If your Power Four school lacks a big brand and TV market, you should be 'terrified'

If you’re a rank-and-file Power Four school, the message that has been hammered home all summer should have you on edge: Fortune favors the brands.

If you’re sitting in a power conference lacking a brand name and TV market, don’t get too comfortable.

You could wind up like Oregon State and Washington State. After joining their fellow Pac-12 schools in repeatedly offering public messages of unity and solidarity over the past six months, the two Pacific Northwest schools are now abandoned, looking around and seeing everyone has run for greener pastures.

They are the ones left to shut off the lights in a 108-year-old league. They can find a landing spot in the Mountain West Conference, whose commissioner, Gloria Nevarez, recently made campus recruiting visits to both schools. A home in another Power Four conference is not in their short-term future. 

But that’s not the only warning sign this summer for the non-big brands out there.

If you’re any number of also-rans in the ACC, you’ve watched Florida State‘s candid, blustery rhetoric assist in tilting the revenue-sharing model in favor of the biggest and most successful brands. The additions of Stanford, Cal and SMU could result in more than $50 million in annual revenue for the league.

Stanford and Cal are expected to accept an initial partial revenue share, perhaps 30% of existing members. SMU will reportedly forgo any initial broadcast rights share for nine years. Existing members will benefit financially, and success-based initiatives could favor big, successful brands like Florida State and Clemson. 

It is an ecosystem where the biggest brands in the biggest conferences have the most leverage. That has never been more clear. And now they are starting to throw their weight around. This summer, Florida State leaders said the quiet parts out loud.

But don’t think other marquee brands aren’t thinking the same. Ultimately, schools lacking brand names could be thrown by the wayside.

Michigan regent Jordan Acker told On3 on Friday morning, “Frankly, the way things are going, I’d be terrified of that. I’d be terrified of the idea of a super league of some sort leaving smaller schools behind. It would be terrible for college athletics … If you’re not a place with a big market, I’d be terrified. All the presidents and chancellors have wrought this on everybody.

“The consequences here will be absolutely profound. What prevents a TV executive from going the next step and saying, ‘Why are we paying X amount of dollars for a Rutgers, Purdue or Vanderbilt?’ when they can put someone else on TV?”

Networks will pay big money for ‘top inventory’

Two summers ago, after Texas and Oklahoma sent shockwaves through the industry with the announcement that they’d be joining the SEC, several TV sources talked to On3 about the next dynamic that would emerge in conference realignment. 

The biggest brands at some point would grow tired of sharing equal slices of the TV rights revenue pie with schools that weigh down the league. The biggest brands would begin to flex their muscles, leveraging the fact that they are the reason the rights packages now have so many digits and commas.

“The networks will pay you whatever you need them to pay you for the top inventory,” one veteran media rights source told On3. “What they don’t want to do anymore is pay $9 million a game for Michigan–Ohio State and also pay $9 million a game for Rutgers-Maryland. Every conference is top-heavy.”

The top three or four brands in every conference account for more than 50% of the TV viewers, with some slight variation among leagues, another TV source said.

“Everyone thinks, ‘Oh, my God, the SEC has this magic.’ But you don’t realize how pedestrian the numbers are when the big schools aren’t involved,” the first TV source said. “Like Mississippi–Mississippi State – the only thing that helps that game is that it’s on Thanksgiving. When you say how about a fill-in-the-blank team versus someone other than Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Auburn and LSU? The numbers fall off a cliff.”

Fortune favors brands in new Power Four format

What some Power Four members lack in brand name they make up for in the market they deliver. See Rutgers with New York and Maryland with Washington, D.C. 

Others that lack both a brand name and a major market should be concerned about which way industry winds are howling.

“I worry about that for our game and for those universities,” North Carolina coach Mack Brown told ESPN’s Paul Finebaum two years ago. “I think we will see some schools that just can’t have enough money, enough facilities, enough commitment selling those tickets, be attractive enough for the TV contracts that they will lose who they are and drop down to another level.”

The enterprise is increasingly moving toward a landscape in which the biggest brands play together in their own sandbox. Whether that entails four power conferences or two, whether it entails a full breakaway from the NCAA, that all remains to be seen.

Additionally, Tom McMillen, CEO of LEAD1 Association, told On3 what he hears from athletic directors regarding an elite football breakaway is this: “Part of the allure of the structure is that you have scheduling pods. God, I’d hate to be the SEC and have to play Texas and Alabama. The scheduling variability is a factor here. Maryland can play Towson. They are close by. Probably get a win. Towson gets the money. That would go away in a world where every game is hyper-competitive.” 

“The idea that you have some schools in there that, like a Cinderella school with San Diego State basketball, is very appealing to public officials. It is not just money wins. And the reason I say that is because, as college sports evolves, there’s going to be more and more attacks on it.”

But what we have seen this summer is this: Another clear-as-crystal reminder that money does in fact win. And for rank-and-file Power Four schools who aren’t the ones driving the escalating TV rights deals, this summer should provoke a serious case of agita.

This summer has hammered home the truth: Fortune favors the brands.