The Pac 12’s Leadership Needs To Ink A New Media Deal Then Start ACC Merger Talks.
“The answer is there is no reason for any of the Pac 12 members including the “Four Corner Schools to leave the conference at this point,” says Florida-based media consultant Jeff Edwards. “What the conference needs is to stay together and quickly ink a new four- or five-year media rights deal as we see how the college realignment saga plays out. I think that staying together and using that time to engage the ACC in talks about a future merger or alliance is in the best interest of both conferences. The chance to join the Big 12 will be there four years from now.”
Last summer, the ACC and Pac-12 had detailed conversations about a partnership, involving a championship football game between the two conferences, as well as other basketball and Olympic sports events that could land both leagues a better media rights deal as UCLA and USC left for the Big Ten. At the time there were too many moving parts to go further plus the ACC rights deal that pays each school 36 million dollars through 2036 seemed a massive obstacle.
It was actually the ACC and more to the point the University of North Carolina that brought up the idea. Andrew Carter of The News & Observer, last summer reported that university leadership at North Carolina floated the idea of a “super conference” between the ACC and Pac-12.
“Should we explore a partnership with the Big 12 or Pac 12[?]” UNC athletic director Bubba Cunningham texted university chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz.
“We could have a super conference both athletically and academically,” Guskiewicz responded. “Probably would need to be called the Atlantic-Pacific Athletic Conference (APAC). Maybe that’s crazy, but if it would get us a better TV deal, it may be worth considering,” he continued.
“We need to think about what outcomes we want? What are our priorities? Do we want to maintain all teams in the ACC? Is this a new league? Do we want to have the same number of teams at each school? Should we play a national schedule or regional schedule?” Cunningham questioned..
There remains an open channel between the ACC and The Pac-12 about ways they can work together in the future. Merger talks are not a dream or a media hyped story there is clearly room for some serious conversations.
An Atlantic-Pacific Athletic Conference could offer media partners some outstanding big-name college sports brands in all four time zones starting at noon on the East coast, heading into the Central, Mountain, and ending the night on the Pacific coast. We are talking Boston College, Pittsburgh, and Syracuse in the East, Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Miami, and North Carolina in the South, for now, SMU in the Central, Colorado, and Utah in the Mountains then it is Arizona, Arizona State, Cal Oregon, Stanford, and Washington out West.
That is a mega-conference with the star power and the media markets to land a big media deal. This would take four or five years to work out, but it would be time well spent if it could be pulled off.
Now Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff goal is to work with Amazon, ESPN, and a few potential mystery partners in the hopes of beating the Big 12 deal done with Fox and ESPN that pays about $31.7 million per school for the next six years.
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