As all know by now, the Mountain West announced its new media package a few months ahead of its transition into a new era, set to begin July 1st.
There have been many informative articles this week following the release of the new deal, particularly a few that are providing side-by-side comparisons between what the PAC-12 has already announced and the new MW information. In case you missed those, check out the work done by Jason Walker, Chris Murray, and Nathan Carroll.
While it is nice to finally
have some details on the media deal that has been discussed since at least media days back in July, fans on social media are not satisfied with the release. Despite the news providing many answers, it produced nearly as many questions.
How much money is the Mountain West set to receive?
The conference followed suit with the PAC-12 in not announcing the financial terms of its deal. Those are the numbers everyone wants to hear about and, in many ways, the thing that matters most. It is safe to assume that the total payouts schools are less than what the conference hoped for, because if they weren’t, they would have released the numbers while taking a victory lap. The same can be said for the PAC-12, for what it’s worth.
This, of course, leads to the next most obvious question that is on everyone’s mind.
Is this deal better or worse than the new PAC-12 media deal?
The answer is almost sure to be “no”, but perhaps the real question is: how far apart are the two deals? Fans (and probably some staff) on either side want to be able to justify their stance on the split. If the two deals are close in terms of money, the Mountain West side can justify saying that a merger made much more sense. On the other hand, if the two deals have some space between them, the departing schools can continue to claim they are trimming the fat and maximizing their value without other teams dragging things down.
Note that “close” and “some space” are both vague terms that likely have different meanings on either side. For example, is $2 million a wide enough gap justify splitting or close enough that it was a mistake? The answer is probably yes for both sides.
The theory the departing schools had still carries enough weight to be true. The schools with the most value can command that value even without the bottom teams in the conference. Therefore, the conference without those valuable schools can’t command as much. As a result, the PAC-12 deal should be larger than the MW deal. However, the MW deal likely can’t be less than the current one, and the PAC-12 deal clearly isn’t as much as they thought they would command when they chose to leave. In a sense, both are right, and both are wrong in different parts of the equation.
Are the football game time slots the same or different than the current deal?
Same isn’t bad in this case, but that isn’t a guarantee. Expect the Mountain West to be heavily featured in late-night windows, with more than its fair share of Friday night games. Along with this, it will be interesting to see how CBS Sports and the CW juggle both western conferences when it comes to preferred time slots.
How much will the streaming app cost the fans? Will it end up helping the schools?
The Mountain West had some creative thinking with using a subscription model for the MW app to get more money into the pockets of individual schools. The problem is that money comes out of the pocket of the fans, who are already being asked to attend games and fund NIL deals. Hopefully, the app won’t cost too much.
Are legacy schools getting more money than new schools?
The answer appears to be yes, though it hasn’t been directly answered. The Athletic reports that Gloria Nevarez said the legacy schools “will not see a decrease from their current annual media payout of $3.5 million per year.” That points to the new schools not seeing the same amount of money, but it is more reading between the lines.
The other interesting thing here is the way the sentence is worded; it’s not a glowing review that legacy schools will be seeing more than $3.5 million, which would be classified as a disappointment.
Are additional funds necessary? If so, where are they coming from?
Another nugget from the Athletic is that the $3.5 million was “promised in the grant of rights, whether the money comes entirely from the TV deal or is drawn in part from league reserves.” Hopefully, the media deal pays schools more than $3.5 million, so perhaps tapping into the reserve funds won’t be necessary. But does the Mountain West have sufficient reserve funds? If so, for how long? A lot may be riding on the exit fees and poaching penalties that will eventually be settled by the courts.
What would a deal have looked like if the two conferences had ended up merging?
In the wise words of the old Tootsie Pop commercials, “the world may never know.” Perhaps the answer is in some alternate universe, and maybe the MCU can one day drop an Easter egg in a movie, but otherwise, we won’t know how it would have all shaken out if Washington State and Oregon State joined the Mountain West on a permanent basis. And it’s not an answer that can be easily pieced together.
It is reminiscent of the old math problem: If person A can paint a house in 4 hours and person B can do it in 6 hours, how long does it take them together? The answer isn’t 5, and it surely isn’t 10. For those curious about the painted house answer, feel free to watch this video. Similarly, if the Mountain West gets $4 million per team per year and the PAC-12 gets $6 million per team per year, they definitely don’t get $10 million together, and they probably don’t get $5 million either. Unfortunately, there is no video to easily explain what would have happened, but the unknown answer should also serve as a reminder that no one is reversing course in this process anytime soon.
Also, the two conference is much different now with their additions. Gonzaga and Texas State change the equation, as do NIU and UTEP. As things now stand, the two future conferences no longer fit into the neat idea of an 11-team Mountain West with one football-only member.
As both sides continue to move forward, more questions remain about how successfully the two conferences are moving.
