Should USC go independent?

Interesting article for the conferences that are making huge sums less than the SEC/B1G and especially for the conferences most often locked out of the playoff.


USC goes independent?

Many Pac-12 fans share frustration with the league over a variety of factors. When I floated this idea to the writers of Conquest Chronicles, our USC blog, there was near-universal agreement that Abraham had a point.

Here’s why Trojans fans are mad this year

There’s the feeling that Pac-12 schedules make it harder to make the Playoff. Pac-12 teams play nine conference games, and this year, USC didn’t have a bye week until after the end of the regular season. USC’s league loss, 30-27 at Washington State, came on a Friday after USC had been on the road the week before. The Pac-12 fixed this problem for next year, saying no road team for a Thursday or Friday game will play on the road the previous week.

There’s also the money

USC is a big program in a major market. But revenue distribution from the Pac-12 lags behind other major conferences significantly. The league distributed about $28.7 million to each conference team in the 2016 fiscal year, well behind the Big Ten, SEC, and the Big 12. As the Big Ten cashes in from its new TV contracts with FOX and ESPN, that margin will grow.

The Pac-12 made a bet on owning its network outright, rather than partnering with ESPN or FOX. But for now, distribution problems (and lower demand for Pac-12 content relative to the Big Ten and SEC) have limited payouts.

So yes, Rutgers, Maryland, and Vanderbilt take in more TV and conference money than USC does. Yes, that is a weird sentence to read out loud.

This is not a new source of tension

Tension between the richer schools in the Pac-12, like UCLA and USC, and programs like Oregon State and Washington State has existed for about as long as those programs shared a conference. The precursor to the Pac-12, the PCC, blew up in part because the California schools didn’t want to travel to Oregon State, Washington State, or Montana (oh yeah, Montana and Idaho used to be in this league). They investigated a nationwide conference with programs like Notre Dame, Penn State, and Navy, colloquially called the “Airplane Conference,” in the late 1950s.

Idaho and Montana were jettisoned, and then we had the Pac-8.

But USC wasn’t mollified and still objected that it was leaving money and exposure on the table by required trips to smaller markets, while sharing revenue with programs perceived to be inferior, deep into the mid-1970s. In an effort to keep the Trojans from bolting, the league expanded to include Arizona State, who had a fancy stadium and large fan base, and Arizona. A conference official at Stanford was quoted by the Los Angeles Times saying, “it was one of the crudest power plays I’ve seen in some time.”

OK, but could USC leaving the Pac-12 actually work?

Now we enter the realm of reckless conjecture. In order for such a move to work, you’d need a few things.

1. Could USC assemble a workable schedule as an independent? Almost assuredly

BYU can, and it’s nowhere close to USC’s brand. Liberty still gets four-ish P5 teams on the schedule a season, and it’s even lower than BYU. Notre Dame doesn’t have any trouble. USC’s geography might make this a little trickier, but finding enough teams to build a quality slate doesn’t seem impossible.

The only way this would get dicey is if Pac-12 programs completely refused to schedule USC, but that seems unlikely. Everybody in the league recruits Southern California heavily and benefits from the exposure against USC. It would be in everyone’s best interest for the Trojans to still get regular Pac-12 opponents. Sure, there would be bitterness, but Pac-12 programs would need to weigh sticking it to the Trojans vs. giving up chances to play in important recruiting territories. I bet recruiting would eventually win out.

Realignment broke up Texas-Texas A&M, Kansas-Missouri, Nebraska-Oklahoma, and plenty of other rivalries. Would we expect UCLA, Stanford, and Cal to keep annual games with USC going? That’s probably unrealistic.

You get Notre Dame, maybe three or four Pac-12 games a season, BYU, a few national 

P5 programs, and some MWC schools to fill things out, and you’ve got a fine slate that would give the Trojans flexibility to face teams from across the country.

2. Could USC find a home for Olympic sports? Yeah, probably

The Pac-12 wouldn’t let USC’s other sports hang out minus football. The Trojans already compete in the MPSF for volleyball, indoor track, and water polo. But finding a place for everybody else might be hard.

The most obvious landing spot would be the WCC, a league of private schools. USC’s athletic budget would dwarf the rest of the league, and it wouldn’t be a great fit in every sport (like say, baseball), but a basketball league with Gonzaga, St.Mary’s, BYU and USC isn’t bad.

How this might all break down financially is another factor. A move to the WCC probably means a smaller NCAA Tournament check than staying in the Pac-12, and if the Trojans decided to join a non-WCC league, travel costs for Olympic sports could be higher.

3. Could USC secure access to the College Football Playoff or major bowls? That’s not immediately clear

It’s worth nothing that an independent team hasn’t made the Playoff yet, and they’re deprived of that proverbial 13th data point, the conference championship game. That doesn’t mean making the Playoff would be impossible (Alabama and Ohio State have made it without playing in one), but it is something people would probably holler about if USC was, like, 9-1 heading into late November.

If the Trojans finished outside of the top 10 or so and thus ineligible for an at-large spot in the New Year’s Six games, would they be able to secure some bowl arrangements so they wouldn’t be shipped to Shreveport or something? Probably.

4. Could USC make more money this way? That’s the big question

USC is a huge program in an enormous TV market. Could it start its own TV channel, like Texas did? Given how that deal has gone for ESPN with a school that isn’t competing against tons of pro sports teams in its own city, that seems unlikely.

Could it try to sell its TV rights to a conventional TV channel? Sure, but the companies that shell out fat TV contracts are tightening their belts. Could USC sell rights to a new entrant in the rights race, like Facebook, Amazon, or Netflix? Maybe, but that’d be a risk, exposure-wise.

The Pac-12 is betting that its current setup has it better positioned for the brave new world. Maybe it’s right! If so, leaving would be dumb.

I think it’s almost impossible to answer this with any certainty. If the sports streaming industry matures, and everybody gets a better idea about audience and market rates, then it’s a different story.