PAC-10 making waves

Let get down to the issues at hand...

Now that Colorado has been officially announced as the 11th member of the PAC-10 conference, let's been clear how this affects the Big 12 and PAC-10 conference TV contracts at this moment.

Zero effect.

PAC-10 will not see Colorado until 2012 FB season, so the PAC-10's current contracts will have expired and have been renegotiated with Colorado and whomever else the PAC-10 adds to the conference. Same with the Big 12's current deals, at least through 2010 and 2011. The FSN deal will have expired, but the ABC deal will have a few more years on it. Whether the Big 12 sticks around as a viable entity or not remains to be seen.

I'm not even going to speculate on PAC-10 Networks or possible TV alignments for the conference since it looks like the PAC-10 is only in Aisle 2 at the grocery store.

Now to the case against USC. There are some revenue items to consider.

1) Depending how bad USC is based on the scholarship losses, ABC and FSN could elect to televise fewer USC games. The PAC-10 does not share TV revenues equally, so if USC appears less on TV, they'll bring in less money.

That may happen for only one season. USC has 12 of their 13 games slated for national TV. The UCLA game will appear either on ABC. FSN or Versus, but the Washington St. game will only be a local telecast.

2) The Kraft Fights Hunger Bowl (formerly the Emerald Bowl) is the last bowl in the PAC-10 pecking order. USC could have enough wins but not be eligible, so unless the PAC-10 has six NCAA bowl eligible teams, that bowl could likely go vacant for the conference. By not filling the bowl, the PAC-10 could lose out on any revenues that they would receive by sending a a team to the game. USC's W-L record for 2010 will still count in the standings and towards other teams' records for bowl purposes.

There has been no mention of a TV ban and I wouldn't expect USC to be banned from TV, as it would harm schools outside of USC as ABC and FSN would likely request some form of relief from the PAC-10 in terms of the rights fees they have paid to the conference.