Pac-12 media rights negotiations: Multiple presidents pushed for unrealistic deal from ESPN

Do-overs? Yes, Kirk Schulz has a list of decisions he’d like to see restored following the Pac-12’s demise.

The president of Washington State and Pac-12 board chair was heavily involved in the media rights saga that lasted 13 months and ended last week in a failed attempt to save the conference.

“We should have had more robust conversations about our value in the marketplace,” Schulz said on Friday to the Hotline.

According to JohnCanzano.com, the Pac-12 presidents rejected an offer from ESPN for the entirety of the conference’s football and men’s basketball media inventory last fall because they refused to accept market reality.

Instead, the presidents directed commissioner George Kliavkoff to seek a $50 million per-school deal.

“Two or three schools were interested in that number,” said Schulz. “It was discussed that we needed to close the gap on the Big Ten.” “The commissioner went off with those numbers, which were certainly unrealistic.”

According to a source familiar with the negotiations, one president believed the valuation “should be in the 50s” — meaning more than $50 million per school. (The source refused to name the president.)

ESPN turned down the Pac-12’s counter-offer.

“They couldn’t save those guys from themselves,” according to the source. “The experts told them there was a path to a deal in the $30 million range…

“(However), if George had approached the presidents in October and told them there was a deal out there for $32 million or so, they would have thrown him out of the room.”

When asked if Kliavkoff should have resisted the presidents, Schulz replied, “I don’t know what the individual conversations were like between George and those schools.”

Kliavkoff refused to comment for this article.

The push for $50 million per school came after the Big Ten announced a $65 million deal with Fox, CBS, and NBC (per school per year), but before the Big 12 presidents agreed to a $31.7 million per year partnership with ESPN and Fox.

For the first year of the media negotiations, Schulz served on the Pac-12’s three-person executive committee, alongside Washington’s Ana Mari Cauce and Stanford’s Marc Tessier-Lavigne; he was elected chair in July.

“No one wants to hear it,” Schulz said, “but sometimes you need a reality check… rather than chasing fantasy numbers.”