We had a discussion on here about a week ago concerning this topic and there was pretty unanimous agreement that it would be horrible for the conference to do this and that OSU should not go along. The main reasons were:
1. It creates a media grant of rights with the existing network partners through 2046 (21 more years after this one)!! Did the B1G members learn absolutely nothing from the ACC and their long-term GOR disaster? Do we really want to give FOX Sports even more control over our future, our kickoff times, etc.?
2. It is absolutely short-sighted. Rather than the conference and it's members who are having cash flow problems adjusting down their expenses to meet their revenues they are selling a chunk of their future cash flow to private equity. Of course the investors won't set this up to just get back their initial $2.4B investment but also probably a 10-20% annual return over and above that. In one form or another that's going to come out of the conference's future inflows.
Doing this is nothing more than a short term band aid that will mask the underlying problem and make it much worse after the initial investment is used up.
I'm really disappointed to read that OSU is now going along with the proposal and actually trying to lobby the 2 dissenting schools (TCUN and USC) into signing-on. We should absolutely be one of the programs saying "no" to this for the reasons above plus it totally undervalues our contribution to the conference.
Honestly, after seeing how Notre Dame has fared in this expanded playoff era, if we really wanted to maximize our revenues and our value if anything the university should deeply analyze the cost/benefit of leaving the conference and being independent -- at least in football which is where all of the money is.
I can't believe TCUN sees this for what it is and our admin does not. I'm highly disappointed in our administration and I seriously hope there isn't some monkey business going on here.
Since OSU is a state funded institution I wonder if there is anything the state and specifically the State Auditor General can do here to intervene to make sure that this is in the State's interests and the tax payers interests?
