Pac-10 and Big Ten Declare War On Big 12’s Financial Viability
February 28, 2010
The talk of UT moving to the Big Ten is difficult to imagine while the Big 12 is still a viable BCS conference.
The loss of Colorado to the Pac-10 and Missouri to the Big Ten would dramatically compromise the viability of the Big 12 in the eyes of Texans, freeing UT to move to a different conference.
So, are the Pac-10 and Big Ten knowingly compromising the financial integrity of the Big 12 as a BCS conference to have a shot at UT?
This really is mirroring the last days of the Southwest Conference, when UT pushed Arkansas to break the seal on the SWC allowing UT to try to escape .
Missouri to the Big Ten
The rumor of Missouri being a leading candidate for the Big Ten didn’t make sense to me.
It took a homerun addition of Penn State to get the Big 10 up to 11 teams. While Missouri is quite an attractive candidate for BCS conferences, they don’t draw 100K per game.
Missouri might be a good candidate for the SEC down the road, but I would think they would have a lot less to offer the Big Ten because the Big Ten already has both the University of Illinois (state flagship) and Northwestern (arguably the state’s No. 2 university).
These two universities means they already have TV relevance in St.Louis, which I would think dramatically reduces the benefit they would receive by adding Missouri (unlike the SEC who would look at Missouri as adding a state with six million people and including two major media markets to which they do not belong).
While they do a fair amount of research (5M in 2006), that number isn’t a homerun either. It is in fact far less than some of the other candidates for that 12th spot.
On the positive side, US News ranks Missouri as a Tier 1 National University, they are a state flagship, and they are one of the 60 US members of the AAU.
However, all together they don’t look like a homerun for the Big Ten.
Colorado to the Pac-10
Colorado on the other hand is a very understandable target for the Pac-10.
There are very few large media markets near the Pac-10 footprint, so unlike the Big 10, the Pac-10 doesn’t have a lot to chose from if they want to keep a tight footprint.
The state of Colorado has about five million people and the Denver DMA stretches into a number of surrounding states, giving the Pac-10 the No. 1 teams in two major markets in the Mountain West time zone.
The University of Colorado shares the liberal perspective appreciated at schools like Stanford and Berkley—a very important factor when you consider the Pac-10 requires a unanimous approval on expansion votes.
Colorado would be a much stronger football program in the Pac-10 because the schools in Colorado would be a hotbed for California recruits.
The idea of playing football near skiing areas is a lot more attractive to Californians than it is to most Texans, who just see it as a cold place. With much better recruiting there is a good shot Colorado would be a lot better team.
The Buffaloes did 0M of research in 2006, are a US News Tier 1 National University, are a state flagship, and are one of the 60 US members of the AAU. So, academically they hit all of the Pac-10’s desires.
Pairing Utah with Colorado?
No offense to the Utes, but the second part of the Colorado rumors (adding Utah to the Pac-10) makes little sense unless it is designed mostly to provide leverage.
Utah did a fair amount of research too (8M in 2006), but per US News they are the eighth worst school in their Tier 1 national category. They are 127th out of the 133 schools that made Tier 1 and only eight slots from being ranked a Tier 3 university by that periodical.
They are a state flagship with statewide support, but Utah only has 2.8 million residents. It is not like they are like an SEC school that draws 80-90,000 people per game where the fevered nature of their fans outweigh the relatively small population base.
Taking a very quick and dirty look at the top five BCS conferences which have an abundance of flagships with statewide support—the Pac-10, Big Ten, SEC, ACC, Big 12—and totalling up the residents in those member schools’ states and dividing them by the number of universities, you get between 4.9 million and 5.6 million residents per school for all of them but the Big 12.
The Big 12 averages 3.9 million residents per member school.
In terms of support, the Big 12 does not have three universities with the largest multi-year gameday attendance averages like the Big Ten (Michigan, Penn State, Ohio State) or six of the top 10 like the SEC (Tennessee, Georgia, LSU, Alabama, Florida, Auburn). UT is in the top five and Nebraska, A&M, and OU are in the top 15 but the rest of the Big 12 schools lag far behind.
Utah is the No. 2 university in that state with game attendance attracting about 45,000 on game day.
How does that kind of addition help a conference like the Pac-10?
Let’s play it out
Let’s say the Big Ten adds Missouri and the Pac-10 adds Colorado and rumors abound that they are close to adding Utah as their 12th school.
What happens in Texas?
The Big 12 currently has 47 million residents living in the states. If you remove Missouri and Colorado, that number drops to roughly 36 million divided by 10 schools.
Who could the Big 12 add to fix that?
TCU?
No, the Big 12 is already media relevant in the metroplex. UT, A&M, Tech, OU, and even Baylor have large alumni bases in the Metroplex.
BYU?
Again, their primary base of operations is Utah, which has a population 2.8 million. While they do draw a crowd, I don’t think they would be considered a strong enough replacement.
Colorado State?
While they are in the Denver DMA, they are quite a bit farther from Denver than the Buffaloes and they only draw about 40 percent of the fans the Buffaloes do.
The loss of Colorado and Missouri would send a message to Texans that the days of the Big 12 as a power player are over. When that occurs you can forget about the Texas legislature reigning in UT or A&M staying in the Big 12.
It won’t happen.
Several really bad things could occur for the Big 12.
UT could join the Big Ten as it’s 13th school with Missouri acting effectively as a bridge. From there the Big Ten might wait for Notre Dame or add Rutgers to get a platform to push their name programs’ popularity into the NYC media markets as the Big East once did with Miami.
A&M and OU could approach the SEC and sneak away overnight.
A&M never wanted to be in the Big 12, long coveting a spot in the SEC. Years ago LSU was ready to sponsor them for admission.
OU is certainly not going to sit on it’s hands while UT’s TV revenue goes up to at least million per year. Far better to get a million SEC payout than a -7 million one in the former Big 12.
Or perhaps at that point the Pac-10 might offer UT and A&M slots.
There are no “fixes” for that.
You could add Houston to replace A&M, but A&M draws 82,000 people per game while Houston only draws a fourth of that. A&M has an enrollment of almost 50,000 while UH has just under 30,000 students.
Sure you could recover some relavance in the Houston area, but the scale of the fandom is just not going to be the same and neither will the TV money.
Adding TCU would be largely the same story in DFW.
Media relevance in Austin, San Antonio, and South Texas would affectively be lost.
Grim future prospects
Even if the Missouri thing is just a feign designed to open the door for UT to leave, there seems to be too much momentum for schools leaving the Big 12 for the conference to just “ride it out.”
The Big Ten might just take UT, leaving the SEC to chose between OU, Missouri, and A&M.
The Big Ten might have to bring on A&M to land UT—something no Big Ten fans seem to think would be a deal breaker—leaving Missouri and OU as potential SEC candidates.
The Big 12 is still going to be a BCS conference when it is all said and done, but the odds are they will join the Big East in not having a BCS level TV contract.
In fact if UT and A&M go west, do not be suprised if the Big 12 is entirely cut out of the proposed Pac-10/Big 12/ACC network talks.
(Today the demographics would suggest that a Pac-10/Big 12/ACC Network would have the Pac-10 and ACC members eating Big Mac combo meals and the Big 12 members eating kid portion happy meals.)
Nebraska, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Tech, Oklahoma State, and even Baylor need to think about positioning themselves better for the future. The four northern schools need to really look at this and realize that today they could steer this conference in directions they might not be able to tomorrow.
The conference needs to make some tough choices today and probably needs to start talking expansion.
Schools like Texas Tech may need to start thinking about what they can do and where they want to be and may need to start making some clandestine alliances if they don’t want to be part of a empty husk of a conference.
As things stand, the future of this conference looks to be shaped by the whims of the Pac-10 and Big Ten membership, not the Big 12 membership.
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