Pac-12 needs to bring Amazon and Apple into original football time-slotting
As we continue to explore what a Pac-12 media rights deal might look like, we need to be a little more specific about the final details.
We have spent time discussing what the Pac-12 needs to do, and we have stressed the larger overall point that the conference needs to be creative and bold. That sounds good enough in theory, but we need to put some meat on the bone and go deeper.
Let’s start with the point that the Pac-12 is not in position to get a huge windfall here. The Pac-12 does not have the leverage here. It is not going to make gains on the other Power Five conferences. The goal for this media rights deal is to be competitive with the Big 12 and provide a dollar figure which stabilizes the conference and ensures its survival. Then the Pac-12 can think about its next media rights package in several years and dream bigger.
This media rights deal should be a bridge to the future and give the conference something it can build on at the end of the 2020s.
If those are the goals attached to a 2023 deal, it naturally follows that the Pac-12 and George Kliavkoff should try to achieve a few specific feats:
Get deals with multiple outlets to establish relationships which can be built on in the next media rights deal several years later
Make use of time slots other conferences simply aren’t in a position to use
Give any prospective outlet something that can’t be found on other outlets
If those are pillars of a plan, here’s what that looks like in concrete form:
Amazon Friday Night Football. A Pac-12 standalone game none of the other conferences have. Not the No. 1 game in the conference, but either No. 2 or No. 3. Not a great game, but a very good game. We put Amazon here, not Apple, because Apple has Major League Baseball on Fridays, which would include September.
Apple Sunday Afternoon Football. Wait, what about the NFL? Yes, we know. Have you stopped to realize that a lot of NFL Sundays have a slow, boring late-game window? The 4:25 Eastern window often has dull or lopsided games, and only three total games. That window is dead several times per season. The Pac-12 shouldn’t have a game every Sunday, but when the NFL schedule is announced, and the Pac-12 can look at the 4:25 windows for October and November, it should take six of its games and flex them to Sundays at 5:30 Eastern, 2:30 Pacific. Why that specific time? It’s because the Pac-12 Sunday game would end during the 40 to 60 minutes between the end of the NFL 4:25 window and the start of the 8:20 Sunday Night Football game on NBC. Having a live game ending when no NFL action is taking place would be a way for the Pac-12 to own a not-insignificant part of the sports TV landscape on fall Sundays.
ESPN Hawaii Time Pac-12 Football. That wouldn’t be the official name of the product, but it is essentially the idea we are putting forth. College football diehards love to stay up late on Saturdays and watch the Hawaii home game at midnight Eastern, 9 p.m. Pacific. The Pac-12 can get away with playing games in this time slot. No other conference can. ESPN could carry a 10 Eastern Pac-12 game, and then ESPN2 could show a midnight game. Ratings wouldn’t be huge, but ownership and usage of this time window would give Pac-12 football visibility other Power Five conferences would lack. It’s exactly the thing the Pac-12 should do to maintain visibility and relevance.
