For subscribers only: San Diego State must wait to see how it fits into conference realignment picture

I used to be mountaineering in Slovenia’s Julian Alps final week when my telephone buzzed with a textual content from an athletic administrator about rumors USC and UCLA could be defecting from the Pac-12 to Huge Ten.

Just a few hours later, the tectonic plates of the school sports activities world have been colliding to type new mountain ranges — and new valleys — throughout the panorama, a lot in the identical manner the African and Eurasian plates slammed into one another some 65 million years in the past to create the Alps. The Huge Ten and SEC are the best ranges now, dwarfing the crumbling ACC, Huge 12 and Pac-12.

One of many distinctive emotions about mountaineering within the excessive mountains is it makes you are feeling small, makes you respect nature’s may, makes you settle for that extra highly effective forces management geologic future. And so it goes for San Diego State and its future within the convoluted period of convention realignment, the place hope and actuality are totally different entities.

The Aztecs, in different phrases, have to attend to study their destiny. It could be significantly higher, could be marginally higher, may entail the identical, drained journeys to Laramie and Logan within the Mountain West.

In order that they wait. And watch.

It’s charming viewing for the informal observer, much less so in case your future is staked to the result. The Huge Ten (with the 2024 addition of UCLA and USC) and the SEC (with the arrival of Texas and Oklahoma) have claimed the excessive floor. Now the ACC, Huge 12 and Pac-12 are combating for the bronze medal.

The primary salvo was by the Huge 12, with information Tuesday morning it’s making an attempt to poach the perfect of the remainder from the Pac-12: Utah and Colorado, Arizona and Arizona State, possibly Oregon and Washington as properly. Just a few hours later, the Pac-12 countered by authorizing Commissioner George Kliavkoff to “instantly” open negotiations for a media rights contract.

That’s code for ESPN freaking out that its funding within the ACC, which has authorized language binding its members to the community by way of 2036, may very well be rendered irrelevant. ESPN additionally has a stake within the Pac-12, and one resolution is to hyperlink them in some style to consolidate the No. 3 spot whereas pushing apart the Huge 12.

However that solely works if the Huge Ten and SEC, the actual kingmakers right here, let it.

The following domino to tumble is Notre Dame and whether or not it joins the Huge Ten as properly, one thing insiders determine is a when, not if, proposition. In addition they say Stanford, coveted by the academically inclined Huge Ten, would turn out to be the 18^th member to supply even numbers.

The query then turns into whether or not the Huge Ten stops there or succumbs to Phil Knight’s advances to take Oregon and Washington, giving it a West Coast department so UCLA’s softball and volleyball groups don’t should cross a number of time zones every week.

Why the scramble to get into the Huge Ten? As a result of it, just like the SEC, quickly pays its members upwards of $100 million per 12 months. The following tier of conferences might be nearer to $30 million or $35 million. Extrapolate that over a decade, and also you’re $700 million much less in your athletic division finances.

Now what occurs when colleges begin paying salaries to soccer and males’s basketball gamers, one other inevitability within the shifting sands of school sports activities? The Huge Ten and SEC will be capable of pay them two or three (or 4 or 5) instances what their former energy convention brethren can, similar to Premier League soccer golf equipment in England in comparison with the decrease divisions.

It doesn’t imply the Huge Ten and SEC may have all the perfect gamers. However with liberal switch guidelines, it means they’ll finally get most of them.

The place does all this go away SDSU?

Too early to inform.

The Pac-12 additionally says it’s exploring enlargement, and the Aztecs, you’d assume, are at or close to the highest of the listing. It’s a massive public college that’s gaining tutorial respect, with a brand new soccer stadium, with a perennial NCAA Match basketball program, with a Southern California presence, with the nation’s 27^th largest TV market. The identical goes for the Huge 12, which insists it isn’t carried out increasing.

The calculus turns into geography versus worth. Turns into: Is having a Southern California footprint value lowered TV proper payouts?

Bob Thompson, the previous president of Fox Sports activities Networks who negotiated dozens of media rights offers over the previous 25 years, instructed Oregon journalist John Canzano that the Pac-12’s general value dipped from $500 million per 12 months with its Los Angeles contingent to $300 million with out them. That’s $30 million for every of the remaining 10 members, which suggests including anyone who brings lower than $30 million in annual worth doesn’t make financial sense.

With its particular person carve-out for residence soccer telecasts, Boise State will get just below $5 million per 12 months from the Mountain West; SDSU and everybody else will get $3 million. Thompson estimated, even in the perfect circumstances, the Broncos wouldn’t be value greater than $8 million per 12 months to the Pac-12. SDSU could be the identical or barely much less.

Or put it this manner: If the Pac-12 is now value $300 million, including SDSU and Boise State may get it to $315 million. As a substitute of $30 million per faculty, that turns into extra like $26 million with two extra mouths to feed.

The opposite choice, in fact, is to supply SDSU an enlargement spot at a lowered distribution extra in keeping with its media worth — and SDSU could be inclined to just accept simply to unshackle itself from the Mountain West. However do you actually need to add members who might be at a major aggressive benefit?

And even when the Aztecs settle for a proposal to hitch the Pac-12 after USC and UCLA go away in 2024, who is aware of if the Convention of Champions nonetheless exists by then. Keep in mind when SDSU and Boise State introduced their departure to the Huge East for soccer and the Huge West in most different sports activities? That was December 2011. By December 2012, the Huge East as a soccer convention had disintegrated they usually slinked again to the Mountain West, Boise State with an $1.8 million annual carveout and SDSU with nothing.

Right here’s one other situation: Stanford and the foremost northwest colleges go to the Huge Ten, the mountain and desert colleges go to the Huge 12 and the Pac-12 turns into the Pac-3. That leaves the leftovers — Washington State, Oregon State, Cal and anybody else — to be absorbed by the Mountain West or type a brand new West Coast convention that will function within the shadows of school sports activities’ elites.

It might resemble the preliminary Mountain West, again when it had BYU, Utah and TCU. Higher than its present iteration, however on no account an influence dealer.

Yet one more situation: The Pac-12 stands pat, indicators some form of non-proliferation treaty with the Huge 12 or ACC, and SDSU goes nowhere.

It’s all on the desk, all in play. The opposite factor you study concerning the excessive mountains is the climate adjustments shortly, usually with out warning, generally sunny, generally stormy, and there’s nothing you are able to do about it.