![]() Because Stanford isn’t public, we don’t know the exact numbers at play, but the university argues its athletics budget is much smaller than its peer institutions because the athletic department functions as a separate entity. That’s not necessarily an indicator of how much it can spend on athletics, however, because the vast majority of that money is expressly off-limits to Cardinal athletics. There’s another element at play for Stanford, too, and one that isn’t necessarily an issue at other schools: The university has a $36 billion endowment, the fourth-highest of all private schools in the country. That may have some extra appeal now that there is no Pac-12 Conference to speak of, which guaranteed multiple high-major teams playing in the Pacific time zone each week. He argues that while the football team itself isn’t great - four straight losing seasons including just 14 wins combined - Stanford would naturally fill a west coast time slot. Ray Katz, COO of Collegiate Sports Management Group, speculated that an independent Stanford could command in the “high six figures” per game, maybe even approaching $1 million. Stanford can certainly do better than that. The Huskies make an estimated $500,000 from putting five-or-so home games per year on CBS Sports Network. ![]() At the other end of the spectrum, there’s UConn, who negotiated a deal with CBS when the program wasn’t just bad, but historically awful. You can look at Notre Dame, arguably the biggest football brand in the country, and the $22 million per year it makes off its solo deal with NBC, but Stanford can’t hope to approach that. The problem is that there’s no 1:1 comparison here. So, what could Stanford football command on its own as an FBS independent? It’s hard to say - but it’s something. If it joins the Mountain West, alternatively, the Cardinal would enter a conference that currently distributes around $4 million per year in media rights revenue to its full-time members and would have to settle for a fraction of that without football. There is no world in which Stanford can come close to matching that in the near future, save for a last-second invite from a super-conference. The Pac-12 was last among the Power Five conferences in revenue distribution last year, but still managed to dole out $37 million per school. It can park its other sports in the American Athletic Conference or Mountain West in the meantime.įinancially, Stanford is taking a hit no matter what. Stanford should seriously consider going independent in football. ![]() But in a world with no great options, this one might be the Cardinal’s best shot. ![]() It’s far from an ideal situation, and might not work at all in the long term. But Stanford, who has been as miserable as the rest of the “Pac-4” of late in football and men’s basketball, may have another option to explore. The Mountain West seems like a logical landing spot for that group, and it comes with some upsides, namely geographic fit and a linear TV deal that’s up in two years and due for a bump. With Washington and Oregon headed for the Big Ten and Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and Colorado bound for the Big 12, only four Pac-12 members remain.Īs of this writing, Washington State, Oregon State, California, and Stanford are all alone. The league once called the Conference of Champions (never mind that they haven’t won a championship in football since 2004 or men’s basketball since 1997) is almost certainly doomed. Out of the so-called Pac-4, the Stanford Cardinal stand the best chance to survive what has become the literal worst-case conference realignment scenario out west.įans, sportswriters, and pundits alike spent the past weekend mourning what the loss of the Pac-12.
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