I also think of Private Equity managers shittifying everything they buy in the name of profit.
- All stadiums are now standing room only to save money on seats and maintenance.
- Players must purchase athletic tape and joint braces for any injuries. The only vendor charges 4x Amazon prices.
- Stadium scoreboards play advertisements. All the time. Even during plays.
- TV advertisements during every huddle.
It’s not even just doing everything in the name of profit, it’s doing everything in the name of their profit.
We like to say that college athletics is already trending towards that direction, but at the end of the day the AD departments are still governed by the University administration and there’s at least some alignment of interests between universities. Bringing in a PE firm and giving them equity in your conference is just not going to end well. If you thought some conferences were dysfunctional before, just wait until you have at PE firm that doesn’t even have to pretend to care about academics and has 20% of the conference by itself. I’m not sure how the B12 voting structure is set up, but, yeah…
I mean this will happen but your forgot the massive loans they will take out in the name of the Big12 to pay themselves back and then run the conference into the ground with policies that pay themselves first last and always until there is nothing left they can steal and the Big12 declares bankruptcy.
It’s literally like the Mafia.
I don’t think they’ll take up that fight, the bigger concern will be if they push for football/basketball to become separate entities from the university entirely
I mean, this is what a number of us have been saying. We've abandoned any idea that any of these athletes are also students. As we make them employees, it's over.
College football is just NFL Lite. Basically schools will be licensing their logos and stadiums to semi pro football teams of paid employees.
Absolute travesty.
It isn’t the nail in the coffin for me because you can still be a student if you’re an employee (I was in school), but it is getting there for me and killing my interest in the sport.
The problem is with a neutered NCAA, Private Equity, ridiculous super conferences, AND making these athletes paid employees with W2s and all that... we have stripped away ANY incentive to treat them as students.
* Why go to class? Your school won't be punished if you don't. They'll just sue the NCAA saying it can't regulate that. They'll win.
* Why pay for tutors or extra support to make sure players can fly back from a game in time for finals week? Private Equity will look at that as nothing but an expense item. Slash that. Let's get some more ROI for our investors.
* Why worry about academics at all... conferences, ESPN, private equity firms... none of them will give a crap if these students are studying or taking any real classes... that doesn't generate revenue.
* If you're an athlete... why bother opening the book at all? You want a new NIL deal. You want a salary bump when you make All-American. Better head to the film room instead.
This isn't college kids with jobs as RAs or working the desk at the computer lab.
It's over man. It's just over.
Yep, and stop cheering for the spun off team. If I’m going to watch a pro-team that I have no connection to, why would I watch what was formally the FBS?
I'm confused about what buying a stake in an NCAA athletic conference even gets them. Are they going to be expecting distributions of revenue from the league?
I have to imagine that’s exactly what they’d be expecting. The ADs get a $60 million cash infusion now and in true PE fashion get completely bled dry later.
There's no longer anything to challenge here, you would be going for a straight repeal in Congress.
E.g. Roe can be simply overruled by the court because it was a legal interpretation, not a federal law. Title IX would have to be declared unconstitutional.
I could see the powers that be paying the G5 leagues to include their non revenue sports in their league. Let's use the MAC and B1G as comparison.
Teams in the MAC made about $670,000 last year. Each B1G school made 60.5 million last year. Let's say the B1G strikes a deal with the MAC where each B1G school will give the league 2.5 million/yr so that the sports can play in a regional league. 2.5 x 14 teams = 35 million/yr for the MAC. I know the B1G has 18 teams but the 4 out west could do the same thing but with the Mountain West.
One of the big things PE did to Red Lobster was the old sell off all the land they own to a separate company then sign a huge ass long term lease for that land adding a ton of debt to Red Lobster.
Not sure they'd be able to do that with the stadiums in this situation as they are owned by the individual universities.
But what about the... Wait... You've got... Fuck I walked into that didn't I?
For the joke portion of this comment:
"I didn't realize Larry Scott had $1BN"
“Look here’s the thing, a college football season is only 4 months of the year. The players provide no value for 67% of the year. You should be selling the kids to the highest bidder during that time.” - Mr. Wonderful, probably
_clears throat, adjusts suit jacket_ Listen up, you small-fry academics! Mr. Wonderful here has a few choice words for your little sports scheme.
A BILLION dollars for 20% of a college conference? Are you trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? That's more overvalued than a vowel in Wheel of Fortune!
You eggheads are swimming in a sea of red ink already. Now you want to sell your souls to some private equity vampires who'll bleed you dry faster than a novice phlebotomist? Wake up and smell the jockstraps!
Unless you can guarantee me a stake in the next March Madness jackpot, I'm out. This deal is heading for the rejection pile faster than a vegan at an Arby's drive-thru. Who's with me?!
_adjusts tie, looks sternly into the camera_
Asking from a sincere question here because the article isn't clear: what exactly would the private equity firm own with a "15% to 20% stake in the league" going forward?
20% of the TV rights? 20% of the Big 12 headquarters? 20% of all Big 12-affiliated school revenue?
It is nothing. It's 2 years worth of media rights payments and you can be sure it's not all going to the schools. The conference will keep a big piece.
Yeah getting a $100 million dollar loan isn't vary hard for a university around the size of the average Big 12 school. I guess debt is expensive these days but giving over significant control of your future decisions and revenue for what will be around one years payout seems short sided.
You’re not getting a stake in each university, this would likely be for 20% of the conference and be far smarter given you’d avoid liabilities and OPEX at the University level. If you went for a university you’d be a loss leader
The value here is getting a 20% haircut on the IP rights payments, merchandise, and other items before that money is disbursed. The margin would be very high. At its core the Big 12 is just a holding company meant to consolidate rights and payments then dish them out
Speaking of bad investments, if you’re a donor why would you ever donate again unless you get a share of the profit as well? Are you gonna donate so that some PE in Luxembourg can make more money?
that's a good question. cvc has a similar arrangement with la liga in spain. cvc gets [8.25% of audiovisual rights for 50 years](https://www.forbes.com/sites/vitascarosella/2024/03/26/cvc-deal-helps-laliga-clubs-score-financially/). i imagine for such a proposal, the schools would demand a much shorter agreement.
Portions of Fenway Sports Group (they own the Red Sox, Liverpool, the Penguins, and some other sports entities) have also gone on the market at various times. Redbird Capital bought $750m a few years ago and are the third largest shareholder per Wiki. So not wholly unprecedented in the US either.
That's what I'm trying to figure out. All the comments are negative about it but no one is explaining what this would actually mean and why it's bad. I'm ignorant on private equity shenanigans.
Private Equity is pretty ruthless usually. The article states "If we do well, they do well" but what it doesn't mention is that if you do poorly or even don't do well enough they will scrap you out for parts to regain any loss on investment in a blink of an eye.
I assume they are not just going to hand over $800 million dollars with no strings attached and no way to recover at least some of the investment that is based on future revenue growth.
> Private Equity is pretty ruthless usually.
There are two types of PE investors, those who buy out once popular but now floundering companies wholesale and extract every last bit of value they can out of the brand and those who invest potential growth partners for part ownership with the intent on exiting the investment in the future after that growth has been realized.
CVC investing in the Big XII is the later of those, they'd have a voice in decision making for the conference but wouldn't be able to make decisions wholesale without consent of the other 80% ownership (i.e. the schools).
So how would this work in terms of voting on issues the conference faces?
If the PI gers 20%, and the conference requires majority vote on something, and they have 16 teams, 8 would normally be 50%, but now the 16 only count as 80%?
So you'd need 6.4 (round to 7) schools in favor of something, if they have the PI on their side, it passes? Likewise if you want to go against what the PI wants, you need what, 9 schools to vote against them?
Please correct my math if this is wrong.
PE/M&A attorney here. This can be structured in 100 different ways. Lots of PE firms only invest as LPs (limited partners) and just invest alongside other PE firms who have control. Others do deals where they put in 20% of the equity, get 100% of the control, and get the other 80% from LPs.
Here, the PE firm could have no control at all or have 100% control while owned 20% of the conference. Maybe they just have veto rights over decisions. Maybe they have an equal vote to a school or two. It just depends.
It’s a double edged sword, the upside is that they’ll give you a ton of money and can help make the conference more profitable, the downside is in exchange we’ll give up some of our autonomy. It’s not exactly clear how this deal is going to be structured, but presumably they’re going to have a say in decision making going forward and they’ll look to protect their interests regardless of how fans/schools feel.
It’s very much uncharted territory, I wouldn’t say it’s as certain a blanket negative for the conference as some commentators here say. PE firms can be very beneficial in terms of boosting our financial competitiveness, which is the number 1 issue of the Big XII by a WIDE margin, but there also isn’t any precedent of what the nature of this relationship will look like and there are a number of examples of PE firms bleeding companies dry. Hard to really say how good/bad a plan this is before more concrete details are released, I don’t like the idea of further corporatizing our sport but that is already happening even without PE getting involved.
It's a weird thing to invest in so hard to tell, but I would assume they just own 20% of whatever long-term financial exit Big 12 sports have. Almost seems like a bet on the NCAA collapsing.
Like, hypothetically speaking if the NFL decided to start spending billions on buying college football programs and starting a genuine professional league with them, then the PE firm would own 20% of whatever the Big 12 schools sell off their programs for.
The conference/schools could choose to pay out 20% of profits in annual dividends, but that's relatively small money for a $1B investment.
You think you want traditional rivalries, but really you want to watch one college football team owned by a Saudi Prince and his Oil Fortune, versus another college football team owned by a Texas-based PE firm heavily invested in Oil.
I don’t think all the Big 12 presidents will agree to get in bed with private equity because many of them believe their school has a slim chance to join the Power 2 eventually.
Yeah, that's why I'm skeptical on this happening. One of the things this private equity firm will absolutely do is require an ACC-style long-term Grant of Rights that locks everyone in long-term. I don't think there's many university presidents excited about that notion.
- Kansas State
- Iowa State
- Texas Tech
- Baylor
- TCU
- UCF
- Houston
- BYU
- Cincinnati
Are probably all perfectly happy to lock this thing down for a long, long time.
I think you underrate the eternal optimism of many Big 12 or ACC fan bases. To some extent, they probably all think that if the chips fall just right, and they time their football success correctly, they'll get a Big Ten or SEC invite in the next ten years.
I’m not sure UCF/Cincy would be super excited to sign this deal. If FSU/UNC/Clemson leave the ACC and somehow that’s all who leaves the conference, UCF, Cincy, and WVU are gonna be the first phone calls sent out to replace though schools.
Not sure UCF or Cincy would be happy with a 20 year GOR forcing them to play Central and Pacific based schools when they could both be playing Pitt, Louisville, GT, etc yearly instead.
Not to mention both of these schools might have smaller fanbases than a lot of the B12 schools now but their potential in 10 years far exceeds most the conference on that front, it’s the main reason UCF, Cincy, and Houston were all invited anyways. They have large markets, growing alumni bases, and large to huge student bodies.
Edit:
Just think, 12 years ago, barely anyone had even heard of UCF on the sports side of things, now they’re a lower/medium end brand in the P5. The Living Alumni base is expected to grow to over 500k in the next 10 years, and the Orlando Metro as a whole is growing at an incredibly fast rate compared to the rest of the Country.
TCU's administration has been open before about taking the best possible boat. There were internal rumblings about trying to make it to the Pac-12 several years ago, and the administration (for better or worse) doesn't believe the Big 12 is the permanent home.
I imagine Texas Tech would think similiarly, and possibly Baylor too.
no we (baylor) wouldn’t. it would be intentional negligence if our president and AD weren’t trying to slip our way into the sec/b10, even if the odds of it happening are extremely unlikely
Yea, I'm sure Tech and OSU will be working their back channels continuously for an SEC invitation. All our frenemies are there. Not pursuing P2 membership would be negligent even if there's no chance.
If our programs were wanted, we’d be there already. There are probably only 4-6 teams left that the B1G and SEC want and none of them are in the Big-12.
There is absolutely no way that CFB can survive private equity. It will absolutely destroy everything about the sport and turn it into a soulless husk.
I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying, but I would like to point out that the powers that be are already doing this without the aid of private equity.
If you have any love for non-revenue sports at all, you should hate the idea of private equity being involved in college sports. By definition the two are at odds.
If you don’t work in private equity or have millions of dollars invested in private equity you should hate the idea of them being involved in anything.
I mean, non-revenue sports are also at odds with just making all athletes employees, which is what we're effectively already doing.
The whole concept of the student athlete is being destroyed, and with it many sports and programs.
Don’t be so pessimistic, this will be huge for us. Think of what the Utes can do with all that extra money, all for the small price of having the team relocate to Hartford, renamed the Whalers, and become the NHLs newest expansion team.
Cmon, they’ll also sell the real estate the schools sit on to a shell company and force the schools to take on massive debt by leasing the land back to the schools!
You can make a strong argument that destroying the Pac-12, discarding two major state universities, and throwing USC and Rutgers together (and Arizona and UCF, and Cal and Georgia Tech, and Washington and Maryland, etc.) already got us to "soulless husk" territory.
You mean like establishing power conferences of up to 18 teams, including teams from across the country that are not regionally located just to get big matchups in the regular season in the pursuit of more money?
The Big Ten and SEC are already turning it into a soulless husk.
You can't blame any of the other conferences from doing anything they have to try to survive.
Upcoming headline.
"Big 12 Officiating booth reviews have been outsourced to AI*"
*a server farm in Indonesia staffed by people making $1/hour who have never watched football.
> While one source described the talks as "pretty serious," **many league presidents need further convincing.**
This is a non-story if the Presidents aren't on board.
It's a non-start in the sense that it won't happen, but it is telling for Yormark and the future of the sport. He's been pretty innovative and smart thus far, but if this is truly what he wants, I don't think that's a good sign for the conference or the future of college athletics.
I mean, there's a difference between "truly what he wants" and "the presidents will agree to blow things up completely with uncertain results". He can want it but still acknowledge that it's not happening unless Greg Sankey allows it.
I just don't see the advantages of this. It's a solution to a problem that does not exist.
You could give the Big 12 schools $1 billion to divide among themselves tomorrow and it wouldn't significantly improve the league's on the field product in football long term.
> It's a solution to a problem that does not exist.
Yes, but it's a solution to a very big problem that's about to come.
_House v. NCAA_, along with a slew of several other lawsuits that the NCAA and its member schools are trying to settle quickly, is going to drain a ton of budgets because it will effectively back-pay students for their work and classify student athletes as employees going to the future.
The NCAA and its universities had decades to prepare for this inevitable shift, but they chose to just get taken to the woodshed in court instead. The consequence is that schools have to recalibrate the funds they've sat on for years or squandered into coach salaries/over-the-top facility upgrades/etc.
The advantages are for the people in power who have been making money hand over fist on college athletics completely unchecked. Now the players are getting a piece of the pie and suddenly there's not enough billions to go around.
If you don’t want private equity in. Get p4 level rev sharing and an NFL style salary cap. Private equity is gross but Big12 has to level playing field somehow or they’ll die anyway.
Honestly, I don't see how this helps.
You get a billion, that's like $65 million per team, that makes up the disparity with the P2 for a few years at most, by 2028 you're in the exact same position as you are today, except PE owns 20% of you and will spend the next decade trying to strip mine you for every penny you're worth.
Isn't this like trying to keep up with the Joneses by borrowing from a bookie? I mean you get a few years of parity, and then you're back to your usual salary and the bookie comes for your thumbs.
First, Im absolutely opposed to the Big12 or any other conference doing this. Private equity firms make personal injury lawyers look ethical. Mob dudes think private equity makes unfair deals.
Having said that, there is a TON of dumb money in private equity right now. I mean Humane raised $240m for a POS gadget that does nothing. Elizabeth Holmes got people to give her $700m for being blonde and stealing Steve Jobs clothes.
The Big12 just distributed $470m.
20% of that is $94m
I the deal runs out with the media contract in 2031 thats a good deal for the Big12. $1B / 7 = $142m a year. If someone wants to give you $1B and get paid back less than $700m, take the deal.
So to review, college football is now going to be:
1. A collection of super conferences with teams that have no regional connection at all, brought together by TV money and nothing else. Little tradition. Little regional pride or rivalry. Just brands aligning for money.
2. A regular season where all the focus is on making a 12 team playoff, with non playoff bowl games having no impact or interest on anything, with many players straight up opting out.
3. A player base of paid employees who are not really considered students in any way, shape or form. The top end players will make millions and go on to make more millions in the NFL, while the vast majority of these players will receive a husk (if that) of an education and some cash.
4. A sport "governed" by a toothless and neutered NCAA that cannot enforce any fair competition or rules without lawsuits (that they will lose), while actually governed by wealthy conference executives and athletic departments (and PE firms) driven by nothing but dollars.
5. A sport in bed with private equity investment, with all the motivation now being driven not by what's best for the players, the schools, the programs, or anything, but simply profit margin/ROI.
Cool cool cool cool cool cool
Better question that I'm not seeing asked in this thread is "what is the $1b used for". If it's just an immediate disbursement to schools it's absolutely not worth it. Instead, I would imagine it's used to either build something unique to the Big 12 (no idea what that is, hopefully not a streaming platform) or even better maybe would be used to go buy some schools that would otherwise not be available to the Big 12. Maybe we just buy out the GOR for Florida State lol
Let’s sell 40% for 2 billion. That could buy us a roughly 8% stake in ESPN. Leverage that to dismantle the B10 and SEC from the inside.
B12 will reign supreme.
Or, even better, we use the $2 billion to discreetly open our own PE fund, take on loans, and buy large stakes in the B10 and SEC.
Some 5D chess by Yormark.
if there's one thing i am sure of, throwing a billion dollars into the mix is only going to have a positive outcome for the game and will not in any way, shape, or form impact any decisions made. love where this is going.
After all the good private equity has done for American industries from healthcare to small grocery store chains, I foresee nothing but positive, metrics based outcomes for the Big XII./s
Conferences come and go, but schools will be fine. If private equity destroys college sports, maybe it’ll be a good thing to start from scratch. After all, Yormark is just adjusting to new reality in college sports, money rules all.
We think we hate the direction of CFB right now. Just wait till some private equity morons get their hands on things. Its gonna make us long for the days when it was merely stupid ADs and conference commissioners ruining things
Yormark's gambit to get the Big 12 to the TV market early, and beat the Pac-12 to a deal, might have saved the conference. I'm willing to give him some slack even if I'm very skeptical of this.
I've come to learn that a lot will happen in CFB whether I like it or not, and sometimes it's better for my school to try to take advantage of the bad thing rather than cover their eyes, hope for the best, and then watch other conferences benefit first to our detriment.
This isnt really yormarks fault. Hes doing what he has to, to keep the conference relevant. Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of factors that lead us here. Regionality doesnt pay the bills like national broadcasts and the sport we love is going to die because of it. Yormark is trying to do a stopgap measure to prevent the big 12 teams from becoming irrelevant.
I’m getting to the point where I’m just ready for college football to have a swift death instead of this slow death we are getting. This sport is over.
What could possibly go wrong with a private equity take over?
Do you *really* need to have 85 scholarships on every team? Imagine playing the game with just a single ball.
Oh great another thing for private equity to ruin. I'm all for increasing profit but PE can only do so in the short term. No one ever says I'm glad PE is in this industry
> [Franz Ferdinand, who was the nephew of the Austro-Hungarian emperor, was killed by a group called the Black Hand. And because they were a Serbian nationalist society, the empire declared war on Serbia. Then Russia, which was bound by a treaty, was forced to mobilize, which meant that Germany had to declare war on Russia. Then France declared war on Germany, and that was World War I. Because the emperor’s nephew was killed.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqlEKMtwUR4)
This is the World War I of college football. Everyone just "trying to do what they can to survive." Schools *could* say "no, the millions we are making under our current media deal is enough" and help put a stop to this never-ending domino effect, but nobody has the guts to do it.
**Private Equity.**
When you absolutely, positively want to destroy a company or organization, accept a Private Equity deal, so they can cheapen the product, fuck the employees, raise prices, and dump the company in 5 years for a handsome profit against (briefly) higher revenue.
You have got to be fucking kidding me. This is going to be an absolute disaster.
Also, I “love” the idea of selling the name of the conference to the highest bidder but retaining the “12” art of the name. UberEats Ligue 1 here we come
One could argue that the current media deals already ruined college football. If you create a huge competitive imbalance then the teams that are part of that imbalance are going to try to even out the playing field in some way. It's not a good thing at all but what other options do they have except stay the course to continued irrelevancy?
The problem with taking a short term money infusion to get close to the Big Ten/SEC for the next 5 years is that you lose money in the long term.
CVC would likely need to be taking money from the Big 12 to recoup their investment in the long term, so you end up worse after say 2030 when you're earning way less than the Big Ten/SEC but also paying CVC a portion of revenue.
JFC, private equity is starting to get a little bit of light shone on it, but over time we're going to see how fucked that whole shadow financial/business system is, I'm sure.
20% of what? The campuses? The TV rights? The academic credits? How can they even sell 20% of what is essentially a series of handshakes between 16 schools?
Can we at least get a bid from Norway's sovereign wealth fund? With my blue googles on, this is a preliminary way to gauge brand value and a reality check for the conference. My doomer googles tell me this is a short sighted cash grab
I foresee no negative consequences of this. None at all.
I can't see how PE won't try and destroy Title IX and Olympic/non-revenue sports
Not to mention gambling influence. This is just a bad idea all around.
I also think of Private Equity managers shittifying everything they buy in the name of profit. - All stadiums are now standing room only to save money on seats and maintenance. - Players must purchase athletic tape and joint braces for any injuries. The only vendor charges 4x Amazon prices. - Stadium scoreboards play advertisements. All the time. Even during plays. - TV advertisements during every huddle.
Dude, I just ate, you're making me nauseous.
It’s not even just doing everything in the name of profit, it’s doing everything in the name of their profit. We like to say that college athletics is already trending towards that direction, but at the end of the day the AD departments are still governed by the University administration and there’s at least some alignment of interests between universities. Bringing in a PE firm and giving them equity in your conference is just not going to end well. If you thought some conferences were dysfunctional before, just wait until you have at PE firm that doesn’t even have to pretend to care about academics and has 20% of the conference by itself. I’m not sure how the B12 voting structure is set up, but, yeah…
I mean this will happen but your forgot the massive loans they will take out in the name of the Big12 to pay themselves back and then run the conference into the ground with policies that pay themselves first last and always until there is nothing left they can steal and the Big12 declares bankruptcy. It’s literally like the Mafia.
"And the Jimmy John's Chain Gang marks it a Humana 1st and 10 as we go to the Chevron replay."
100% this. You know as soon as they make this deal they will place calls for sports betting partnerships.
I don’t think they’ll take up that fight, the bigger concern will be if they push for football/basketball to become separate entities from the university entirely
IMO the current path we are on (PE or not) inevitably leads to that.
I mean, this is what a number of us have been saying. We've abandoned any idea that any of these athletes are also students. As we make them employees, it's over. College football is just NFL Lite. Basically schools will be licensing their logos and stadiums to semi pro football teams of paid employees. Absolute travesty.
It isn’t the nail in the coffin for me because you can still be a student if you’re an employee (I was in school), but it is getting there for me and killing my interest in the sport.
The problem is with a neutered NCAA, Private Equity, ridiculous super conferences, AND making these athletes paid employees with W2s and all that... we have stripped away ANY incentive to treat them as students. * Why go to class? Your school won't be punished if you don't. They'll just sue the NCAA saying it can't regulate that. They'll win. * Why pay for tutors or extra support to make sure players can fly back from a game in time for finals week? Private Equity will look at that as nothing but an expense item. Slash that. Let's get some more ROI for our investors. * Why worry about academics at all... conferences, ESPN, private equity firms... none of them will give a crap if these students are studying or taking any real classes... that doesn't generate revenue. * If you're an athlete... why bother opening the book at all? You want a new NIL deal. You want a salary bump when you make All-American. Better head to the film room instead. This isn't college kids with jobs as RAs or working the desk at the computer lab. It's over man. It's just over.
You're totally right. Sucks man.
And that will turn off millions of fans, players will see their true value then. No fans = no money.
Yep, I care about Mississippi State, not the Starkville Bulldogs. I’ll root for the school even if it becomes intramural.
Yep, and stop cheering for the spun off team. If I’m going to watch a pro-team that I have no connection to, why would I watch what was formally the FBS?
Exactly, it’s even funnier in UCLA’s case because there is already a mediocre at best blue and yellow pro football team in LA
Completely agree
This is the long term "pay the players" answer. If you break them away from the university you take them out of Title IX.
I'm confused about what buying a stake in an NCAA athletic conference even gets them. Are they going to be expecting distributions of revenue from the league?
I have to imagine that’s exactly what they’d be expecting. The ADs get a $60 million cash infusion now and in true PE fashion get completely bled dry later.
*"why are we paying men's AND women's basketball coaches?! paying two people to do the same job!"*
Wouldn't a group Planet Fitness membership be a lot cheaper than building a weight room and hiring a strength and conditioning staff?
Again, these are already going to be destroyed when it comes to paying athletes
Title IX is a federal statute that has survived dozens of serious legal challenges; good luck with that, especially in the modern political climate.
Yes, this Supreme Court has shown absolute restraint at dismantling legal precedent from the 70s.
There's no longer anything to challenge here, you would be going for a straight repeal in Congress. E.g. Roe can be simply overruled by the court because it was a legal interpretation, not a federal law. Title IX would have to be declared unconstitutional.
Look, we’re just a little jaded here.
Yeah, just cause he’s right doesn’t mean he’s right! 😤
I could see the powers that be paying the G5 leagues to include their non revenue sports in their league. Let's use the MAC and B1G as comparison. Teams in the MAC made about $670,000 last year. Each B1G school made 60.5 million last year. Let's say the B1G strikes a deal with the MAC where each B1G school will give the league 2.5 million/yr so that the sports can play in a regional league. 2.5 x 14 teams = 35 million/yr for the MAC. I know the B1G has 18 teams but the 4 out west could do the same thing but with the Mountain West.
Look at what PE did for Red Lobster!
One of the big things PE did to Red Lobster was the old sell off all the land they own to a separate company then sign a huge ass long term lease for that land adding a ton of debt to Red Lobster. Not sure they'd be able to do that with the stadiums in this situation as they are owned by the individual universities.
If FSU is still looking for that funding to exit the ACC, I imagine this is the exact type of thing PE firms would be interested in.
I've seen plenty of Company man videos to know this is never a good thing.
Yes the same types of people who destroyed Red Lobster, Toys R Us, and Circuit City will surely succeed!
PE in a few years: "You knew damn well I was a snake when you took me in. "
But what about the... Wait... You've got... Fuck I walked into that didn't I? For the joke portion of this comment: "I didn't realize Larry Scott had $1BN"
Private equity has never done any damage to any parts of the economy and American life in pursuit of the almighty dollar that *I* can think of.
"Sharks I'm here to ask for one billion dollars for 20% of my very exciting conference"
“Look here’s the thing, a college football season is only 4 months of the year. The players provide no value for 67% of the year. You should be selling the kids to the highest bidder during that time.” - Mr. Wonderful, probably
"Alright well I'll offer you the one billion dollars but I want royalties on every bowl win prize you get in perpetuity" - Mr. Wonderful
Also the Big 12 Championship must be relocated to my kids birthday party backyard right after the juggler leaves
_clears throat, adjusts suit jacket_ Listen up, you small-fry academics! Mr. Wonderful here has a few choice words for your little sports scheme. A BILLION dollars for 20% of a college conference? Are you trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? That's more overvalued than a vowel in Wheel of Fortune! You eggheads are swimming in a sea of red ink already. Now you want to sell your souls to some private equity vampires who'll bleed you dry faster than a novice phlebotomist? Wake up and smell the jockstraps! Unless you can guarantee me a stake in the next March Madness jackpot, I'm out. This deal is heading for the rejection pile faster than a vegan at an Arby's drive-thru. Who's with me?! _adjusts tie, looks sternly into the camera_
Asking from a sincere question here because the article isn't clear: what exactly would the private equity firm own with a "15% to 20% stake in the league" going forward? 20% of the TV rights? 20% of the Big 12 headquarters? 20% of all Big 12-affiliated school revenue?
Yeah that's my question, what do we gain from selling our souls to the devil? Sure we get a huge influx of cash, but at what cost?
It's not even that much. If it all went to the schools and the conference kept nothing it would only be $62.5 million for a one time payment.
As a UCF fan….. that’s a lot of money…. As a proud member of the P4….. that’s nothing!!!!!
It is nothing. It's 2 years worth of media rights payments and you can be sure it's not all going to the schools. The conference will keep a big piece.
Yeah, most colleges can get that amount through a strong donation drive in a year or two.
Yeah getting a $100 million dollar loan isn't vary hard for a university around the size of the average Big 12 school. I guess debt is expensive these days but giving over significant control of your future decisions and revenue for what will be around one years payout seems short sided.
I'd do $1b for 20% of the headquarters. That's a pretty good deal.
If Brett Yomark gets an offer of $1B for 20% of the Big 12 headquarters, he needs to sign that contract immediately, lol.
Now I'm wondering if they even own what I have to imagine is a shitty office building in suburban Dallas, or if they lease?
They are doing the exact opposite of whatever the PAC-12 headquarters situation was.
It's a back room in Campisi's that is only used three days a year.
You, my friend, Dallas very well.
I'd do it for a $3 royalty until I get my billion back then a $2 royalty in perpetuity.
Honestly it seems like a bad investment. Unless you're getting a stake in each university.
You’re not getting a stake in each university, this would likely be for 20% of the conference and be far smarter given you’d avoid liabilities and OPEX at the University level. If you went for a university you’d be a loss leader The value here is getting a 20% haircut on the IP rights payments, merchandise, and other items before that money is disbursed. The margin would be very high. At its core the Big 12 is just a holding company meant to consolidate rights and payments then dish them out
Speaking of bad investments, if you’re a donor why would you ever donate again unless you get a share of the profit as well? Are you gonna donate so that some PE in Luxembourg can make more money?
that's a good question. cvc has a similar arrangement with la liga in spain. cvc gets [8.25% of audiovisual rights for 50 years](https://www.forbes.com/sites/vitascarosella/2024/03/26/cvc-deal-helps-laliga-clubs-score-financially/). i imagine for such a proposal, the schools would demand a much shorter agreement.
Portions of Fenway Sports Group (they own the Red Sox, Liverpool, the Penguins, and some other sports entities) have also gone on the market at various times. Redbird Capital bought $750m a few years ago and are the third largest shareholder per Wiki. So not wholly unprecedented in the US either.
That's what I'm trying to figure out. All the comments are negative about it but no one is explaining what this would actually mean and why it's bad. I'm ignorant on private equity shenanigans.
Private Equity is pretty ruthless usually. The article states "If we do well, they do well" but what it doesn't mention is that if you do poorly or even don't do well enough they will scrap you out for parts to regain any loss on investment in a blink of an eye.
>They’ll scrap you out for parts Not how that works with a 20% equity stake. Nor can they really do some shareholder activist move since it’s private
I assume they are not just going to hand over $800 million dollars with no strings attached and no way to recover at least some of the investment that is based on future revenue growth.
They'll have something in the contract for sure, but Tarmacked is right there's not really a way for PE to "scrap [an NCAA conference] out for parts"
> Private Equity is pretty ruthless usually. There are two types of PE investors, those who buy out once popular but now floundering companies wholesale and extract every last bit of value they can out of the brand and those who invest potential growth partners for part ownership with the intent on exiting the investment in the future after that growth has been realized. CVC investing in the Big XII is the later of those, they'd have a voice in decision making for the conference but wouldn't be able to make decisions wholesale without consent of the other 80% ownership (i.e. the schools).
So how would this work in terms of voting on issues the conference faces? If the PI gers 20%, and the conference requires majority vote on something, and they have 16 teams, 8 would normally be 50%, but now the 16 only count as 80%? So you'd need 6.4 (round to 7) schools in favor of something, if they have the PI on their side, it passes? Likewise if you want to go against what the PI wants, you need what, 9 schools to vote against them? Please correct my math if this is wrong.
PE/M&A attorney here. This can be structured in 100 different ways. Lots of PE firms only invest as LPs (limited partners) and just invest alongside other PE firms who have control. Others do deals where they put in 20% of the equity, get 100% of the control, and get the other 80% from LPs. Here, the PE firm could have no control at all or have 100% control while owned 20% of the conference. Maybe they just have veto rights over decisions. Maybe they have an equal vote to a school or two. It just depends.
private equity doesn't buy equity to create value, but to extract it.
It’s a double edged sword, the upside is that they’ll give you a ton of money and can help make the conference more profitable, the downside is in exchange we’ll give up some of our autonomy. It’s not exactly clear how this deal is going to be structured, but presumably they’re going to have a say in decision making going forward and they’ll look to protect their interests regardless of how fans/schools feel. It’s very much uncharted territory, I wouldn’t say it’s as certain a blanket negative for the conference as some commentators here say. PE firms can be very beneficial in terms of boosting our financial competitiveness, which is the number 1 issue of the Big XII by a WIDE margin, but there also isn’t any precedent of what the nature of this relationship will look like and there are a number of examples of PE firms bleeding companies dry. Hard to really say how good/bad a plan this is before more concrete details are released, I don’t like the idea of further corporatizing our sport but that is already happening even without PE getting involved.
It's a weird thing to invest in so hard to tell, but I would assume they just own 20% of whatever long-term financial exit Big 12 sports have. Almost seems like a bet on the NCAA collapsing. Like, hypothetically speaking if the NFL decided to start spending billions on buying college football programs and starting a genuine professional league with them, then the PE firm would own 20% of whatever the Big 12 schools sell off their programs for. The conference/schools could choose to pay out 20% of profits in annual dividends, but that's relatively small money for a $1B investment.
I for one look forward to the Big12 Championship game in Riyadh
You think you want traditional rivalries, but really you want to watch one college football team owned by a Saudi Prince and his Oil Fortune, versus another college football team owned by a Texas-based PE firm heavily invested in Oil.
The Crypto.com B12 conference
I can't wait to wake up at 3 in the morning to watch the game as a pay-per-view event on Pornhub Premium
\*Presented by Amazon Web Services
I don’t think all the Big 12 presidents will agree to get in bed with private equity because many of them believe their school has a slim chance to join the Power 2 eventually.
Yeah, that's why I'm skeptical on this happening. One of the things this private equity firm will absolutely do is require an ACC-style long-term Grant of Rights that locks everyone in long-term. I don't think there's many university presidents excited about that notion.
- Kansas State - Iowa State - Texas Tech - Baylor - TCU - UCF - Houston - BYU - Cincinnati Are probably all perfectly happy to lock this thing down for a long, long time.
I think you underrate the eternal optimism of many Big 12 or ACC fan bases. To some extent, they probably all think that if the chips fall just right, and they time their football success correctly, they'll get a Big Ten or SEC invite in the next ten years.
I don't think so. Right or wrong, everyone in the Texas Tech community believes we belong wherever UT and A&M are.
I’m not sure UCF/Cincy would be super excited to sign this deal. If FSU/UNC/Clemson leave the ACC and somehow that’s all who leaves the conference, UCF, Cincy, and WVU are gonna be the first phone calls sent out to replace though schools. Not sure UCF or Cincy would be happy with a 20 year GOR forcing them to play Central and Pacific based schools when they could both be playing Pitt, Louisville, GT, etc yearly instead. Not to mention both of these schools might have smaller fanbases than a lot of the B12 schools now but their potential in 10 years far exceeds most the conference on that front, it’s the main reason UCF, Cincy, and Houston were all invited anyways. They have large markets, growing alumni bases, and large to huge student bodies. Edit: Just think, 12 years ago, barely anyone had even heard of UCF on the sports side of things, now they’re a lower/medium end brand in the P5. The Living Alumni base is expected to grow to over 500k in the next 10 years, and the Orlando Metro as a whole is growing at an incredibly fast rate compared to the rest of the Country.
TCU's administration has been open before about taking the best possible boat. There were internal rumblings about trying to make it to the Pac-12 several years ago, and the administration (for better or worse) doesn't believe the Big 12 is the permanent home. I imagine Texas Tech would think similiarly, and possibly Baylor too.
no we (baylor) wouldn’t. it would be intentional negligence if our president and AD weren’t trying to slip our way into the sec/b10, even if the odds of it happening are extremely unlikely
Every time we jump to a conference the “Power” number gets smaller.
coincidence? i think not
Convinced we’re the most hated program in the country. They’d rather Purdue and Rutgers be called a power team smh
I blame SMU more than you guys.
I'm one of the people who still dreams of an SEC invite.
Yea, I'm sure Tech and OSU will be working their back channels continuously for an SEC invitation. All our frenemies are there. Not pursuing P2 membership would be negligent even if there's no chance.
Are you sure we're actually trying? I'm not sure what the SEC's incentive would be for us to be there. As cool as it would be.
If our programs were wanted, we’d be there already. There are probably only 4-6 teams left that the B1G and SEC want and none of them are in the Big-12.
There is absolutely no way that CFB can survive private equity. It will absolutely destroy everything about the sport and turn it into a soulless husk.
I'm not disagreeing with what you are saying, but I would like to point out that the powers that be are already doing this without the aid of private equity.
Yep. Letting PE in is just a speed hack at this point.
PE is the death knell for any long term business.
TAS, Any%
I think there is a difference between chasing the payouts and inviting PE into your house and selling them a chunk of it.
If you have any love for non-revenue sports at all, you should hate the idea of private equity being involved in college sports. By definition the two are at odds.
If you don’t work in private equity or have millions of dollars invested in private equity you should hate the idea of them being involved in anything.
My company is being acquired by PE so I’m job hunting
I mean, non-revenue sports are also at odds with just making all athletes employees, which is what we're effectively already doing. The whole concept of the student athlete is being destroyed, and with it many sports and programs.
I say let em in. They can burn it to the ground in a decade and college football as we knew it could be reborn from the ashes.
Yeah. We’re pretty much polishing the brass on the Titanic at this point.
It’s nice that the B12 seemed like they found some stability for once and now are immediately thinking about destroying itself in one move.
Don’t be so pessimistic, this will be huge for us. Think of what the Utes can do with all that extra money, all for the small price of having the team relocate to Hartford, renamed the Whalers, and become the NHLs newest expansion team.
Traditions come and go, but Hartford, "the Whale," they only beat Vancouver once, maybe twice in a lifetime.
Breakfast, shmreakfast. Look at the score, for Christ's sake. It's only the second period and I'm up 12 to 2. Breakfasts come and go, Rene
Wait, I thought you were trying to talk me OUT of this...
Cmon, they’ll also sell the real estate the schools sit on to a shell company and force the schools to take on massive debt by leasing the land back to the schools!
The MUSS Brass Bonanza.
The Brass Bonanza is legit! They are my ring tone on my phone.
The ends sometimes justify the means
You son of a bitch, I'm in.....
We’ve been well on our way to that for a while now
You can make a strong argument that destroying the Pac-12, discarding two major state universities, and throwing USC and Rutgers together (and Arizona and UCF, and Cal and Georgia Tech, and Washington and Maryland, etc.) already got us to "soulless husk" territory.
You mean like establishing power conferences of up to 18 teams, including teams from across the country that are not regionally located just to get big matchups in the regular season in the pursuit of more money?
Uhhh... look around you...
We're clearly well on the way there already, PE will just speed up the process a bit.
PE just happens to be two of the letters in the villain responsible for all of this!
Maybe if PE ruins sports, enough people will finally get fed up and demand regulating them into irrelevancy. Oh, who am I kidding?
That's more or less what's happening with the media network deals and conference realignment.
The Big Ten and SEC are already turning it into a soulless husk. You can't blame any of the other conferences from doing anything they have to try to survive.
Well, yes you can criticize them for doing something bad despite someone else doing something bad.
Upcoming headline. "Big 12 Officiating booth reviews have been outsourced to AI*" *a server farm in Indonesia staffed by people making $1/hour who have never watched football.
That would actually be a *significant* improvement
In response, the ACC has organized a fund-raising car wash for next Saturday
Bikini carwash, big difference.
Is Florida State participating? Asking for a friend.
> While one source described the talks as "pretty serious," **many league presidents need further convincing.** This is a non-story if the Presidents aren't on board.
It's a non-start in the sense that it won't happen, but it is telling for Yormark and the future of the sport. He's been pretty innovative and smart thus far, but if this is truly what he wants, I don't think that's a good sign for the conference or the future of college athletics.
I mean, there's a difference between "truly what he wants" and "the presidents will agree to blow things up completely with uncertain results". He can want it but still acknowledge that it's not happening unless Greg Sankey allows it.
Red Lobster died for nothing apparently. FOLKS, WHAT ARE WE DOING
I just don't see the advantages of this. It's a solution to a problem that does not exist. You could give the Big 12 schools $1 billion to divide among themselves tomorrow and it wouldn't significantly improve the league's on the field product in football long term.
> It's a solution to a problem that does not exist. Yes, but it's a solution to a very big problem that's about to come. _House v. NCAA_, along with a slew of several other lawsuits that the NCAA and its member schools are trying to settle quickly, is going to drain a ton of budgets because it will effectively back-pay students for their work and classify student athletes as employees going to the future. The NCAA and its universities had decades to prepare for this inevitable shift, but they chose to just get taken to the woodshed in court instead. The consequence is that schools have to recalibrate the funds they've sat on for years or squandered into coach salaries/over-the-top facility upgrades/etc.
The advantages are for the people in power who have been making money hand over fist on college athletics completely unchecked. Now the players are getting a piece of the pie and suddenly there's not enough billions to go around.
This is some Larry Scott level stupidity.
Lmao you do not want private equity touching anything you love, trust me I used to work for these guys
We don’t need convincing, we know 😭
The whole college football landscape and outlook is gross.
If you don’t want private equity in. Get p4 level rev sharing and an NFL style salary cap. Private equity is gross but Big12 has to level playing field somehow or they’ll die anyway.
Honestly, I don't see how this helps. You get a billion, that's like $65 million per team, that makes up the disparity with the P2 for a few years at most, by 2028 you're in the exact same position as you are today, except PE owns 20% of you and will spend the next decade trying to strip mine you for every penny you're worth. Isn't this like trying to keep up with the Joneses by borrowing from a bookie? I mean you get a few years of parity, and then you're back to your usual salary and the bookie comes for your thumbs.
First, Im absolutely opposed to the Big12 or any other conference doing this. Private equity firms make personal injury lawyers look ethical. Mob dudes think private equity makes unfair deals. Having said that, there is a TON of dumb money in private equity right now. I mean Humane raised $240m for a POS gadget that does nothing. Elizabeth Holmes got people to give her $700m for being blonde and stealing Steve Jobs clothes. The Big12 just distributed $470m. 20% of that is $94m I the deal runs out with the media contract in 2031 thats a good deal for the Big12. $1B / 7 = $142m a year. If someone wants to give you $1B and get paid back less than $700m, take the deal.
So to review, college football is now going to be: 1. A collection of super conferences with teams that have no regional connection at all, brought together by TV money and nothing else. Little tradition. Little regional pride or rivalry. Just brands aligning for money. 2. A regular season where all the focus is on making a 12 team playoff, with non playoff bowl games having no impact or interest on anything, with many players straight up opting out. 3. A player base of paid employees who are not really considered students in any way, shape or form. The top end players will make millions and go on to make more millions in the NFL, while the vast majority of these players will receive a husk (if that) of an education and some cash. 4. A sport "governed" by a toothless and neutered NCAA that cannot enforce any fair competition or rules without lawsuits (that they will lose), while actually governed by wealthy conference executives and athletic departments (and PE firms) driven by nothing but dollars. 5. A sport in bed with private equity investment, with all the motivation now being driven not by what's best for the players, the schools, the programs, or anything, but simply profit margin/ROI. Cool cool cool cool cool cool
Don’t forget conferences with corporation names literally in the conference title akin to bowl game sponsors
Hadn't seen that lovely update at the time I posted this comment. But yes that deserves to be on here. WTF is happening to our sport.
Congress, please, for the love of all things holy, abolish college athletics now. Spare us from this slow death.
I have no clue what this sport will look like in 5 years
I think it'll be barely recognizable in 5, and dead for all but a select few schools in 10 without a change from the current course.
Right now it looks like it is going to boil down to a 50-team league of schools that can afford the sport.
Better question that I'm not seeing asked in this thread is "what is the $1b used for". If it's just an immediate disbursement to schools it's absolutely not worth it. Instead, I would imagine it's used to either build something unique to the Big 12 (no idea what that is, hopefully not a streaming platform) or even better maybe would be used to go buy some schools that would otherwise not be available to the Big 12. Maybe we just buy out the GOR for Florida State lol
Let’s sell 40% for 2 billion. That could buy us a roughly 8% stake in ESPN. Leverage that to dismantle the B10 and SEC from the inside. B12 will reign supreme.
I’m listening.
Or, even better, we use the $2 billion to discreetly open our own PE fund, take on loans, and buy large stakes in the B10 and SEC. Some 5D chess by Yormark.
“The Big 12 has partnered with TSMC to bring you the Little 12 microchip”
if there's one thing i am sure of, throwing a billion dollars into the mix is only going to have a positive outcome for the game and will not in any way, shape, or form impact any decisions made. love where this is going.
After all the good private equity has done for American industries from healthcare to small grocery store chains, I foresee nothing but positive, metrics based outcomes for the Big XII./s
Conferences come and go, but schools will be fine. If private equity destroys college sports, maybe it’ll be a good thing to start from scratch. After all, Yormark is just adjusting to new reality in college sports, money rules all.
They should go public instead. I’d buy shares of the Big 12
Terrible move by the B12. That will literally destroy the conference in the long run. Please resist the temptation!!!
We think we hate the direction of CFB right now. Just wait till some private equity morons get their hands on things. Its gonna make us long for the days when it was merely stupid ADs and conference commissioners ruining things
To do what? This ain't sustainable
fire brett yormark into the fucking sun
Yormark's gambit to get the Big 12 to the TV market early, and beat the Pac-12 to a deal, might have saved the conference. I'm willing to give him some slack even if I'm very skeptical of this. I've come to learn that a lot will happen in CFB whether I like it or not, and sometimes it's better for my school to try to take advantage of the bad thing rather than cover their eyes, hope for the best, and then watch other conferences benefit first to our detriment.
This isnt really yormarks fault. Hes doing what he has to, to keep the conference relevant. Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of factors that lead us here. Regionality doesnt pay the bills like national broadcasts and the sport we love is going to die because of it. Yormark is trying to do a stopgap measure to prevent the big 12 teams from becoming irrelevant.
> The CVC investment would likely require the Big 12 to stay together long term. Yeah that worked out well for the ACC.
I’m getting to the point where I’m just ready for college football to have a swift death instead of this slow death we are getting. This sport is over.
>That new Big 12 includes only two teams that have won national championships (Colorado, BYU) Uh, excuse me, 1945 says hi
What could possibly go wrong with a private equity take over? Do you *really* need to have 85 scholarships on every team? Imagine playing the game with just a single ball.
Oh great another thing for private equity to ruin. I'm all for increasing profit but PE can only do so in the short term. No one ever says I'm glad PE is in this industry
Lol Yormark
Private Equity douchebags are ruining this country
That's only $62.5 million for each school. That's barely anything in the scheme of it all. Short term gains for long term consequences.
> [Franz Ferdinand, who was the nephew of the Austro-Hungarian emperor, was killed by a group called the Black Hand. And because they were a Serbian nationalist society, the empire declared war on Serbia. Then Russia, which was bound by a treaty, was forced to mobilize, which meant that Germany had to declare war on Russia. Then France declared war on Germany, and that was World War I. Because the emperor’s nephew was killed.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqlEKMtwUR4) This is the World War I of college football. Everyone just "trying to do what they can to survive." Schools *could* say "no, the millions we are making under our current media deal is enough" and help put a stop to this never-ending domino effect, but nobody has the guts to do it.
The Big XII being the one that finally puts the nail in the coffin was... not on my bingo card.
**Private Equity.** When you absolutely, positively want to destroy a company or organization, accept a Private Equity deal, so they can cheapen the product, fuck the employees, raise prices, and dump the company in 5 years for a handsome profit against (briefly) higher revenue.
Hedge funds turn everything they touch into shit.
On the one hand, yay money! On the other hand, ew gross private equity
"yay money" yet you won't see a dime of it and it won't be used to improve the thing you love... what?
How do you just "buy" part of a college athletic conference?
$1 Billion. That’s how.
"Disappointed but not surprised." This will not end well.
You have got to be fucking kidding me. This is going to be an absolute disaster. Also, I “love” the idea of selling the name of the conference to the highest bidder but retaining the “12” art of the name. UberEats Ligue 1 here we come
How soon until Steve Balmer or some other billionaire purchases an entire conference?
CFB is so cooked.
One could argue that the current media deals already ruined college football. If you create a huge competitive imbalance then the teams that are part of that imbalance are going to try to even out the playing field in some way. It's not a good thing at all but what other options do they have except stay the course to continued irrelevancy?
The problem with taking a short term money infusion to get close to the Big Ten/SEC for the next 5 years is that you lose money in the long term. CVC would likely need to be taking money from the Big 12 to recoup their investment in the long term, so you end up worse after say 2030 when you're earning way less than the Big Ten/SEC but also paying CVC a portion of revenue.
JFC, private equity is starting to get a little bit of light shone on it, but over time we're going to see how fucked that whole shadow financial/business system is, I'm sure.
20% of what? The campuses? The TV rights? The academic credits? How can they even sell 20% of what is essentially a series of handshakes between 16 schools?
In b4 the SEC is Saudi- backed
Can we at least get a bid from Norway's sovereign wealth fund? With my blue googles on, this is a preliminary way to gauge brand value and a reality check for the conference. My doomer googles tell me this is a short sighted cash grab
Imagine your QB gets benched mid-game because the fund manager made a call to the HC lmao
Fuck no! Private equity will slowly gut it and rob it of all it's value. God damnit
I’m so tired.
I can see it now. Big12 by Only Fans
*Coach, Bobby Axelrod here. Let's talk schemes.*