It’s becoming increasingly likely that one day in the near future, Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens will be a happy, happy man.
Not because of any on-field accomplishment an Oregon team may achieve. Or any ticket sales goals Oregon might reach.
Nope, Mullens — and athletic directors across the new Pacific-12 Conference — could have different reasons to celebrate. It looks like a new, exceedingly profitable TV deal could be in the works.
The conference’s current deal with Fox/ESPN pays a little less than $60 million to the conference annually. With that set to expire, the Pac-12 is looking to break the bank.
Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News said estimates for the new deal top the $200 million mark.
“AJ Maestas of Navigate Marketing, which has done media rights deals for Arizona State and Ohio State, told me that he has revised his estimates for a Pac-12 TV deal to approx $220 million annually, up from $175 million six months ago,” Wilner wrote.
If the Pac-12 reaches the $220 million per year threshold, it would dwarf the current kingpin of media rights packages, the Southeastern Conference, which rakes in an average of $205 million per year.
Do the math, and you’ll see that each Pac-12 institution could receive an average of about $18.5 million in media rights revenue.
While the benefits from the extra cash may not be felt for a few years (Wilner reports there are plans for a Pac-12 network that could require millions of dollars in initial funding), athletic departments throughout the conference should have an unexpected influx of cash within five years or so.
That’s great news for athletic departments in the Pac-12 — particularly those that have to support numerous non-revenue sports that effectively act as cash-guzzlers.
You’d think athletic departments would be tempted to use the majority of the new revenue to add support staff, hire better quality coaches and maybe even add a sport or two.
But eventually, especially if major conferences around the country negotiate similarly profitable TV deals, it’s inevitable that another group will benefit: college football and basketball players.
One of the main arguments against paying football and basketball players — the student athletes who produce the bulk of the athletic department’s non-TV revenue — is equality. How can a school justify paying only certain scholarship athletes while leaving others out in the cold?
It’s certainly a valid question, and there are practical issues to work out. But on the most basic level, it’s even less just for football and basketball players — who are the only reason tennis players, golfers, gymnasts, etc., are even able to earn athletic scholarships — not to be paid.
Even with a mediocre TV contract, five of the Pac-10 athletic departments were profitable from July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010, according to a report in Forbes Magazine.
That’s 50 percent of the conference’s athletic departments making money — think of the possibilities for when each athletic department receives an extra 10 or so million bucks.
And, if, in fact athletic departments are able to consistently operate in the black with the influx of cash, there will be mounting pressure to start paying athletes.
It doesn’t have to be much — maybe $40,000 per year for football players, $20,000 for basketball players on top of the modest stipends already provided to scholarship athletes, either dispersed in the form of a monthly check or put aside in trust for when the player graduates — but it would be something.
Of course, the “salary” would need to be regulated across all major conferences, to ensure no school has an inherent recruiting advantage over the other.
But the point remains — with each additional dollar athletic departments make, there are fewer excuses colleges can use to deny fairly compensating the athletes who make millions.
The new TV contracts could be the final straw in finally righting this injustice.
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