The Financial Mistake That Could Doom the PAC-12 Conference

There’s chaos in college sports as universities switch conferences left and right (and east and west).

George Kliavkoff’s biggest mistake as Pac-12 commissioner is beyond dispute

What happened?

ESPN offered the conference $30 million per school each year, and that’s even with UCLA and USC bolting for the Big Ten (which now has, I think, 37 teams).

In comparison, schools in the Big 12 (which has 17 teams?) were offered $31.7 million each per year by ESPN.

The Pac-12 schools thought they could get $50 million. That turned out to be a mistake, as ESPN walked away. The Pac-12 made the mistake of “overestimating its worth.”

I was told by people in the TV industry that the Pac-12 severely overestimated its worth and that's what allowed the Big 12 to jump the line, but I couldn't get the specific numbers.

John did. Wow. https://t.co/ScXKINlELE

— Andy Staples (@Andy_Staples) August 11, 2023

Matt Wadleigh, author of the piece that I linked to up top, wrote that Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff made a mistake: he failed to tell the university presidents that they must sign the $30 million ESPN deal.

There are mistakes of action (telling ESPN they wanted $50 million) and mistakes of inaction (Kliavkoff not telling the presidents to take the deal).