | 964 |
| Provo | 1438 |
| Stillwater | 518 |
| Waco | 185 |
On social media, PAC10 schools taunt their AAU status and how much more research dollars they have and look down on Big12 schools.
They show charts and graphs displaying how superior they are academically and how big their endowments are over Big 12 schools.
None of that has to do with conference realignment but the PAC10 is making it a thing and saying the Big 12 is beneath them. Well maybe not Arizona but the rest are.
He knows what the deal is and knows they are not moving to the big12. I am thinking at this point, all the pac12 presidents know what their media deal is.
Time for the big12 to focus inward and move on.
What happens when the excitement of keeping the band together wears off and the PAC12 realizes that they are second class citizens based on their media deal?
I still don’t understand the rationale for adding SMU and even SDSU. How would their additions get their value up to expectations?
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The PAC has spent the last 9 months spewing propoganda that is ultimately proven false, so at a point (right now) where the PAC looks so pathetically weak in national media, i cant for the life of me, imagine how the PAC wouldn’t intentionally leak a competitive tv contract package if they had one. If they had a decent contract on the table then town criers would be shouting “hear ye, hear ye!..32 million dollars per school annually for 6 years and Oregon and Washington agree to a 15 year GoR” LOL
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They actually are in ONE sport: Lacrosse!!!
B1G affiliate member!!!
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He’s not really had anything new but this is a good perspective on the 28mm-30mm number.
That may be their media deal but…Apple TV + ? CMON! But for Apple to pay even that much, they probably demanded a GOR…Arizona and Colorado under intense pressure not to desert and kill the Apple deal…looking like they will try and stick it out, for now, at least…Very few will see them play…