Tell us how you really feel Dan Lanning.
In the wake of Colorado leaving the Pac-12 last week, Oregon’s head coach wasted little time bidding the Buffaloes goodbye.
“I’m trying to remember what they won to affect this conference,” Lanning deadpanned. “I don’t remember. Do you remember them winning anything? I don’t remember them winning anything.”
Safe to say Lanning won’t miss his trips to Boulder. And truthfully, Lanning isn’t wrong. His thought process, fair or not, is shared by many.
What really is the loss of a program that went 1-11 last year and hasn’t had a six-win season since 2016? The Buffs have had more head coaches (five) than winning seasons (two) since it made the jump out west.
But here is what Lanning might have missed.
Colorado’s value to the Pac-12, and to the Big 12, was never really about football success. It was about a media market, stability and a brand.
After all Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark wasn’t eyeing a Colorado team led by Karl Dorrell last year because he thought they’d sneak up on everyone. He’s viewed Colorado as a long-term target because of its location and strategic value.
“Denver is the biggest market in the Mountain Time Zone. And with respect to programming schedules, time zones play a huge role in ratings and therefore media rights value optimization,” Ray Katz said, the co-founder of Collegiate Sports Management Group. “In terms of establishing value in conference athletics programming, I believe that University of Colorado contributes a great deal as a result of this to the Big 12 Conference.”
Colorado brings in the Denver market — the 16th-largest market in the country, right behind Minneapolis and ahead of Orlando (where Big 12 newcomer UCF is located).
And with Denver also came another team in the Mountain Time Zone. Yormark made it clear he values adding more teams out west. It gives the Big 12 more inventory for television partners if it has multiple teams that can play in the late-night TV window on Saturday. Yormark had BYU. Now he has Colorado.
But Colorado’s value to the Big 12 was also strategic, a potential pawn in the long game. If Yormark could get Colorado to bolt, it would spark more instability in an already shaky conference.
Colorado’s departure could potentially lessen the value of a media rights deal for the rest of the Pac-12, leading other members to defect too. Arizona, Arizona State and Utah have been patiently waiting for a media rights deal to be presented by commissioner George Kliavkoff. If it is not lucrative enough, getting close to the $31 million dollar per school figure that the Big 12 commanded, they could bolt.
Some of those concerns are already taking shape. Arizona’s Board of Regents was scheduled to meet Thursday evening to discuss “possible legal advice and discussion regarding university athletics” for both the University of Arizona and ASU.
Kliavkoff presented a potential media rights deal to the nine remaining members on Tuesday, according to ESPN. Per multiple reports, the leading option was an Apple TV deal that would be worth less than the Big 12′s. The deal would have the chance to become more valuable than the Big 12 if the Pac-12 could generate enough subscriptions to the streaming service, according to ESPN. But the details were unclear.
Currently, a streaming service is less valuable than a linear network like ESPN and Fox. Colorado athletic director Rick George said part of the reason the school left the Pac-12 was because of the Big 12′s future with the two flagship networks.
Any deal that includes the potential for more money based on subscriptions is not a sure thing.
“I want to know how attainable these [subscription] incentives are you know?” one industry source said. “Where do the incentives kick in, for 1 million or is it 2 million? What’s the retail price for the package? There’s a lot of unknowns that need to be figured out.”
The source also pointed to Major League Soccer’s deal with Apple TV. That deal reportedly just reached 1 million subscribers in July, but it took the addition of Lionel Messi to get there.
It leaves Utah and both Arizona schools in an unenviable spot. Should it keep waiting, or try to seek a lifeline with the Big 12?
From Katz’s perspective, Utah would be an intriguing option for Yormark. Even though the Big 12 already has two teams in the Mountain Time Zone now, adding Utah would give Yormark a chance to own the region.
“It’s as much about what other people don’t have as what you do have as a conference with respect to schools that deliver an incremental fan base,” Katz said. “If the Big 12 can add Utah, this will be you’re going to clearly be the dominant conference in the Mountain time zone taking nothing away from the commercially underrated Big Sky conference. So in terms of lining up with prime time and other day parts, this will be very powerful from the perspective of driving ratings, overall viewership, advertising revenue and future commercial value.”
Utah could also bring in a rivalry with BYU, which Katz thinks should not be undersold.
“I’ll give you an example: Montana versus Montana State football does a 38 rating across the entire state of Montana,” Katz said of the rivalry game that was on roughly two-thirds of the state’s televisions in late November. (Some 2.2 million viewers also tuned into ESPN’s College GameDay broadcast from Montana that Saturday as well.)
“A regionally very important school with an extremely avid and dedicated fan base such as Utah could be extremely important in a strategy that intelligently provides a combination of local and national broadcasts”
What comes next for Utah is still unknown. It might take weeks, or even months, to materialize.
But one thing that does seem clear is why the Big 12 went after Colorado. And it wasn’t for wins or even new head coach Deion Sanders. Sanders might help in the short term, but he isn’t a long-term value add. Instead, it was about the other parts of the equation.
So Lanning might be right. Colorado leaving won’t affect the Pac-12 standings. But it certainly will affect the Pac-12′s future.
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