The Big Ten Conference won’t partner with ESPN in the next cycle of media rights contracts, per reports. For the first time in 40 years, the Big Ten football and men’s basketball games won’t be included among the worldwide leader’s programming.

The Pac-12 is smiling today.

The Big Ten issued a statement saying nothing has been “finalized.” Still, if this holds up, it appears the “Conference of Champions” finally got a much-needed win.

ESPN reportedly pulled the plug on negotiations, walking from a seven-year, $380-million-a-year deal that would have left the network behind Fox and NBC in weekly pecking order. John Ourand, of Sports Business Journal, had the news first.

Word ripped across the Pac-12 footprint on Tuesday morning. It was greeted with enthusiasm and optimism. Conference athletic directors were already tuned in, aware that ESPN is the most likely Tier 1 bidder for the Pac-12’s rights. But the fear was that the network might overspend to continue its relationship with the Big Ten.

“This is where the real work begins,” said one Pac-12 Conference AD.

“Our strategy is sound,” added another.

“This contributes to further stability for the 10,” said a third.

Fox locked up the Tier 1 rights for the Big Ten weeks ago for an estimated $500 million a year. NBC and CBS are likely coming at $380 million and $350 million each for the second and third positions. Total estimated take: $1.23 billion. Because Fox owns 60 percent of the Big Ten Network, it sat in on negotiations for the Big Ten’s No. 2 and No. 3 partners.

Bob Thompson, the former Fox Sports Networks president, told me Fox’s presence in the room wasn’t customary.

“It probably made the other networks very uncomfortable.”

ESPN reportedly balked at a deal with the Big Ten. If the Pac-12 could have performed a cartwheel, it would have. It’s been a gut-wrenching five weeks since USC and UCLA announced they were defecting to the Big Ten. One Pac-12 athletic director who has been part of the turmoil associated with several different conference expansions and realignments offered some context.

“It always starts with shock, surprise and frustration, then folks who weren’t invited start knocking on doors asking why not us?” he said. “Then the dust settles and folks confront reality.”

The reality?

The Pac-12 now needs to capitalize. It needs a strong, creative and lucrative media rights package and possible expansion. Those things now walk hand in hand.

George Kliavkoff, the Pac-12 commissioner, worked as an executive at Hulu in its infancy. He was also employed at NBC Universal. The new commissioner had a low bar to clear when he took over for Larry Scott and got good marks. But this media rights stuff is the kind of work Kliavkoff was hired to do. He’ll be judged on what happens in the next month.

Some additional thoughts:

• NBC is clearly trying to replicate its successful Sunday Night Football experience with a matching Saturday night college football bonanza. But Thompson, the former Fox executive, points out that “they aren’t going to have an exclusive window like they will on Sunday night. There’s gonna be a lot of other college games in that window. NBC’s pick is probably going to be the second or third best game that week.”

I’m not sure it works as well. You?

• Once the dust settles on media rights negotiations, access to the expanded College Football Playoff will become the major point of focus for all conferences. It will create a massive windfall for the conferences that participate. It’s why the media rights payouts and network affiliations are vital.

I expect the Big Ten’s wish to include multiple media bidders for the playoff right will result in an NFL-like scenario where viewers watch playoff games on a variety of networks. But will viewers really watch college football playoff games like it’s the NFL?

• Two weeks ago, I asked Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff which was more important: A) media rights revenue; or B) access to the playoff. He said: “Both.”

You can’t easily have B without A, though. We’ve learned that in watching the Pac-12 fall woefully behind in the four-team playoff format.

• Kliavkoff told me at Pac-12 Media Day that he would wait to see what the Big Ten did with its media partners. Once that is settled, he anticipated the negotiations getting serious for the Pac-12. It feels that we’ve just about arrived at that juncture.

I’ll have more as this unfolds…

It looks like the Big Ten is on the verge of finalizing its new media rights deal. And according to Sports Business Journal, ESPN won’t be a part of it.

SBJ reported Tuesday morning that ESPN has pulled out of the negotiations. Without ESPN involved, the Big Ten’s deal is expected to include three entities: Fox, CBS and NBC.

Fox, which has a 60% stake in Big Ten Network, would be the conference’s primary rights holder with CBS and NBC also part of the agreement.

It would mark a major shift in the media landscape as ESPN’s first deal with the Big Ten dates back to 1982. Additionally, ABC first carried Big Ten games in 1966.

With ESPN out of the equation, a Big Ten Saturday could look like this: a noon game on Fox, a 3:30 p.m. game on CBS and a prime-time game on NBC. According to SBJ, Big Ten games would also air on FS1 and Big Ten Network with Peacock, NBC’s streaming service, also in the mix.

Additionally, according to The Athletic, a “streaming package” with Amazon or Apple could also be part of the deal.

The long-negotiated deal, which has been rumored to be worth in excess of $1 billion, “could be reached by the end of this week or push into next week,” per SBJ.

The Big Ten’s current media rights deal expires in 2023.

A lifeline for the Big 12 and/or Pac-12?

If ESPN is indeed out on the Big Ten negotiations, a significant portion of the network’s inventory goes by the wayside. To fill that void, ESPN could turn to the Big 12 and Pac-12.

Both conferences lost major members in realignment with Texas and Oklahoma departing the Big 12 for the SEC, and USC and UCLA leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten. Without those marquee members, particularly in the Pac-12’s case, the media rights of those conferences are nowhere near as lucrative as they once were.

Still, this has to be viewed as a positive development for the Pac-12, which began its media rights negotiating window early last month (the Big 12’s deal expires in 2025). ESPN wants live sports to broadcast, particularly in late-night windows. The Pac-12, should it remain together, could certainly provide that with its remaining members.

The Big Ten is setting the market with this deal.

Thoughts on the CFP, Notre Dame and more

A few other thoughts:

ESPN is the exclusive rights holder of the SEC, and losing out on the Big Ten could provide further incentive to get Texas and Oklahoma into the SEC before 2025. It also makes you wonder if ESPN would have interest in pulling some strings to accelerate some sort of merger or partnership between the Pac-12 and ACC.

Would ESPN want to strike deals with the Big 12 and Pac-12, or would some of the remaining Pac-12 teams — like Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah — make more sense in an expanded Big 12? I’m not sure that would make the deal significantly more lucrative, but only having to put in a bid for one conference is cheaper than two.

How does this impact the TV deal for the College Football Playoff? If the CFP expands, could we be heading toward a setup that resembles the NFL playoffs with games played across multiple networks with the national title game rotating between networks on a yearly basis like the Super Bowl? The current CFP contract expires in 2026.

Does NBC’s involvement sway Notre Dame one way or the other? We all know the Big Ten would love to add Notre Dame, which has long retained its independence. Will the fact that the Big Ten now extends to the West Coast make joining the conference more appealing to the Irish brass?

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, probably the most influential person in college athletics, said Thursday he wants to take “a fresh look” at the NCAA men’s basketball tournament—perhaps with an eye toward expansion of the current 68-team field.

Sankey cautions that he is “not ready to make headlines there yet.” But he also is open to conversations about a Big Dance that doesn’t exclude small-conference champions while potentially including more teams.

As an example, he mentions the 2022 College World Series baseball championship, which was won by SEC member Mississippi—the last team into the 64-team field.

“If the last team in can win the national championship, and they’re in the 30s or 40s from an RPI or [NCAA] NET standpoint, is our current approach supporting national championship competition?” Sankey asks. “I think there’s health in that conversation. That doesn’t exclude people. It goes to: How do we include people in these annual national celebrations that lead to a national champion?”

Sankey’s remarks pertained to the men’s tournament, but given the recent NCAA emphasis on an equal tournament experience for both the men and women, it is conceivable the discussion of an expanded bracket would also apply to the women’s tournament as well.

There has been a rising tide of concern about being left out of March Madness among conferences that send only their tournament winners to the NCAA tourney—the underdogs who so often give the event their best moments and unique flavor. Some of that comes from comments Sankey reportedly made to members of the Division I Council earlier this summer about the NCAA tournament looking different in the future.

Sankey stresses that he said the tourney “could” change, not that it would. But the suspicion among some mid-major and low-major programs is that their automatic bids would instead be given to more teams from the rich and powerful multi-bid leagues.

“March Madness will become much more controlled by a handful of schools,” Florida Gulf Coast president Michael Martin told a Fort Myers TV station recently. “And automatic qualifiers that we now get from being in the A-Sun will disappear.”

Sankey, though, makes no mention of potentially taking away automatic bids. He’s aware that tinkering with one of the most popular formulas in college sports could lead to enormous backlash. Instead, he talks about the quality of teams that either just barely make the field or are left out.

“I thought [SEC member] Texas A&M should have been in the field in basketball [last season],” Sankey says. “People didn’t agree. But the way they played at the end of the year, I firmly think they were one of the better teams in the country. I’m biased. But somebody else, Dayton was one of the first four out.

“Look at what UCLA did as an 11-seed [in 2021], what Virginia Commonwealth did as an 11-seed [in 2011], what Syracuse did as an 11-seed [in 2018]. Those are three teams that played [in the First Four] in Dayton and went to the Final Four eventually. It should broaden our thinking.”

(Sankey was conflating two Syracuse appearances. In 2016, it made the Final Four as a 10-seed that did not play in Dayton, but played against Dayton. In 2018, Syracuse was in the First Four in Dayton but was eliminated in the Sweet 16.)

One potential method of expansion—which was not raised by Sankey—would be to have a quartet of First Fours, one at each region. That would increase the total number of bids from 68 to 80.

But quadrupling the moving parts also would increase the logistical hurdles for the NCAA. Getting eight teams to Dayton in short order after Selection Sunday, then dispersing the winners to various sites around the country with a fair chance in their first-round games, is not easy.

Still, Sankey sounds willing to explore several options for a bigger Big Dance.

“Just take a fresh look at all of it,” he says. “As we think collectively, everyone goes to the corner and says, ‘I have to hang on to what’s mine.’ But how do we contribute and build it better together?”