Winners and Losers of The PAC Rebuild (The MW is DOA)
This will be informative, but it won't be pretty. I had a 3 hour drive tonight and was thinking about some things, and fired up Ye Olde Data Warehouse to dig in. Because it's 11 at night and I walked almost 10 miles at the San Diego Zoo today, you get screenshots instead of formatted tables and charts.
Initial Question: "How much TV value is for the MW is wrapped up in the 5 schools leaving?"
I knew it was a lot - obviously Boise, Fresno and SDSU are the 3 biggest brands in the league. Colorado State had the history in the 90s/00s that people like to tune in and Utah State is experience their best decade in the last 40 years. Thankfully, we don't have to guess how the TV networks value the games, because they tell us exactly how they value them by how they slot them on TV.
I broke the games down 2 ways: # of Pac-5 schools and TV Tier.
I tiered the TV broadcast like so:
- Tier 1: CBS/ABC/FOX/NBC
- Tier 2: ESPN/ESPN2/FS1/CBS Sports
- Tier 3: FS2/ESPNU/ESPNNews
- Tier 4: anything else
- Tier 5: not broadcast at all/MW Network/Hawaii's weird Spectrum deal
I debated putting CBS Sports on Tier 3, but left it to give them the benefit of the doubt here since that is the primary network for the league. I took the 2021-2024 seasons since that is under their current TV deal.
A behold:
The 4th column tells most of the story here:
- If 0 of the teams leaving for the PAC are playing only 47% are on Tier 1 or Tier 2
- If 1 of the 5 is playing, 72%
- If 2 are playing, 93%.
CBS Sports boasts being the "Home of Academy Football" - Air Force is the biggest contributor to the 47% - without them, it's 35% for the rest of the schools (though this is impacted by Hawaii as well):
Okay so how bad are the other teams?
I looking at CFP Era (2014-) SP+ ratings across the G6. I pulled the 4 call-ups out of the American (Houston, Cincy, UCF, SMU), and broke out the Pac-5 to their own group, with the others in their 2025 conferences:
0 in SP+ means perfectly average. The left behind MW is Tuesday Night MACtion Quality. Move NIU and UTEP over to the MW and they're the worst conference in the FBS over the last decade:
UTEP is so bad that taking them out of CUSA moved the whole league up 2 spots. Air Force is the only above average team and everybody else is a full TD or more underdog to them. Yikes:
So is it worth it?
Looking at this - I think so. The gap is so large between the rest of the G6 that the Pac champ should get into the playoff MOST years. If they do that, then they can firmly operate in the DMZ between the two segments of haves and have nots, much like the American tried to push with their P6 campaign when everybody started the year assuming their champ would get the NY6 bid.
With the Pac signing a TV deal, the MW is going to get crippled monetarily. Their current TV deal pays ~3.5mm per team and that is with everybody involved. If you reduce it to the back of the napkin, that's about 40mm total from TV money for the league each year.
Now take the estimated numbers that the Pac with 8 schools (7 + Gonzaga) just signed for ~8mm each, and, well, depending on how much you attribute to general market inflation, the Pac just took 100% of the west coast G5 TV dollars. So it's working exactly as planned for that league.
How bad can it be for the MW?
The Sun Belt has become a fan favorite by being regional with like minded schools in college towns that love ball. They have their dead weight (and ironically are about to shed some), but the top half is exciting. They've gone from the worst league in the country 15 years ago to everybody's favorite G5 toy.
They still don't make much and have to play mid week because they're competing for Saturday time slots against the ACC/SEC/Big Ten/Big 12. The geography helps the Pac here.
Their 2023 990 filing shows ~7mm in TV revenue for 14 schools. This was signed in 2018 and expanded in 2022 (prior to adding Marshall, Southern Miss, ODU and James Madison). There are likely kickers that we will see drive additional growth as viewership increases in the coming season because they built a good product first and foremost.
CUSA reported the same amount in their 2022 990 filing - which was the last to include Marshall/Southern Miss/ODU. They've only been able to backfill with FCS schools Missouri State, Kennesaw, Sam Houston, Jacksonville State and Delaware since this was released.
TL;DR - the MW is looking at probably having to take 750k per school (if they're lucky) which is a steep haircut from the 3.5mm they're used to. And they better win that lawsuit otherwise they're not gonna be able to pay UNLV or Air Force their promised money.
The Biggest Winner: Texas State
They're expected to get an invite Monday morning and honestly I'm excited for them. They've struggled mightily since moving up to FCS - but they won 2 D2 national championships in the 80s, and 2 FCS conference titles in their last 5 years at the level. On paper Dennis Franchione, Everett Whithers and Jake Spavital all should've worked somehow, but they struggled big time.
GJ Kinne is 8-5 in back to back years since taking over - the bones are good and success was immediate once they got the right guy in the door. They have 40k students in a college town of 70k half way between Austin and San Antonio.
Like UNLV they may have only been good the last 2 years, but unlike UNLV they:
- Have regional support
- Have tons of local talent around them
- Had success at multiple prior levels
They lucked out by being in the right place at the right time and I hope the Bobcats make the most of it.
The Biggest Losers: Air Force and UNLV
Staying was the worst decision in realignment since Tulane left the SEC.