[Goose]

Sure, it's suboptimal.  But we're in the realm of "least worst option" at this point in time.  There was no optimal option, really, for Stanford because it became clear to the rest of college football that the Western US is not a viable standalone region for the sport, for the most part, on a revenue/interest/support basis, apart from the large LA market.  When USC essentially agreed with this perspective (I am fairly certain many SC boosters have had this perspective for quite some time, but leaving the Pac was difficult to imagine until recently), that was going to be the end of the Pac, or any successor Pacific conference that could be "bigtime", because the main market left the building.  The rest of the conference ex the LA schools had some value, but nothing close to the value of the other big 4, despite the weakness in the Big-12.  It really just became clear that a regional Western conference could not compete, revenue-wise, with any conference that has roots in Texas, the South, or the Midwest.

I agree that the "PAC-10" without the LA schools was never going to be as lucrative as the B1G or the SEC. However, supposedly there was a 30 million dollar per school on offer from ESPN. That is on a par with the Big-12 at the moment. Had that offer simply been accepted, it is probable that a western region conference could have gone ahead "just fine". It was far from "impossible". When it wasn't accepted, several PAC-10 members became concerned about the stability of the conference. They had no confidence that they could trust their compatriots to stay, and they had no confidence the PAC-10 could sign a media deal for a purported 51 million per team. If there was an offer available from another conference that was better managed (and therefore more stable, at least for now), most schools would take it. Colorado went first, but after that it was hard to imagine anybody staying. It is like any bank "run". The bank may actually be viable economically, but nobody wants to be left holding the bag in case it isn't. Get what you can while you can. Stanford and Cal were caught flat-footed. They had done nothing to prepare a landing spot. The poster child for hoping for the best but preparing for the worst was UofA. They knew they weren't a "hot property" and did what it took to 1) be able to join a P-4 conference, and 2) do so with a full share. Oregon and UW were also not really prepared, and ended up accepting a pretty low "valuation" for their media rights. They were saved by the fact their media rights were intrinsically more valuable than Stanford's.

 
For Stanford this was a completely disastrous turn of events given our practice of fielding a massive set of champion-caliber teams that are funded by our football team, essentially.  It forced us into a world of suboptimal options.  Going to the ACC under the conditions reported doesn't solve the fundamental problem of how to fund the other sports.  We will have to find a solution to that problem.  But it does prevent the other sports from being decimated in their ability to recruit as they would be if they were in a newly-constructed misfit conference.  So it's a way to stop that aspect of the suboptimal while kicking the can a bit on the funding side -- longer term we will need to either accept that these other sports will be funded long term by the university, or we will need to find some other funding coming from football in a way that the reported arrangements with the ACC won't.  And perhaps that "bet" is that the current arrangements are not stable, and that everyone will be playing roulette again in another few years for more definitive arrangements, and we would prefer to be an ACC member at that stage than a member of a newfangled conference on the outside of the new P4 structure.  

It's all suboptimal at this point, unfortunately.  Kicking the can is not necessarily the worst approach given the exigency, but I think we should realize that it is kicking the can nonetheless.  At some point the fundamental issues will need to be addressed, one way or another, because there is no real plan for Stanford's AD where the football media revenue isn't there long term.

I agree with the fact that the absence of football media rights income at anywhere near the present level is going to be a problem. The sport obviously consuming the majority of that revenue is football. That is the sport that right now provides significant revenue and also has significant costs. It isn't a matter of canceling some "Olympic" sports and otherwise continuing normally. Football itself needs the revenue. We have lots of estimates on this board about how much "profit" football returns to the AD. As far as I can tell, it isn't really a lot compared to the football budget, but the accounting is unclear.

Kicking the can down the road isn't going to be free, but one has to compare it to the alternative approaches of joining the ACC as some kind of very junior member, trying to hang on with a rump PAC-X and "grow the brand". These both promise some kind of revenue, but at least initially greatly diminished from what we have been receiving. They also have some significant associated risks, one of which is a "significant" period of commitment to said approach would be inevitable. It will need to be looked at very closely. Does anybody on this board have confidence that Stanford can do this kind of "due diligence" objectively and accurately? I for one do not. The good news might be there are so many elements that are basically not quantifiable (or have such a big variance they might as well be) random chance may be the best choice :(.

[Goose]

Sure, it's suboptimal.  But we're in the realm of "least worst option" at this point in time.  There was no optimal option, really, for Stanford because it became clear to the rest of college football that the Western US is not a viable standalone region for the sport, for the most part, on a revenue/interest/support basis, apart from the large LA market.  When USC essentially agreed with this perspective (I am fairly certain many SC boosters have had this perspective for quite some time, but leaving the Pac was difficult to imagine until recently), that was going to be the end of the Pac, or any successor Pacific conference that could be "bigtime", because the main market left the building.  The rest of the conference ex the LA schools had some value, but nothing close to the value of the other big 4, despite the weakness in the Big-12.  It really just became clear that a regional Western conference could not compete, revenue-wise, with any conference that has roots in Texas, the South, or the Midwest.

I agree that the "PAC-10" without the LA schools was never going to be as lucrative as the B1G or the SEC. However, supposedly there was a 30 million dollar per school on offer from ESPN. That is on a par with the Big-12 at the moment. Had that offer simply been accepted, it is probable that a western region conference could have gone ahead "just fine". It was far from "impossible". When it wasn't accepted, several PAC-10 members became concerned about the stability of the conference. They had no confidence that they could trust their compatriots to stay, and they had no confidence the PAC-10 could sign a media deal for a purported 51 million per team. If there was an offer available from another conference that was better managed (and therefore more stable, at least for now), most schools would take it. Colorado went first, but after that it was hard to imagine anybody staying. It is like any bank "run". The bank may actually be viable economically, but nobody wants to be left holding the bag in case it isn't. Get what you can while you can. Stanford and Cal were caught flat-footed. They had done nothing to prepare a landing spot. The poster child for hoping for the best but preparing for the worst was UofA. They knew they weren't a "hot property" and did what it took to 1) be able to join a P-4 conference, and 2) do so with a full share. Oregon and UW were also not really prepared, and ended up accepting a pretty low "valuation" for their media rights. They were saved by the fact their media rights were intrinsically more valuable than Stanford's.

 
For Stanford this was a completely disastrous turn of events given our practice of fielding a massive set of champion-caliber teams that are funded by our football team, essentially.  It forced us into a world of suboptimal options.  Going to the ACC under the conditions reported doesn't solve the fundamental problem of how to fund the other sports.  We will have to find a solution to that problem.  But it does prevent the other sports from being decimated in their ability to recruit as they would be if they were in a newly-constructed misfit conference.  So it's a way to stop that aspect of the suboptimal while kicking the can a bit on the funding side -- longer term we will need to either accept that these other sports will be funded long term by the university, or we will need to find some other funding coming from football in a way that the reported arrangements with the ACC won't.  And perhaps that "bet" is that the current arrangements are not stable, and that everyone will be playing roulette again in another few years for more definitive arrangements, and we would prefer to be an ACC member at that stage than a member of a newfangled conference on the outside of the new P4 structure.  

It's all suboptimal at this point, unfortunately.  Kicking the can is not necessarily the worst approach given the exigency, but I think we should realize that it is kicking the can nonetheless.  At some point the fundamental issues will need to be addressed, one way or another, because there is no real plan for Stanford's AD where the football media revenue isn't there long term.

I agree with the fact that the absence of football media rights income at anywhere near the present level is going to be a problem. The sport obviously consuming the majority of that revenue is football. That is the sport that right now provides significant revenue and also has significant costs. It isn't a matter of canceling some "Olympic" sports and otherwise continuing normally. Football itself needs the revenue. We have lots of estimates on this board about how much "profit" football returns to the AD. As far as I can tell, it isn't really a lot compared to the football budget, but the accounting is unclear.

Kicking the can down the road isn't going to be free, but one has to compare it to the alternative approaches of joining the ACC as some kind of very junior member, trying to hang on with a rump PAC-X and "grow the brand". These both promise some kind of revenue, but at least initially greatly diminished from what we have been receiving. They also have some significant associated risks, one of which is a "significant" period of commitment to said approach would be inevitable. It will need to be looked at very closely. Does anybody on this board have confidence that Stanford can do this kind of "due diligence" objectively and accurately? I for one do not. The good news might be there are so many elements that are basically not quantifiable (or have such a big variance they might as well be) random chance may be the best choice :(.