In this episode of the Podcast of Champions hosts Ryan Abraham and David Woods are back in studio trying to talk about anything but the potential demise of the Conference of Champions, which will be nearly impossible to do until a lucrative media rights deal is secured and the remaining 10 members are satisfied with the payouts. The guys start off the show talking about a move that everyone anticipated after the conference hired George Kliavkoff as commissioner, the Pac-12 football media day will be moving to Las Vegas! Ryan doesn’t need much of an excuse to head to Vegas so he will be there, but will David be able to break away from his kids midweek for his final Pac-12 media day? We shall see.
While they are trying not to talk about the conference breaking up, they will discuss what some prominent members of the college football media and sports business reporters are saying about what potential media partners are available for Kliavkoff to team up with and what sort of deal he could expect with the 10 programs he has now or with the addition of others like San Diego State and SMU. Unfortunately, the current marketplace isn’t favorable for the Pac-12 and that is one of the reasons the projections for the new media rights deal aren’t very promising.
Unless Kliavkoff can pull something spectacular off, some sort of out of the box deal that delivers cash to his members and also gets their programs more visibility, the speculation surrounding schools leaving for other conferences will continue to grow. The best news for Kliavkoff is that the Big Ten still doesn’t have a replacement commissioner for the outgoing Kevin Warren, but the Big 12 is like a wolf on the prowl and appears to be ready to pounce if any Pac-12 program isn’t happy with the new deal.
Dave also provides some potential breaking news as he has heard that Utah and Colorado have already decided to leave the Pac-12. How credible is this information? Dave said he heard it from the same guy who told him two days before it happened that USC and UCLA were leaving, so we shall see.
We’re not sure if Wednesday’s Los Angeles hail storm was some sort of omen for the Pac-12, but Dave’s Tweet of the storm did give us an unexpected glimpse into his backyard and maybe the reason why he wasn’t a fan of the show, ‘The Last of Us.’
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