A Pac-12 invitation for San Diego State? It should be a no-brainer for the league

Monday night, San Diego State will play for the national championship. Tuesday morning, the Pac-12 should extend an invitation to the Aztecs to join the distressed league.

The decision should be a no-brainer for commissioner George Kliavkoff and university presidents. And it would be wise for the Pac-12 to act swiftly, or risk hard-charging marketing maven Brett Yormark moving expeditiously to expand the Big 12’s footprint from the country roads of West Virginia all the way to the cliffs and beaches of San Diego. 

The Big 12 already beat the Pac-12 to the punch by landing a $2.3 billion media rights deal with ESPN and Fox in October. Kliavkoff and Pac-12 stakeholders can’t afford to miss this opportunity, which would be just the latest league miscue among many in recent years. 

While expansion decisions are largely football-driven, of course, landing San Diego State fresh off a national championship appearance – if not the first West Coast national title since Arizona in 1997 – would provide the beleaguered league with a much-needed positive jolt. The Pac-12 is still trying to secure a new media rights deal – likely a combination of linear and streaming platforms – as league flagships UCLA and USC ready to depart for the greener pastures of the Big Ten in 2024. That will leave Bill Walton’s Conference of Champions without a southern California presence.

No one will make the case that San Diego State’s football and men’s basketball teams possess brand names that resonate. But as one veteran television source told On3 that is the case now, with the programs competing in the Mountain West Conference. When and If the Aztecs gain entry into the Pac-12, the muscle of a Power 5 conference – even one not named the SEC or Big Ten – will bolster San Diego State’s athletic teams in promotion, exposure and recruiting. The problem is that the media largely judge the stature of the program in its Group of 5 league without considering the effect of Power 5 membership.

“As it grows and becomes competitive in the Pac-12, general media interest will grow with them,” the source said. “If you only judged a G5 school’s media value based on G5 media audiences, then no school would ever be deemed worthy. That’s a mistake I’ve seen many in the media make: ‘Why would the Pac-12 want San Diego State? They barely average 400,000 viewers.’ Of course that’s all!

“Playing average G5 competition on ESPN2, ESPNU, FS1, CBS Sports Network, in time slots against multiple big games on major platforms, what do people think they should be averaging? That’s why other factors are important – market, financial resources, facilities, athletic investment, academics, culture. The school will rise to the conference, not the other way around.”

Adding San Diego State – and perhaps Dallas-based SMU – also would add more inventory, which is exactly what a subscription-driven streaming platform like Amazon, or another Big Tech player, wants. 

On the other hand, adding those schools isn’t seen as something that would move the needle enough to substantially increase the value of the media rights package. The Pac-12 is hoping to land a rights deal that equals or surpasses that of the Big 12, whose schools will receive $31.6 million annually. 

Neal Pilson, the former longtime president of CBS Sports, told On3 before San Diego State’s tournament run that neither San Diego State nor SMU would “generate any penetration in southern California or Dallas. But from a sponsorship point of view, from a recruiting point of view, there might be some benefits. It helps them [the Pac-12] marginally, but are they going to take one-12^th of their revenue and share it with SMU and San Diego State, those less-popular football-playing schools? I think it would be an error [to add those two], but it’s hard enough to run the Pac-12 right now than to read about criticism from retired network executives.”

There’s also obviously the possibility, if not likelihood, that San Diego State and/or SMU would receive less than a full share of media rights revenue for a period of time. That still would be a welcomed check for San Diego State, which is receiving in the vicinity of $4 million annually in rights revenue from the MWC.

San Diego State’s men’s basketball program is not a one-hit wonder. The Aztecs were a national title contender in 2020 before the pandemic forced the cancellation of the NCAA tournament. This is their fourth 30-win season since 2010. Its men’s basketball budget is $7.2 million, the San Diego Union-Tribune has reported, some $4.7 million less than UCLA. Imagine what an influx of new Pac-12 media rights revenue would do for the program.

San Diego State’s football program is perennially competitive, with five 10-win seasons since 2015. Its last losing record came in 2009. The Aztecs also opened the sparkling $310-million, 35,000-seat Snapdragon Stadium before last season. 

Before San Diego State’s Elite Eight victory over Creighton, Aztecs coach Brian Dutcher said, “My own personal belief is I always thought the Pac-12 would not ask us in with UCLA and USC because they would put us on equal footing and we would be too great a competitor to let in. Now that they’re gone and southern California has a really good team sitting in San Diego, I would think we would be desirable for the Pac-12, the Big 12, a lot of conferences. We’ve won a lot of games in football and basketball. Non-revenue sports have always been good. We do things the right way, we have a great university, and we have a competitive athletic program.”

San Diego State is the attractive girl still waiting for the much-anticipated, belated invite to the prom. It’s time. 

Monday night, the Aztecs’ basketball team faces a formidable task in trying to topple a UConn team steamrolling through the tournament. But SDSU win or SDSU loss, the Pac-12 has a golden opportunity to once again secure at least some foothold in the southern California market, acquire promising football and men’s basketball programs and – not to be dismissed – land its first positive headlines in quite some time. And if it doesn’t, Yormark may strike.

This one is a no-brainer.