In the fall of 2016 I had a casual in-home dinner with a high ranking executive at Amazon. We compared our business experiences, and while I was fascinated with Amazon and his world, he was equally interested in college football and sports.

Our conversation turned to the coming changes in sports media. I knew he was somewhat knowledgeable about college football, but I was surprised that he was very familiar with the topic of ‘conference realignment’ and TV revenues.

“Conference realignment will come,” he said, “but probably not in the way you’re thinking.”

He explained that Amazon, Netflix and perhaps even Apple, Google and Facebook, (aka ‘FAANG’), will be more instrumental than current TV networks in reshaping what we know now as conference affiliations.

Naturally, I doubted this statement, until he explained why.

“We already have more cash than ABC/ESPN, NBC or CBS” he said. “And, In another five or six years, it won’t even be close. And too, ”the tech companies are far more advanced than the networks when it comes to knowing how to use the future broadcast technologies, (streaming) and that gap is growing too.”

I witnessed some of this ‘tech gap’ last week when I was invited to Lucas Film HQ’s in San Francisco for a private screening of the new Star Wars film ‘Solo.’ (I’m not a huge Star Wars fan, but I was totally blown away by what is going at what is called the Letterman Digital Arts Center, which houses Lucasfilms Industrial Light & Magic, focusing on animation, consumer products and digital media.

Last week I found even more confirmation in an article by Victor Luckerson on the Time-Warner AT&T merger that addressed the money gap as well as any I’ve read. Among the eye opening statements:

“Netflix and Amazon spent a combined $10.8 billion on content last year.”

That’s in one year, and that figure is growing faster than kudzu on a Tennessee highway. Think about that -- $10 billion, and try to compare how massive that figure is when we talk about the Big 12, SEC or Big 10 getting $ 40-50 million per team annually for TV rights.

Recently Big 10 Commissioner Jim Delany disclosed that the conference will bring in $ 2.6 billion in TV revenue over the next six years, or $ 433 million per year. Not a bad haul at all, but that has to be divided between 14 teams, which works out to about $ 31 million annually per team.

When conference TV rights begin to expire in six or seven years, my Amazon source says that Amazon and Netflix could easily be prepared to spend ten times what the networks are projected to have available.

When I first started researching this issue over a decade ago, we were an ESPN affiliate and I was a member of a ESPN affiliate board exploring the impact of digital vs traditional TV broadcast signals. Two things were obvious even then: one, mobile technology was growing and was projected become a huge force over the next decade. Secondly, consumers would increasingly see fewer differences between content from their television and their computers. Both came to be true.

OK, let’s fast forward to the uncharted waters of re-alignment.

We’ve all had ideas and bets about what teams may migrate to where. But what we’ve failed to do is factor in the providers who are going to be offering up the revenue.

Again, back to my friend at Amazon. “We’re still seven or eight years away,” he said, “but if we had to restructure the landscape today, we would not start by negotiating with a conference. We don’t care about the SEC, Big 12 of Big 10 as a whole. In our opinion, those entities are not our focus.

“Instead, we would want to identify 30 or 40 teams that command the biggest audience. That may be by reputation or location, but generally we all know that there are members in every one of these conferences that frankly don’t move the needle.

“We would not want to pay for broadcast rights for a team with a fraction of the audience when we could use most of our available cash to tie down high profile teams.

If my Amazon friend is right, conferences, which were originally geographically based, may cease to exist, at least as we know them now.

Obviously, any broadcast (or streaming) entity paying millions (or billions), is looking at programming, and in football that means key match-ups every week between top teams. That means that we can expect the obvious ‘Top 40’ teams to be in the mix.

But these teams are unlikely to be willing to play a 12 team schedule against each other; meaning there will still be a need for teams like Washington State, Wake Forest, Kansas State, Boise, Purdue, Iowa State, Vandy, Baylor, Georgia Tech and Northwestern.

These secondary level teams may not command the same dollars as the Top 35 or 40, but they will serve some purpose, perhaps a cannon fodder, or maybe as an occasional spoiler that will pop up in any given year. But the *Big Dogs will still need a few cupcakes to get fat on, and this alone is the ONLY value a conference affiliation could offer.

Another change, TV markets will not be as big of a factor as overall fan bases. In other words, a Michigan fan may live in Los Angeles or Miami. Their overall following will mean more than just getting the fragmented Chicago TV market locked up. Some teams, such as Notre Dame, and other 'name brand' schools like Ohio State, Oklahoma and Alabama, will also rise in value, as seen by streaming providers.



At a recent conference, I asked a CEO of a top digital network what he thought was going to happen between college/conference realignment and potential broadcast and streaming partners.

“First we have to ask who is going to buy who,” he said. “We’ll see a huge shift between 2023 and 2026, we know that’s when TV rights will begin to expire. But no one knows who the bidders will be, only that they will have a lot of cash, and that the schools will have a lot of options.”

Most Power Five grant-of-rights agreements begin to expire in 2023, (the SEC's Tier 1 deal with CBS runs through 2023-24). The Big Ten’s agreement with Fox and ESPN runs through 2022-23; the Pac-12 deal expires after the 2023-24 sports year, and the Big 12's ends in 2025.

OK, we all know change is coming, and we can assume that the current bidders will not be around, or will be swallowed up by the Tech (‘FAANG’) Giants. So what should any savvy athletic director do in the meantime?

“Don’t sign anything -- don’t agree to anything!” my Amazon friend says. “And, don’t rely on your current conference alignment to be a life preserver; If and when the Titanic begins to list, it’s every man for himself.”

And, as the water begins to rise above their ankles, we can expect that conference commissioners, in self serving statements, will also be trying to save their jobs telling everyone that will listen that their beloved group of teams will survive, if they just stay together.

Sorry captain, but there’s only so many lifeboats!

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*Most likley to make the 'Big Dog' list, (according to Top Programs by Value - WSJ ):



In order: Ohio State; Texas; Oklahoma; Alabama; Michigan; Notre Dame; Georgia; Tennessee; Auburn; Florida; Penn State; Texas A&M; Nebraska; South Carolina; Iowa; Arkansas; Wisconsin; Washington; Florida State; Oregon; Michigan State; Mississippi; Clemson; Southern California; Arizona State; UCLA.



















































