What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond? I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.
This week, it’s back to the Big 12’s potential with RedBird and Weatherford Capital because we have new deets. Plus, Aggies being Aggies (don’t you miss them, Big 12?)
More Details on Big 12/RedBird/Weatherford Negotiations
A week after Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger first broke the news about the Big 12’s negotiations with RedBird and Weatherford Capital, new details of the potential deal were reported by Front Office Sports’ Amanda Christovich.
To review, the two entities are proposing a $500 million infusion of cash into the Big 12 Conference. The Big 12 gets money and RedBird’s expertise in driving new investment opportunities. Big 12 schools would have access to up to $30 million in cash as needed, though no school is obligated to use the money. And the league office would build a strategic relationship to make the Big 12 office more “professionalized.”
Christovich, with additional reporting by Ben Horney, were able to get more context. First, we can call it Collegiate Athletic Solutions, a co-investment platform run by RedBird and Weatherford.
Here’s the breakdown. The league office will get $25 million for a new entity called Big 12 Properties and the $30 million pool will be there for each team. That’s adds up to $505 million. But, again, schools aren’t obligated to tap into it or even tap into all of it.
The real question is how CAS would make its money back? Nothing’s free. This isn’t a straight private equity deal, unlike what the Big Ten is proposing or what Utah is embarking upon.
Per FOS, there are ways CAS can get money back. CAS will get a percentage of conference revenue at certain thresholds. It could be 10%, it could be 15%, depending on how well they do in helping the Big 12 drive more revenue.
CAS will earn a 10% commission on any partnerships, sponsorship deals, or other revenue-generating agreements it facilitates for the Big 12. Dellenger reported the same last weekend and it’s important to know that RedBird is already working in that capacity with the Big 12. CAS will also get a $2.5 million retainer per year through 2031, which is the end of the Big 12’s current six-year TV deal. FOS reported that’s a typical retainer for this sort of deal.
As for the schools, FOS reported that if those schools tap into the money there won’t be interest associated with paying it back. The framework would be the school would get the money up-front and CAS would get it on the back end through that school’s yearly conference distribution. There’s even a chance that money generated at the league level through the partnership could be used to pay that off.
So, is this good for the Big 12? It’s better than a straight private equity deal. The league isn’t giving up ownership of anything. It’s getting expertise in areas where it’s needed in generating revenue. Most importantly, schools aren’t obligated to use any of it. I could see some teams tapping into most of the $30 million. I could see some schools basically ignoring it. It would be good to know what that money could be used for. Is it limited to certain things, or do schools have full discretion to use it as needed?
The deal isn’t done yet. But the fact that a longform contract is being created means the university presidents and athletic directors feel comfortable enough to see a final agreement. If I were a Big 12 athletic director, I would take a conservative approach early. Let CAS show you they can bring you the revenue before you consider tapping into it. On paper, this looks intriguing. But there are no guarantees. But this seems more palatable than what the Big 12 was looking at more than a year ago, which was a straight PE deal.
The Greatest Show on Turf
I’m not talking about that Miami-Texas A&M game on Saturday. Yuck. The Hurricanes won that first-round College Football Playoff game in College Station, Texas. To be fair, the Aggies never had a chance. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was there. When Ted shows up for a big game involving a Texas-based pro or collegiate team, that team is gonna lose. We call it the “Ted Cruz curse” here in the Lone Star State and I’m amazed no one has banned this dude from games. By the way he was at Houston’s national championship game loss to Florida in April, too. So, it’s not just Texas-based. It transcends state lines.
Anyway, the fun to be had was on X. The Texas A&M Police have an X account and, if you were multi-tasking, you could keep up with citations and ejections during the game. The cops even have a sense of humor, if not a dry one. Here’s a sample.
(The folks in Ames would like a word about dropping a Busch Light).
(Like, how big were his pants?)
So, in one way, Texas A&M DID win the game. Just not in the way it wanted.
That’s a rough way to go out. But, that’s Texas A&M. It can’t stand a bit of prosperity.
Dillingham’s Big Deal (and His Latest Pitch)
Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham will not be going to Michigan, not after getting a new head-coaching deal worth $7.5 million a year and a $1 million boost for his assistant coaching pool. It’s a big deal for the Sun Devils. It’s probably everything that the Arizona native wanted.
After the deal was announced, he faced the cameras and immediately pitched for a donor to come forward with $20 million for the program.
Our Pete Mundo wrote about the plea (he called it begging). Dillingham said this:
“We need to find one of these really rich people in this city to step up and stroke a check…We live in Phoenix, Arizona. You’re telling me there’s not one person who could stroke a $20 million check right now? There is somebody out here who can.”
Pete wrote this:
But it’s also everything wrong with the sport that I, and many of you, love right now. Sure, the House vs. NCAA Settlement is going to create about a $20.5 million cap for athletic departments to spend on players. But for football, that’s just going to scratch some of the surface for top teams. NIL entities are still going to add tens of millions of dollars per season on top of that $20.5 million. So essentially, nothing is going to change.
The NCAA could have gotten ahead of this 30 years ago, but it chose not to. We could have had a more balanced CFP created 30 years ago that would benefited the entire membership of FBS before the economics got out of whack, but no one wanted it. The NCAA could have properly legislated NIL, but it didn’t. There is plenty of blame to toss their way.
But there’s more. Programs like Texas Tech are unwilling to sign the binding agreement for the College Sports Commission, in part because it knows it would limit its spending and it has one of the deepest bags in college sports. Money is the root of all of this and, to some degree, it’s evil.
But we’re still watching, in many cases more than ever before — and not just football. This is part of the game now. The coaches know it. The players know it. The fans know it. As Pete wrote, Dillingham said “the quiet part out loud.” The thing is, it’s not quiet anymore. It’s just how it is.
Do I like it? No. But if I were an Arizona State alum, I’d be cheering Dillingham on from the sideline, and if I had that bag, I’d hand it over. Because I want to win. And, in college sports now, that’s what the money is supposed to be for.
