UCLA's B1G Move Looks Smarter by the Day
If the events of the last week proved anything, it's that the actions UCLA took were the best course to move forward.
We’re now close to two months removed from the earth-shattering news that UCLA and Southern Cal will be moving to the Big Ten come 2024. Just going off of the comments section in each article I write, fans are still debating the wisdom of such a move, but last week was an object lesson in why this move will still go ahead, and why UCLA was smart in its approach.
Let’s begin last Wednesday when the UC Regents held their long-discussed meeting on campus to discuss UCLA’s move and release their report on the matter. You can read the report here; it’s a pretty dry report, focused mostly on how UCLA’s move will hurt UC Berkeley than on any positives that the move brings for UCLA.
If you thought that the Regent meeting was going to be nothing but political theater, you would be right. Governor Gavin Newsom, who kicked off the backlash by publicly admonishing UCLA for its move, did not attend the meeting despite being a Regent member, which set the tone for the entire event. The Regents themselves showed a stunning lack of knowledge about how college football works; their report cited “media reports” instead of any detailed information, and at one point a regent suggested UC Berkeley had the power to just unilaterally join the Big Ten as well.
Furthering the theater portion of the proceedings, both UCLA Chancellor Gene Block and Athletic Director Martin Jarmond were in attendance for the meeting, and yet at no point during the open session were they called upon to answer questions or to defend the move. Instead, the regents took turns concern-trolling over the new travel that athletes would have to undergo and how this move will hurt UC Berkeley.
Let’s talk about that one real quick. Yes, UC Berkeley will be hurt by UCLA’s move to the Big Ten, but not by a sizeable margin. As Ben Bolch pointed out, the UC Regents report states that the remaining Pac-12 schools will lose about $9.8 million thanks to Southern Cal’s move and that UCLA’s move will cost those schools about 1/3 of that amount. The UC Regents, who in general are more supportive of UC Berkeley, are throwing the world’s biggest hissy fit over $3 million dollars, which should tell you everything you need to know about where their priorities are.
At the end of the day, this was a show. UC Regent John Perez (a UC Berkeley alum) was able to give the money quote of the day by stating that “all options are on the table” and that the regents had the power to overrule the chancellors and reverse course. Jon Wilner, who has not exactly covered himself in glory on this front, stated it was a banner day for people wanting the Pac-12 to continue to exist.
And then the Big Ten broke news the next day that showed exactly why the UC Regents won’t stop this move.
Thursday’s announcement of the Big Ten’s new media deal again shook the college football landscape. The deal with Fox, CBS, and NBC for a collective $8 billion dollars rockets the conference past the SEC for the biggest media rights deal in the country and will lock the conference into nationally-broadcast slots from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. The payouts per school should begin in the $70 million per year and can escalate up to $100 million by the end of the deal. Oh, and the deal is set to expire before the SEC is able to renegotiate their own TV rights, which means the Big Ten will get to reset the market a second time before the SEC is able to try and match them.
If you’re UCLA, the announcement turned the Big Ten move into a no-brainer. Estimates had the Pac-12’s next media rights deal at around $500 million annually, and that was before UCLA and Southern Cal announced their departure, which according to the UC Regents report pushed the estimated deal down to about $350 million. That averages out to about $35 million per remaining school, an increase from the previous deal but dwarfed by what the Bruins will make in the Big Ten. Even factoring in the increases to travel costs and support staff for the various sports, UCLA is poised to make a lot more money with this move, which will help them with debt in the near term while positioning them to still be a factor in whatever the college sports landscape turns out to be in the upcoming years.
Or they could move to Division III, I guess. According to the UC Regents, everything is on the table.
Go Bruins.
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Block & Jarmond made an incredible move, unparalleled in my view, to alleviate UCLA's woeful athletic finance in the first place and, in one fell swoop, lifting its football status nationally. Those Terry Donahue days seemed such a distant memory to me. His successors have been mediocre, uninspiring on the field.
Who cares anyway ? By the time UCLA took the field out west, football fans in the mid west had all been satiated, inebriated too, during the day by the likes of Michigan, Ohio State, Nebraska and my other alma mater Wisconsin going fiercely at each other, thrilling everyone glued to the big screen TV in every town, every bars in the heartlands of America. For them to try to stay awake to see Jim Mora engineering another turnover, another punt ( LOL ) to Karl Dorell staring quizzically at the field, wondering what was going on to Rick Neuheisel's frantic but futile hand gestures at everyone and no one at the same time were indeed too much to bear. The current one has one more chance at it because the buyout terms would be optimun to cut him loose then. We could hire - this time it better pans out - from a wide open field of candidates from coast to coast.
Forget about the regents. They cannot do a darn thing but orally fart.
I'm not sure what "events of the last week" prove. We already knew that the Big 10 had a better TV deal and market. Alas, this continues to prove that this deal was all about the $$$$, which I guess UCLA Athletics needs.
Can't believe it's already football season! We play Bowling Green (ugh) in 11 days!