Last week, Jeff Nelson, the president of Navigate, a revered Chicago-based consulting company, published proprietary information relating to the newest spherical of realignment. Navigate is operating with Gonzaga, a basketball powerhouse, to probably transfer to the Big 12 or Pac-12. To review the best basketball systems’ ratings in opposition to power-conference combatants in regular-season play over the ultimate 3 years, Navigate used a metric known as “TV Power,” with Gonzaga rating 5th on that listing. The Zags’ price is mirrored in the Big 12’s shift of priorities, as including Gonzaga (basketball handiest) and UConn (complete club) is dominating league conversations.
Commissioner Brett Yormark reiterated that enlargement have been mentioned, and there was “mutual admiration” at the presidential stage between Gonzaga and the Big 12. However, there may be extra “momentum” for UConn to sign up for the league than Gonzaga at the second. The Big 12 is looking ahead to the Pac-12 to expose a brand new media rights determine to its participants ahead of taking the subsequent step in that pursuit.
Gonzaga has won a $15 million annual valuation, in line with one trade supply, will have to it sign up for a Power Five convention for basketball. That’s not up to part of what full-ride Big 12 participants will obtain ($31.7 million) starting in 2025. The determine connected to UConn is much less transparent in that basketball can be central to any deal accompanied by way of a lowly looked soccer unbiased.
Think of any new additions to the Big 12 as a enlargement inventory if treated the proper means. With the SEC and Big Ten dominating faculty athletics, the concept could also be to spherical up as many manufacturers as conceivable to turn out to be a cast No. 3 convention in the pecking order. Sources inform CBS Sports that the cash, no less than for Gonzaga, would most likely come from inside the league. Schools may sacrifice some of their present percentage to trap the Zags and/or Huskies. Plus, the Big 12 continues to sit down on the $100 million blended buyout it were given from Texas and Oklahoma.
For Gonzaga, a transfer up at school is wanted, as it considers itself equivalent on the court docket with conventional blue bloods. Typically, basketball is price 15% to 20% of a Power Five media rights deal. In the Big 12, that may quantity to round $5 million or $6 million. The query: Could Gonzaga command greater than that percentage as a standalone nationwide persistent to the Big 12 or Pac-12?
UConn, a college with 5 nationwide championships, would reportedly owe the convention no less than $30 million in go out charges if it departed ahead of its 7th 12 months as a member, which is a snapshot of the realignment. Before this 12 months, its ultimate nationwide championship was once completed in 2014 as a member of the American, the place it performed with two of the Big 12’s 4 most up-to-date enlargement groups: Houston and UCF. UConn left the Big East for the American in 2013 and returned to the Big East in 2020.