Would Big 12 be a better fit for Cats?
While recruiting in Arkansas last week, Arizona’s new cornerbacks coach, Donté Williams, was stuck in a snowstorm. He tweeted that he planned to drive to an airport in Dallas.
What? Arizona is recruiting in Arkansas?
It’s true. The Wildcats have a commitment from two-star defensive lineman Markell Utsey of Little Rock. The UA is no longer as California-centric in football recruiting; it had just 28 scholarship players from California on last year’s roster.
That’s because the Wildcats have to stand in a long line behind UCLA, USC, Stanford, Cal and Oregon when recruiting in California. And it battles Washington, ASU and Utah to be No. 6 in the pecking order.
So I’m thinking: Wouldn’t Greg Byrne shock the college football world if he engineered a move to the Big 12 Conference? Would it be a better fit?
The Big 12 has just 10 members and has not discouraged speculation about expanding to 12.
It was recently given approval to implement a football championship game, which would likely add about $2 million per year, per school, to Big 12 partners.
A trip to Texas is 893 miles from Tucson. That’s almost as close as it is to Cal (858 miles). A game at Oklahoma is 954 miles. Arizona goes 1,282 miles to play Oregon. How about distant Iowa State? That’s 1,427 miles from Tucson. An Arizona game in Seattle is 1,538 miles.
The Pac-12 is not the Valhalla that commissioner Larry Scott diagrammed when he signed a $3 billion media rights deal in 2011 and added Colorado and Utah.
The Pac-12 Networks has little clout, distribution woes and has not been the money-maker projected. It became even more confusing this basketball season when regional feeds became unavailable in other league markets.
ESPN’s Pac-12 correspondent, Ted Miller, last week wrote: “There doesn’t seem to be much momentum inside the posh Pac-12 offices in the most expensive city in the United States to do the nutty thing and, you know, cut expenses so the 12 universities could get more money.
“Moving the headquarters (to Salt Lake City) also might inspire a winnowing of the executive-level, big-paycheck bloat that university administrators are beginning to notice now that the euphoria of the rights deal fades.”
If Arizona jumped to the Big 12, it would mean the ASU rivalry would diminish. That’s life in the 21st century. Kansas-Missouri, Texas A&M-Texas, BYU-Utah and Oklahoma-Nebraska have all abandoned long-time rivalries for better financial situations.
Pros of Big 12 membership: many fewer late-night kickoffs and tipoffs.
Drawbacks: Arizona has sizable alumni groups in California.
It would actually make more sense for the Big 12 to pursue ASU and thereby capture the Phoenix TV market. But interest in college sports in Phoenix is, at best, mild.
Either way, Arizona and ASU should both be looking for better revenue sources, even if it means marginalizing the Territorial Cup.
On Friday, I walked into a hotel near the Cal campus just as a bus carrying Arizona State’s men’s and women’s swimming teams unloaded a traveling party of about 50.
The bill for a three-day swimming trip to Stanford and Cal — airfare, hotels, food, ground transportation — is probably close to $25,000.
The Sun Devils (and Arizona) both spend about 15 nights on the road this swimming season, which means they spend in excess of $100,000 on travel expenses, not including recruiting. Neither swimming program makes a dime in revenue.
Coaches’ salaries soar. Expenses climb. Student-athletes are now essentially on the payroll. But TV revenues in the Pac-12 appear to be maxed out.
The one problem with anyone moving into the Big 12 is that its current media rights deal isn’t much better than the Pac-12 contract.
Texas’ deal with ESPN, the Longhorn Network, which is struggling, has scuttled the Big 12’s efforts to launch its own network.
But given the take-it-or-leave-it attitude toward college sports in Los Angeles and San Francisco — Saturday’s Oakland Tribune did not publish a single word about the Arizona-Cal basketball game — you wonder if the Pac-12’s footprint is really superior to that of the Big 12.
When the NFL begins again in Los Angeles, interest in Pac-12 sports will be further diminished in SoCal.
Maybe a jump to the Big 12 doesn’t make sense for Arizona in 2016, but in the next five or 10 years, the Pac-12 might not be the school’s best option.
