Pac-12’s Past Promises Ring Hollow Amid Colorado’s Potential Exit

Various leaders from the conference’s schools have overpromised on the signing of a new media rights deal while commissioner George Kliavkoff has underdelivered.

Since July 5, 2022, the Pac-12 has been negotiating with various media rights partners on a new TV deal. Those rumored to be at the table range from ESPN all the way to the CW (who recently announced an agreement with the ACC to air a package of games). 

The Pac-12’s deal doesn’t expire until 2024, and normally this sports business summer subplot might not break into the mainstream. But it has become apparent that the league’s lack of a deal constitutes an existential crisis for its future as sources tell Sports Illustrated’s Pat Forde that Colorado looks primed to bolt the league for the Big 12. 

The goal posts on the Pac-12’s deal have moved further and further over the last few months.

The first domino to fall was the Big 12 essentially cutting the conference in line by announcing their own rights deal at the end of October 2022. That assured each of its schools would get around $32 million per year. It’s a far cry from the SEC and Big Ten’s numbers, but roughly on par with the ACC. It was also a prescient move to simply take the bird in the hand and not let their rights wait to hit the open market. The Big 12 instead opted to re-up with ESPN and Fox considering the headwinds in the industry of rights holders not wanting to splash cash indiscriminately on every live sports property with many enduring job cuts, such as ESPN’s high-profile layoffs. 

The Pac-12 was then the only Power 5 league without a deal—and it remains that way.

Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff has yet to announce a new media rights deal for the conference despite searching to secure one for over a year :: Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

Below is a timeline of all the times various decision makers in the league have provided updates in the press, explaining how frustration can mount to this tipping point for the folks in Boulder.

Dec. 2, 2022: Kliavkoff told reporters there was “no rush” to sign a rights deal and that negotiations wouldn’t be completed by the end of the month.

Feb. 21, 2023: “My sense is we need to get it done in March—in mid-March, hopefully,” Washington State president Kirk Schulz told The Mercury News. “The longer it goes, the more noise there will be.”

Feb. 23: Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson told Arizona Sports: “I can’t speculate, but certainly we’re all anxious to have something resolved in the next couple, three weeks so we can take next steps and get some of this speculation out of the air with regard to what other conferences may be thinking in terms of picking off Pac-10 teams, if you will, and speculation about what we may be doing in terms of adding institutions. Getting the media rights deal solidified will then clear the air for figuring out some of that other stuff. So we’re anxious and we’re hoping in the next two or three weeks we’ve got something to move on.”

March 15: Arizona president Robert Robbins told The Athletic: ‘What I think is going to happen is within the next couple weeks, we’re going to have a deal, and then we’ve got to decide: Is it good enough for us to all take?”

March 20: Utah president Taylor Randall told ESPN 700 in Salt Lake City: “I think we’ve still got a ways to go.”

April 6: The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel gives an update citing a source that the deal timeline is now “late spring, early summer.”

Pac-12 TV update: The timeline for a deal is now "late spring, early summer" according to a person with knowledge of the discussions.

Several Pac-12 presidents had recently said a deal was imminent. The source said those comments were "overly optimistic."

— Stewart Mandel (@slmandel) April 6, 2023

May 3: Washington State president Kirk Schulz said in a conversation with a regent that the deal would be delayed because of layoffs at a partner (which implies ESPN is the company he’s referring to. The network has had multiple rounds of layoffs throughout this year).

“I know at least one of the partners we were talking to said, ‘We’re ready to sign today, but the optics of us announcing that we’re laying off ‘x’ number of people and we signed a multimillion-dollar deal with the Pac-12 are just not the best, so we’re going to have to wait six weeks.”

June 8: Arizona president Robby Robbins said only “soon” when asked when the deal would be done.

June 9: Washington State president Kirk Schulz said at a meeting of the board of regents that he expected a resolution “by the end of the month.”

On how much money could be expected: “At least the projections [athletic director] Pat Chun and I and others have seen,” Schulz said, “I’m not sure that it will be a lot larger than we saw in the past, [and] it shouldn’t be smaller than in the past. It may be fairly flat.”

June 16: A Pac-12 administrator declined to estimate when the deal would be done to Sports Illustrated saying, jokingly, "I've been saying 'a couple weeks' to people for six months.”

June 21: Another Pac-12 administrator ballparked it as some point before football season, likely in the month of August.

Week of July 21: League sources began to tell reporters that a deal would not be announced at the conference’s media day on July 21.

July 21: Commissioner George Kliavkoff said, “The longer we wait, the better our options get, and I think the board [of directors] realizes that.’

When asked by Sports Illustrated if that was frustrating, Kliavkoff said:

“I don't consider it frustrating. It’s a reinforcement for me of what dedicated and passionate fans we have and how much people care about college athletics. I get it. At the same time, I don’t want the opportunity to be missed today to talk about football. We’re not announcing a deal on purpose today because I want the focus to be on football.”

The last sentence prompted an obvious follow-up question: Was the implication that a deal is done, but just being held? Kliavkoff responded: “I think you're reading too much into that,” then said, “We want to have the focus on football today. We have an incredibly good football story to tell, and we want that to be the focus today.”

The league's inability to land the plane on the deal and the explosive news that Colorado is considering leaving means it remains impossible for the league to focus on football.