Countless stadiums, arenas, golf tournaments and bowl games have sponsors in their titles. The world’s most prestigious soccer league was named the Barclays Premier League until 2016. Private equity firms currently hold ownership stakes in more than 60 North American sports franchises, according to Pitchbook, as well as many of the top soccer clubs in Europe.

But when news broke Thursday that the Big 12 is entertaining both a potential title sponsorship deal with insurance giant Allstate and a $1 billion private equity partnership, you could almost hear the collective reaction: “How dare they?!”

GO DEEPER

Big 12 discussing PE investment, sale of naming rights to Allstate

Kirk Wakefield, a Baylor University marketing professor, had a much different reaction to the possible title sponsorship.

“You wonder why people haven’t done that already,” said Wakefield, who runs a research firm that studies sponsorship impacts for sports leagues and brands. “It’s such an obvious opportunity.”

USC sports business professor David Carter looks at the plight of the Big 12, which lags hundreds of millions a year in revenue behind the Big Ten and SEC, and sees private equity as a matter of Darwinian survival. To win national championships, Big 12 schools need to be able to spend like…

The transfer portal opened March 18 for men’s and women’s basketball, which meant Rachael Bacchus was having anything but a normal day.

Normal days barely exist for Bacchus, the general manager for NIL at Arizona State. Her job is to stay on top of policy changes, court rulings, portal windows and everything else that goes into the ever-changing world of name, image and likeness. When a season ends and the portal opens, the bidding begins. For Bacchus, that means having in-depth conversations with coaches and players about what the athlete is earning, what’s being offered and what Arizona State can do to retain its players.

“We’re understanding how collectives on the outside are operating, making sure our coaches know our starting forward is being reached out to and DM’ed and having conversations from other collectives,” Bacchus said. “‘Here’s what we’re up against. Here’s what he made last year in NIL through his disclosures.’ In your exit interviews with him, if he says, ‘Hey, coach, I want more NIL,’ here’s how you know what ‘more’ is.”

Bacchus is an employee of Altius Sports Partners, a consulting firm that advises athletic departments on NIL. Altius has general managers overseeing NIL programs at 18 schools, with Michigan soon to become…

LAS VEGAS — At halftime of the Utah-Arizona State first-round conference tournament game, the Pac-12 mascots engaged in a game of musical chairs. As the mascots started to get eliminated — Tommy the Trojan, Wilma the Wildcat, then Puddles the Duck — it was hard not to think of the state of the conference as a whole, especially when Benny the Beaver was the only one left with a chair (or rather, inflatable donut).

Some PAC-12 mascot musical chair fun pic.twitter.com/ldRYc7SMDG

— Malaina Humphreys (@mmalainaa) March 7, 2024

 

In the chaos of conference realignment, most of the Pac-12 schools grabbed any available chair they could find, no matter what league it came in. Ten schools jumped ship, leaving Oregon State and Washington State clinging to the remnants of a once-proud conference, like Benny holding onto that inflatable for dear life.

In Las Vegas during the Pac-12 tournament, the conference’s cloudy future dampens the mood of the festivities. Even as teams celebrate big wins, they’re left lamenting the fact that these opponents won’t be on their schedule next season, that the coaches they’ve formed lasting bonds with won’t be making the trip to their arenas anymore. There are still resumes to build and a championship to win, but an undercurrent of sadness…

Arizona, Arizona State and Utah have formally applied for membership to the Big 12, three people familiar with the Big 12’s discussions told The Athletic.

The Big 12’s board of presidents and chancellors are meeting Friday night, the sources confirmed, and are expected to accept the three new members. ESPN initially reported that Arizona State and Utah had applied for membership.

The three schools would join Colorado in becoming Big 12 members in 2024 at the conclusion of the Pac-12’s current media rights contract, turning the Big 12 into a 16-member conference and leaving the Pac-12 with Cal, Oregon State, Stanford and Washington State as its four remaining members.

Oregon and Washington deciding Friday morning they’ll leave the Pac-12 for the Big Ten forced a change of heart for leadership at the three schools after their efforts to stick together and save the conference and opened the door for the Big 12 to pursue agreements with all three.

Oregon’s Board of Trustees votes unanimously to leave the Pac-12 for the Big Ten in August 2024. Oregon will receive an undisclosed partial share from the Big Ten’s media rights and will become a full member once the current media rights contract expires following the 2029-30 sports season.

After convincing Colorado to leave the…

The Big Ten is expected to officially approve Oregon and Washington as new members later Friday, league sources tell The Athletic.

The news comes after a frenzied 36 hours. Early Friday morning, momentum for the two schools had slowed considerably, but then the Pac-12 met to discuss its new media rights deal and its future. Afterward, the Big Ten presidents and chancellors met, and the group eventually agreed to offer official invitations to Oregon and Washington — to become the league’s 17th and 18th members. The invites come a little more than a day after The Athletic reported that the Big Ten presidents authorized commissioner Tony Petitti to pursue expansion, and one week after Colorado left the Pac-12 for its former home conference, the Big 12.

The additions come barely 14 months after the Big Ten welcomed Pac-12 flagship programs USC and UCLA as new members beginning Aug. 2, 2024. That movement launched the Pac-12 into chaos in the aftermath, especially in almost-daily showdowns with the Big 12 over expansion.

The Pac-12’s inability to secure a quality linear media rights contract coupled with the Big 12’s media rights agreement, reached last fall, led many Pac-12 programs to consider leaving the historic conference. It came to a head last week when Colorado…

The Athletic has live coverage of Colorado’s move to the Big 12.

Colorado is planning to exit the Pac-12 to join the Big 12 in 2024, the school officially announced Thursday afternoon.

The university’s Board of Regents unanimously approved a resolution Thursday allowing Colorado to join the Big 12 effective for the 2024-25 academic year.

The Big 12’s board of presidents and chancellors had already voted unanimously on Wednesday night to accept Colorado as a member of the conference, a person familiar with the Big 12’s discussions confirmed to The Athletic.

The school would officially become a Big 12 member in the summer of 2024 at the conclusion of the Pac-12’s current media rights deal. With Colorado’s addition, the Big 12 would become a 13-member conference and the Pac-12 would be left with nine remaining schools.

It’s a significant achievement for Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark at the end of his first year leading the conference. USC and UCLA announced they would join the Big Ten one day after Yormark was hired last June. Since then, the Big 12 has aggressively pursued expansion candidates with a focus on adding Pac-12 members.

A statement from the Commissioner. pic.twitter.com/UtGgY5WnTf

— Big 12 Conference (@Big12Conference) July 27, 2023

The yearlong…

ORLANDO, Fla. — Fifteen months ago, Roman Macek was an all-conference offensive lineman at Duquesne and a student in the law school, with one more football season ahead of him. The future was bright.

Today, he’s putting that law knowledge to use, carrying a briefcase everywhere and arguing his case. But he’s not in a courtroom. He’s in a WWE ring, under the name Luca Crusifino as a wrestler/lawyer character.

In April 2022, Macek participated in a WWE tryout in Frisco, Texas, aimed at current and recent college athletes. Macek performed well and was offered a contract. He left Duquesne, despite having a year of football eligibility left, and took a leave of absence from the law school, all to chase his dream.

He’d never taken part in professional wrestling before. In just about a year, he slimmed down, created a character and literally learned the ropes. In May, Crusifino won his first match, when he used his briefcase to distract a referee, poked his opponent in the eye and rolled him up for a three count. He has won his past three matches.

“It’s unbelievable,” Macek said. “It’s a dream come true. It’s tough to describe it in words.”

Macek is one of the numerous college athletes from that tryout or from WWE’s name, image and likeness path who already is…

The presidents of Arizona and Arizona State publicly addressed their schools’ futures within the Pac-12 this week as the conference continues to work toward securing a new media rights deal. Here’s what you need to know:

• Arizona State is “committed to the Pac-12,” school president Michael Crow told The State Press, ASU’s student newspaper, on Tuesday.
• In an interview with Bay Area News Group’s Jon Wilner, Arizona president Robert Robbins said that “I don’t think anybody wants to leave (the Pac-12)” but also that “it’s heavily dependent on (commissioner George Kliavkoff) and his team negotiating a good media deal for us to stay competitive.”
• The Athletic reported on March 3 that the Big 12 conference had been in recent contact with Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah as the Pac-12 continues to negotiate a new media rights deal.

What else they said

Crow told The State Press, “There have been no discussions with the Big 12 conference on moving.” But he added: “I mean, there’s been discussions between everyone everywhere on all things related to where our conference is going and where stuff’s going to end up and what’s happening. We are committed to the Pac-12.”

Crow also said the Pac-12 is in the “final stages” of negotiating a new…

Last July, weeks after USC and UCLA’s stunning Big Ten announcement, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff made a bold realignment prediction: “No Pac-12 school is going to the Big 12.”

Eight months later, we may finally learn whether his confidence was justified or false bravado.

Kliavkoff is facing pressure to deliver a new media rights deal to his members by the end of the month. If the dollar figures or the details are underwhelming, March may be the moment when the Big 12 finally strikes. Sources briefed on the discussions say the conference has been in recent contact with the so-called Four Corners schools — Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah — which has renewed optimism that convincing them to join is possible.

Brett Yormark has eyed westward expansion since the day he was hired as the Big 12’s new commissioner last summer. Yormark has never been shy about his interest in expanding the Big 12 into the “fourth time zone” to establish a truly national conference and boost the value of his league’s media rights. The arrival of BYU this summer will get the Big 12 into the Mountain Time Zone. Yormark wants more, though he has always said any additions need to be additive and not dilutive.

“I don’t think any of us are trying to dismantle the…

A Pac-12 school has a certain character. The beautiful weather of the West Coast, a strong academic and athletic environment, and a propensity for success.

For years, that vibe has been perhaps best epitomized by UCLA and USC, schools that boast 120 and 111 national titles, respectively, across all sports, and happen to be located in ideal places to conduct mid-winter recruiting visits. Their presence has been integral to the identity of the conference of champions.

But the Los Angeles schools have only one more full season left in the Pac-12 before moving to the Big Ten. When they exit, a piece of this conference’s fabric goes with them and presents new challenges from recruiting dynamics to losing a foothold in the United States’ second-largest media market. The changing landscape presents unique questions for the future of Pac-12 women’s college basketball in particular.

Although there’s disappointment and curiosity about what’s to come, there’s one aspect of its DNA that the conference refuses to change: the winning.

The Pac-12 calls itself the best women’s basketball conference in the country for good reason. Over the past 10 years, six different programs (Cal, Stanford, Oregon State, Washington, Oregon and Arizona) have made the NCAA Tournament Final Four,…