It has been pretty widely reported that Yormark wants to build a basketball superconference and separate those TV rights out into their own package. Below are the list of schools that I have seen mentioned as potential additions (many in non-football sports only, before everyone rips my head off) and their rankings today:
Then you also have schools like Iowa State and WVU who are just outside the top 25, have a lot of support and resources, and generally expect to be good at basketball.
So if it's true that Yormark is going all-in on basketball right now, is this really the time for us to be scaling back some of the financial support for the program? You could easily see a scenario where even if we "hit" on a coach and hire a good one, we are still 6th or 7th in the conference every year.
MBB already made about $3.4MM in profit last year (coincidentally, that's about the same amount that the women's program lost). If Yormark can land a big time basketball-only contract with TBS/TNT involved as has been reported, plus the way the tournament payouts work, MBB could be a big time cash cow very soon.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like the future of this conference is playing football on a bunch of channels with numbers at the end of them, then putting one team in the playoff every year (to get smoked by the programs with 4x the resources), while the real fireworks are going to be in basketball. I mean, if he puts together a 20 team MBB conference with some of the names being thrown out, there will almost certainly be an all B12 Final Four at some point.
Just for illustration purposes, if I create a 20 team MBB conference from the existing B12, the potential west coast adds, and 4 of these basketball-only schools...and look at how they fared in last year's tournament, you end up with 32 payout units. Assuming $350M/unit (if they're not there yet, they will be soon) that's $11.2MM per year paid to the conference JUST from the NCAA. Those payments also stack, paying out annually for 6 years. So let's say you have similar runs for 5 more years and get 32 units. In year 6, the NCAA is writing a check to the Big 12 for $67.2MM, or $3.4MM per school (we received $214M in 2022). That's on top of your ticket sales and concessions. That's on top of all your advertising revenue. I have no clue what a basketball-only TV contract would look like and haven't seen any numbers floated out. It looks like we are receiving about $7MM now for all of the MBB media rights but that will certainly increase.
Now, keep doing what you're doing in football...I'm not asking to take anything away from there. But I hope the admin is looking at future state basketball instead of present/past state because, to me, this seems like there is enormous potential value in keeping your program one of the best funded in the nation from a support staff standpoint, and making sure you are bringing in someone that you feel is going to be able to compete at the highest level in this new landscape. The "well, it was fun but we're a football school now anyway" line of thinking is not congruent with TTU leading the way in the new conference, which is what we all want to do.
tl;dr: I believe the Big 12 is about to start absolutely printing money in basketball and we need to make sure our financial commitment now reflects that
| Rank | Team | Record |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Houston | 29-2 |
| 3 | Kansas | 25-6 |
| 6 | Marquette | 25-6 |
| 8 | Arizona | 25-6 |
| 9 | Gonzaga | 28-5 |
| 10 | Baylor | 22-9 |
| 11 | Connecticut | 24-7 |
| 12 | Kansas State | 23-8 |
| 20 | San Diego St. | 24-6 |
| 22 | Texas Christian | 20-11 |
| 24 | Creighton | 20-11 |
Then you also have schools like Iowa State and WVU who are just outside the top 25, have a lot of support and resources, and generally expect to be good at basketball.
So if it's true that Yormark is going all-in on basketball right now, is this really the time for us to be scaling back some of the financial support for the program? You could easily see a scenario where even if we "hit" on a coach and hire a good one, we are still 6th or 7th in the conference every year.
MBB already made about $3.4MM in profit last year (coincidentally, that's about the same amount that the women's program lost). If Yormark can land a big time basketball-only contract with TBS/TNT involved as has been reported, plus the way the tournament payouts work, MBB could be a big time cash cow very soon.
Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like the future of this conference is playing football on a bunch of channels with numbers at the end of them, then putting one team in the playoff every year (to get smoked by the programs with 4x the resources), while the real fireworks are going to be in basketball. I mean, if he puts together a 20 team MBB conference with some of the names being thrown out, there will almost certainly be an all B12 Final Four at some point.
Just for illustration purposes, if I create a 20 team MBB conference from the existing B12, the potential west coast adds, and 4 of these basketball-only schools...and look at how they fared in last year's tournament, you end up with 32 payout units. Assuming $350M/unit (if they're not there yet, they will be soon) that's $11.2MM per year paid to the conference JUST from the NCAA. Those payments also stack, paying out annually for 6 years. So let's say you have similar runs for 5 more years and get 32 units. In year 6, the NCAA is writing a check to the Big 12 for $67.2MM, or $3.4MM per school (we received $214M in 2022). That's on top of your ticket sales and concessions. That's on top of all your advertising revenue. I have no clue what a basketball-only TV contract would look like and haven't seen any numbers floated out. It looks like we are receiving about $7MM now for all of the MBB media rights but that will certainly increase.
Now, keep doing what you're doing in football...I'm not asking to take anything away from there. But I hope the admin is looking at future state basketball instead of present/past state because, to me, this seems like there is enormous potential value in keeping your program one of the best funded in the nation from a support staff standpoint, and making sure you are bringing in someone that you feel is going to be able to compete at the highest level in this new landscape. The "well, it was fun but we're a football school now anyway" line of thinking is not congruent with TTU leading the way in the new conference, which is what we all want to do.
tl;dr: I believe the Big 12 is about to start absolutely printing money in basketball and we need to make sure our financial commitment now reflects that
