Podcast of Champions

In this episode of the Podcast of Champions hosts Ryan Abraham and David Woods return to talk about the newly released Pac-12 annual revenue numbers that while came in at record levels, are still dead last among the Power Five conferences with a $21 million gap per school between the Big Ten. The guys talk about what those numbers mean and how that gap is only going to increase with the new SEC and Big Ten media deals kicking in next year.

The guys also talk about the latest on the Pac-12 media rights front including interviews by Washington State president Kirk Schulz and Arizona State athletic director Ray Anderson, giving two very different timeline estimations for when this deal will finally get done. There is also a deadline looming if the Pac-12 wants to add San Diego State for the 2024 season, as the SDSU exit fee of $17 million to the Mountain West will triple on July 1.

Plus the Pac-12 is making some changes to enhance the television product for football games including putting microphones on players and coaches pregame and interviews with head coaches during games and the new proposed California legislation that would allow football athletes to share athletic department revenue.

At the very end of the podcast news broke that USC athletic director Mike Bohn was resigning. The guys give their quick reaction to this out of the blue story with the Trojan athletic department now in search of new leadership with a move to the Big Ten on the horizon.

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No video simulcast this week.

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In this episode of the Podcast of Champions hosts Ryan Abraham and David Woods are back in studio talking about the final Pac-12 program to wrap up spring football, the UCLA Bruins. Head coach Chip Kelly decided to forgo any sort of spring game, instead opting to finish the spring workouts with a Friday morning practice in front of about 50 fans that featured some situational scrimmage situations including wide receiver and defensive back one-on-one drills.

Our own David Woods talks about UCLA’s “15th training session” as Kelly called it, the starting quarterback battle, the reason the Pac-12 didn’t televise the final practice and lots more.

The guys also discuss the ongoing saga of the Pac-12 media rights deal including an interesting report out of Utah that claims that Amazon is out and ESPN is still in, but the sports leader has a financial cap on their tier one offer.

They also talk about the Comcast overpayment mess, early odds to win the conference for all 12 programs and the crazy gambling scandals that are popping up across college athletics.

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You can watch the simulcast on YouTube here:

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Sound off about Pac-12 football in our Podcast of Champions Reddit page! Send us a text or leave us a voicemail by texting or calling (424) 532-0678 or you can email us at pac12podcast@gmail.com.

In this episode of the Podcast of Champions hosts Ryan Abraham and David Woods are back in studio talking about the Oregon Ducks spring game that featured Heisman hopeful Bo Nix playing in front of 45,000 fans Saturday afternoon in Autzen Stadium. Dan Lanning’s defense started out strong and kept the Ducks offense at bay in what turned out to be a low scoring affair with the Green team edging out the Yellow team 23-20. That leaves only UCLA as the lone Pac-12 program that has yet to complete spring football practice and as of now Chip Kelly has no plans to host an actual spring game.

The guys also talk about how the Pac-12 programs did in the 2023 NFL Draft with 9 of the 12 programs getting at least one player selected (only Arizona, Colorado and Washington did not). Oregon led the way with six overall selections followed by Stanford (!!!) with five, USC and UCLA with four, Utah with three and Oregon State with two. California, Washington and Arizona State each had one player drafted over the weekend.

Overall the Pac-12 had 27 players selected, the fewest among the Power Five conferences (SEC 62, Big10 55, ACC 32 & Big12 30).

The NCAA Transfer Portal spring window has now closed and no one saw more action in the country than Coach Prime and Colorado. We get an update from BuffStampede.com publisher Adam Munsterteiger about how many players left and where the Buffs go from here to completely rebuild the roster heading into the 2023 season. The guys also discuss the overall portal numbers and a few of the Pac-12 players that made moves late in the window.

You can listen to the podcast here:

You can watch the simulcast on YouTube here:

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Sound off about Pac-12 football in our Podcast of Champions Reddit page! Send us a text or leave us a voicemail by texting or calling (424) 532-0678 or you can email us at pac12podcast@gmail.com.

In this episode of the Podcast of Champions hosts Ryan Abraham and David Woods are back in studio talking Pac-12 spring football with six more spring games occurring over the weekend including the sellout for the Colorado Buffaloes, 45,000+ fans to watch the debut of Coach Prime in Boulder. Despite four inches of snow falling and the field needing to be cleared, the Buffalos spring game spectacle went on as planned with ESPN broadcasting the entire event over two hours on Saturday afternoon. From one of the worst teams in college football history last season, Colorado now has a new sense of hope with the excitement around the program at historic levels, matching the increase in talent that Deion Sanders has brought in.

There were also five other Pac-12 spring games scheduled over the weekend with Washington, Washington State, Oregon State and Utah completing their spring with various events on Pac-12 Network plus Stanford holding more of a televised practice with three more spring practices left for Troy Taylor’s squad. We also look back at the Arizona State spring that we didn’t get to on last week’s show.

The guys also talk about the latest reports regarding the Pac-12 media rights deal that suggests the conference could go with Apple holding all of the conference’s tier one rights and a linear television partner that could be the CW. There is also a new lawsuit filed against the Pac-12 regarding the firings of a pair of former conference executives, Oregon State AD Scott Barnes is in stable condition after being hospitalized over the weekend, no more clock stoppages after a first down plus USC lands a five-star defensive tackle out of the NCAA Transfer Portal.

You can listen to the podcast here:

You can watch the simulcast on YouTube here:

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Sound off about Pac-12 football in our Podcast of Champions Reddit page! Send us a text or leave us a voicemail by texting or calling (424) 532-0678 or you can email us at pac12podcast@gmail.com.

In this episode of the Podcast of Champions hosts Ryan Abraham and David Woods are back in studio talking Pac-12 spring football with three programs finishing up their spring workouts, Arizona, California and USC. The guys may not have watched these spring games (not even Ryan!) but they will discuss the biggest news and notes from the spring games as these three teams head into the long off-season. Hope springs eternal in the spring and with new faces on the roster the Sun Devils, Golden Bears and Trojans are all feeling optimistic about the changes that were made heading into the 2023 college football season.

The guys also talk about the spring window of the NCAA Transfer Portal opening, sparking two weeks of potential turmoil across the college football landscape. The biggest name to enter the portal is former five-star edge rusher from Washington Sav’ell Smalls. The most active program in the portal is no surprise, the Colorado Buffalos with Coach Prime making some moves including 12 more players leaving and an all-conference safety joining the ranks from the Mountain West.

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Sound off about Pac-12 football in our Podcast of Champions Reddit page! Send us a text or leave us a voicemail by texting or calling (424) 532-0678 or you can email us at pac12podcast@gmail.com.

In this episode of the Podcast of Champions hosts Ryan Abraham and David Woods are back in studio with even more spring football updates from around the Pac-12. Last week the guys heard from Oregon State, Washington, Washington State, California, Stanford, USC, UCLA, Arizona State and Arizona. This week they will finish off their Conference of Champions tour hearing from Colorado, Utah and Oregon.

The Buffs have the most excitement around their program with Coach Prime selling out the Colorado spring game, which will be broadcast live on ESPN. Oregon returns quarterback Bo Nix and is looking to taking its talented roster all the way to a Pac-12 title. Utah is coming off of back-to-back conference championships and with Cam Rising out, most of the focus will be on who wins the backup quarterback spot.

The guys also talk about the latest reports regarding the media rights deal with what everyone felt would be done within weeks now looks like it will take months. Multiple reports are pointing to a late spring or early summer timeline for when the new media rights deal will be announced, which will be about a year out of the expiration of the current deal. There was also another potential media partner named in reports, the CW Network.

You can listen to the podcast here:

You can watch the simulcast on YouTube here:

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Sound off about Pac-12 football in our Podcast of Champions Reddit page! Send us a text or leave us a voicemail by texting or calling (424) 532-0678 or you can email us at pac12podcast@gmail.com.

In this episode of the Podcast of Champions hosts Ryan Abraham and David Woods are back in studio talking once again about all things Pac-12 football. As we creep further into April (how did that happen so fast?) the guys reached out to the various publishers around the Conference of Champions to get updates on how spring football practice is going for each Pac-12 program. There are some new coaches, lots of new players and even a couple of new quarterbacks making their Pac-12 debuts so we get the skinny on how everyone is acclimating in their new environments and how much excitement and enthusiasm is being generated (here’s looking at you Colorado).

The guys also talk about the impressive run future Pac-12 conference member San Diego State made in the NCAA Tournament, nearly bringing the first major championship to the Conference of Champions since USC won a football title in 2004 (the last basketball championship was Arizona in 1997).

Everything is still quiet on the media rights front but Dennis Dodd is reporting that the Pac-12 is more likely to have a much higher percentage of its games on streaming platforms rather than linear television. Will that be an issue, even if the money gets close to the Big 12 if the Pac-12 has more than half its games streaming and the Big 12 has less than 30%? We are all still waiting to see how much money these programs will make and how much national exposure they will enjoy in 2024 and beyond.

You can listen to the podcast here:

You can watch the simulcast on YouTube here:

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Sound off about Pac-12 football in our Podcast of Champions Reddit page! Send us a text or leave us a voicemail by texting or calling (424) 532-0678 or you can email us at pac12podcast@gmail.com.

In this episode of the Podcast of Champions hosts Ryan Abraham and David Woods are back in studio with not a whole lot to talk about when it comes to how the Pac-12 fared during March Madness. No. 2 seed Arizona was out hours after the tournament began and No. 2 seed UCLA couldn’t make it out of the Sweet 16, falling to recent nemesis Gonzaga. But soon to be Conference of Champions member San Diego State took care of business against No. 1 Alabama and made the Final Four for the first time in program history, so we are going to count that as a win for the Pac-12.

While there hasn’t been any real news about conference realignment or a new media rights deal for the Pac-12, with SDSU making the Final Four it seems nearly impossible for George Kliavkoff and the Pac-12 presidents to not bring the Aztecs into the fold. Since 2010, San Diego State has the highest combined winning percentage of any Division I school in football and men’s basketball at 73.8%, ahead of Ohio State (72.9%) and Oregon (71.1%). SDSU’s academics are better, they have built a new stadium, the have beat Pac-12 teams on the gridiron consistently and bring a foothold back into the Southern California for recruiting, how could Kliavkoff say no?

You can listen to the podcast here:

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Sound off about Pac-12 football in our Podcast of Champions Reddit page! Send us a text or leave us a voicemail by texting or calling (424) 532-0678 or you can email us at pac12podcast@gmail.com.

In this episode of the Podcast of Champions hosts Ryan Abraham and David Woods are back to talk about the disappointing opening weekend for the Pac-12 in the NCAA basketball tournament, with three of the four programs that made it to the Big Dance getting bounced out on Thursday/Friday. Arizona State did get a win in the First Four to advance to the field of 64, but lost a tough one against TCU. USC looked flat yet again and had no answers for tournament tested Michigan State who once again made it to the Sweet 16. The biggest flop came early on Thursday with Arizona as a No. 2 seed succumbing to No. 15 Princeton, which would have been the biggest upset of the tournament had it not been for No. 1 Purdue losing to No. 16 Fairleigh Dickinson.

The UCLA Bruins are the only Pac-12 program left in the field (unless you want to count San Diego State) and they will face off against Gonzaga in Las Vegas on Thursday. For the third season in a row the Bruins will face the Bulldogs having lost in Final Four of 2021 and in T-Mobile Arena last season. Overall UCLA is 2-5 against the Zags with three of those games in the NCAA Tournament.

The guys also talk about the latest rumors in the Pac-12 media rights negotiations saga, with the presidents of Arizona and Arizona State making statements about the deal being nearly done and still not a peep out of commissioner George Kliavkoff. Will he be able to pull off a lucrative deal that makes enough money for each athletic department to keep them competitive and also have enough exposure to keep West Coast football relevant? It appears that some sort of deal with ESPN, Amazon and Apple could accomplish that, but until something is announced we continue to await the fate of the Conference of Champions.

You can listen to the podcast here:

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Sound off about Pac-12 football in our Podcast of Champions Reddit page! Send us a text or leave us a voicemail by texting or calling (424) 532-0678 or you can email us at pac12podcast@gmail.com.

In this episode of the Podcast of Champions, David Woods records solo as Ryan Abraham is spending his second consecutive weekend in Las Vegas. Dave talks about the NCAA Tournament, how the Pac-12 is doing in the Tournament, what to expect in the coming weeks from media rights deals (spoiler: Dave has no idea), and which Pac-12 football coaches would last longest during a zombie apocalypse. You know, normal episode.

You can listen to the podcast here:

For the video simulcasts of our POC please subscribe to your YouTube channel!

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Sound off about Pac-12 football in our Podcast of Champions Reddit page! Send us a text or leave us a voicemail by texting or calling (424) 532-0678 or you can email us at pac12podcast@gmail.com.