Pete Thamel: Big 12's pending naming rights deal 'the slow NASCAR-ization of college sports'

Unprecedented news broke in the college athletics landscape on Thursday when ESPN’s Pete Thamel reported that the Big 12 Conference would be exploring potentially selling its naming right to a title sponsor in order to generate more revenue for the league. With Allstate already named as a negotiating parter with the conference in a deal that would make the Big 12 the Allstate 12 moving forward.

Thamel joined The Pat McAfee Show after the groundbreaking news surfaced, explaining to McAfee and the crew how things played out and it what it means for the Big 12 and college sports as a whole moving forward.

“The deal has been in discussions for about six months Pat, it would probably get done in the upcoming months. There was some optimism it would be in July, as these big multimillion dollar deals go, it’s probably going to drag on a little bit longer than that,” Thamel explained.

“But essentially the core of this is, and I agree with you, we’ve seen the slow NASCAR-ization of college sports here, right, Pat? Because there’s a can of Coke on my desk, I’ll just use that as a hypothetical example, if Coke was the sponsor, and it is not going to be, they would become the Coke 12. If Kleenex was the sponsor be the Kleenex 12.”

A presenting sponsor for a conference would already be unprecedented, but the actual changing of a conference name rich in tradition with a company that purchased a naming right takes things to another level. Potentially serving as the first domino in what could be a new norm in college athletics on the heels of changes like paying athletes through NIL and record-breaking media rights deals.

“Yeah, it would be in the name in the logo,” Thamel said regarding a potential Big 12 sponsor. “So Kansas would be going for the Coke 12 Championship in Kansas City, Bill Self‘s team. For a brand it’s pretty massive, there’s no better brand exposure. It’s so much more than putting your name on a stadium or something like that and it would be the first of its kind.”

A Big 12’s naming rights deal would be a direct response to the SEC and the Big Ten’s recent revenue-generating moves. With the both conferences signing massive media rights deals and adding new power programs to their conferences, leaving the ACC and Big 12 in search of alternative ways to generate revenue and bridge the gap.

“I was told that it would mean trickle down to your West Virginia Mountaineers,” Thamel said about McAfee’s alma mater. “Would be multiple millions of dollars annually for them. And look, the Big 12 much like the ACC is significantly behind right now. The Big Ten in the SEC with their giant TV deals have raced ahead, and also they really leveraged a whole bunch of the College Football Playoff money as well and that’s left these other leagues looking for creative solutions be it a private equity, be it this naming deal.”

It will be fascinating to not just see if, when, and who the potential sponsor and face of the Big 12 could possibly be. But also which conferences potentially decide to follow suit and what other revenue generating partnerships come about in current evolving college sports landscape.

“But we really could look back and look at this as a pretty significant thing in college sports, it would be a couple 100 million dollars over a series of years chopped up in different ways. But ultimately if you’re going to have $20 million in rev share, which these Big 12 schools are going to attempt to do, I don’t think all of them will be able to, you need new streams of multiple millions of dollars of revenue and this would be one of them,” Thamel concluded.