Tyler Stearns |
Media deals are everything in college athletics - specifically football. They help a conference with College Football Playoff placement, they help teams get national recognition, and they help schools build a sustainable source of income for their athletics and academics. The Big Ten recently signed a seven-year, eight-billion-dollar deal with Fox, CBS, and NBC for the rights to show their games. This revolutionary deal was signed shortly after USC and UCLA decided to join the conference. The SEC and CBS's deal expired this year so ESPN becomes the primary source of the Southeastern Conference's sports. Other conferences have smaller deals with their respective media rights owners.
Media deals mean more than just a channel where games are broadcasted. The PAC-12 imploded due to failed media rights deals and schools deciding to leave due to those failures. The infamous former PAC-12 commissioner, Larry Smith, created a separate channel for the conference due to his reluctance to sign a deal with ESPN. The model was set up for failure because the PAC-12 was never a national product. Other than USC-Oregon, USC-UCLA, and maybe Oregon-Washington, there are no other games that regularly occurred in the PAC-12 that East Coast fans would consistently tune into. So by creating this channel, Smith placed irrelevant games on a network that no one was paying for.
In the 2000s, the SEC and the PAC-12 (surprisingly) were the two most successful conferences. Both had football giants. The PAC-12 had USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, and Cal throughout these years. The SEC had Alabama, LSU, and Florida who were winning national championships with dominant teams. To try and maximize profits, both had to make decisions about media rights deals. As detailed above, the PAC-12 went through with the failed PAC-12 Network. The SEC, on the other hand, signed a deal with ESPN. ESPN did everything possible to hype up every game that a Southern team would play. Matchups like Missouri versus Arkansas or Mississippi State versus Kentucky became prime-time matchups. This was never the case for the PAC-12. This generated a massive following for the SEC and allowed ESPN to position SEC teams in the College Football Playoff.
The PAC-12 and SEC provide good evidence for the importance of media rights deals and the models that come with them. In the changing world of college athletics with realignment, the transfer portal, and NIL, each team and conference should take a closer look at what will benefit them most in the future. But for now, the SEC and Big Ten will remain dominant over the rest of the nation in popularity and on-field product.
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