Joel Klatt explains how the Big 12, Pac-12 got here after Colorado move

It seemed as though the game of conference realignment musical chairs had ended. Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark walked back his “open for business” comments at the conference’s media days last week and Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff appeared confident the league would stick together as it awaits a media rights deal one year in the making.

Then, the music started back up — and Colorado found a chair when it stopped.

The Buffaloes are returning to the Big 12 in 2024 after the university board of trustees unanimously approved the move in a special Thursday meeting. That means three Pac-12 teams have announced their departures in the last 13 months when USC and UCLA shared their plans to leave for the Big Ten next season.

This ripple effect didn’t start when Texas and Oklahoma announced their plans to leave the SEC, though, according to FOX Sports’ Joel Klatt. It began when media rights deals were nearing expiration.

“There was a pie of dollars that networks were going to spend on live sports,” Klatt said on The Joel Klatt Show. “And that pie is being gobbled up by the things that are going to drive the most eyeballs: the NFL, the Big Ten and the SEC. So it’s not that the pie is growing. It’s that that pie is being divided in ever-increasing sections to those three entities. … Well, the Big Ten and the SEC got massive television contracts. Why? Because they drive the quantity of eyeballs. Because those live appointment viewings, that’s what’s most valuable.

“It’s no longer about the quantity of the cable bundle anymore. Now, there’s just over 60 million homes in the United States that actually have the traditional cable bundle. So that business model is totally fledgling.”

The Big Ten, of course, agreed to a landmark multi-billion dollar media rights deal with three networks — FOX, CBS and NBC — that starts this season and fully kicks in next year. That came after the SEC agreed to a deal with ESPN and ABC starting in 2024. The ACC’s deal was already set.

That left the Pac-12 and the Big 12 to complete new deals. The rest, as they say, is history.

“So there’s this pie of money. It’s being divided into where you’re going to get the most eyeballs and everybody else has to fight for the scraps,” Klatt said. “Well, the ACC didn’t have a deal to be negotiated because their grant of rights is going into the mid [2030s]. All of this to tell you there was basically enough pie for one television deal and there were two entities fighting over it — the Pac-12 and the Big 12.

“You get a big picture discussion about, ‘Well, why are we in this position?’ Well, we’re in this position because there was one television deal to be had between the Pac-12 and the Big 12.”

Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark pulled off a major move when he orchestrated a new media rights deal shortly after taking over. That came to fruition with a $2.28 billion agreement in November 2022 that was signed last month. The interesting part about that new deal is it came together nearly three years before the deal expired, and Yormark was able to convince the conference board to extend it earlier than planned.

It also helped the Big 12 outflank the Pac-12, in a way. The Pac-12 has been promising a new media deal for some time, but Kliavkoff didn’t announce one at Media Day last week. Less than a week later, Colorado announced its departure — and, as On3’s Eric Prisbell reported Friday, the Big 12 might not be done adding Pac-12 programs yet.