When dealing with a catastrophe as public as the collapse of the Pac-12 Conference, the details behind the scenes are generally even more bonkers than what is known on the surface. That might be the case here.
John Canzano, a columnist and radio talk show host on Portland's 750 AM, The Game, is claiming that sources told him a major piece of information that would make the league's disintegration even more bitter to swallow.
“The Pac-12 got an offer of $30 million per school from ESPN in the fall of 2022,” he wrote on his Substack. “It included all the conference’s media rights, including the Pac-12 Network. But the conference presidents and chancellors believed they could do much better.”
If true, then that is an utterly brutal development in this unfathomable saga. It also could explain why conference members were so frustrated with the ongoing negotiations for a media rights deal. Being presented with Apple's offer, which would have reportedly paid each school $25 million, might have been the breaking point that led to this mass exodus.
The Pac-12 is now down to just four members and is not an enticing draw for any major media outlet. It is easy to assign complete blame to commissioner George Kliavkoff for this debacle, but a source inside the conference told Canzano that the higher-ups took control of negotiations and ordered him to pass on the deal.
A mind-boggling counter offer might have effectively filled out the league's death warrant. “We said we want $50 million per school,” the source said, to which ESPN had a simple one-word reply. “Goodbye.”
This would be quite the blunder by the Pac-12 board, Kliavkoff and anyone else who deemed it a wise idea to try to fleece ESPN. The concept of leverage is sorely lacking in this case, but this information would also confirm a much larger issue that had been at work during this whole process.
The conference incorrectly misjudged its hand and therefore had no way of ever competently playing it when it came time to push in its chips. Mockery will ensue, but this is all just sad.