Four teams set to join the PAC from the AAC?

This seems to be dubious. It has shown up on a few separate twitter feeds, but it is just rumor.  The Stanford/Cal thing is not yet resolved.  More info later today...

The headline invokes his name, but the article doesn't really mention him.  Sometimes these rumors are true, and frankly this would be a pretty good one. It is certainly not a 'deal' at this point.

That is the MWC option and basically the worst case scenario. 

Been spending too much time on Twitter, but I have a great idea for a best of the rest conference (better than OS_Beaver’s rumored plan for those of you on Twitter) I’m going to use $180 million from Apple as the starting money for this conference because that’s the number he threw out. Also, this assuming that Oliver Luck is just working for OSU and WSU.

Stanford, Cal and SMU go to the ACC in this hypothetical outcome so they aren’t part of this. Also Air Force unfortunately decides to go independent because they don’t want to play 9 conference games.

Invite 9 Mountain West teams so they can dissolve that conference and not pay exit fees. SDSU, Boise, Fresno, Colorado St, UNLV, Nevada, Utah St, Wyoming and New Mexico. Use remaining pac-12 assets to assist 7 AAC teams with their buyouts. Tulane, UTSA, Memphis, UAB, North Texas, ECU and USF.

This is a base of $10 million per school. Apple was supposedly willing to pay each pac-12 school $23 million base, but up to $50 million with 5 million new subscribers. That’s an additional $27 million per school or $324 million total. If they would offer the same incentive to this conference, it would pencil out to an additional $18 million per school for $28 million total. I believe with this many fan bases and regions, 5 million subscriptions would be very attainable.

To minimize travel, set up 3 pods of 6. Play 5 games in your pod and 2 against each other pod. The pods would be:
West- OSU, WSU, SDSU, Fresno, UNLV, Nevada
Mountain- Boise, Wyoming, CSU, USU, New Mexico, North Texas
East- UTSA, Tulane, Memphis, UAB, ECU, USF

For ease of scheduling, assign traveling partners:
OSU/WSU, SDSU/Fresno, UNLV/Nevada, Boise/Wyoming, CSU/USU, UNM/UNT, UTSA/Tulane, Memphis/UAB, ECU/USF.

With this scheduling setup and $28 million a year, which of these teams wouldn’t do this? And why wouldn’t Apple do this for 5 million new subscribers and getting their foot in the door?

If Apple stepped up as a partner this is a no brainer. I think OSU/WSU should put its energy toward building a broadcast partnership first as opposed to cobbling up a mishmash conference.

If you create a decent media partnership and give them a seat in the board room, you can pretty much pick and choose who you want from G5 in the conference. Not just AAC and MWC, if any other programs fit the bill.

Perhaps this is already in the works. Quite frankly from Apple's perspective you can have a say in building a nationwide conference (2 divisions) and have games running all day saturday...throw in Thursday and Friday nite too.

And in the end if college football ends I'm two tiers, Apple is the leader of the 2nd tier, which just might be the more entertaining one.

f%#*it...call it the Apple Conference! It's what we in the real estate biz call a value add property. Because Tier 1 will eventually start tossing their coattail-riders to the wolves. Looking at you Colorado and Whorizona

Interesting idea, although I still think I might try to pick up air force or maybe a couple different schools from the AAC and then just let MW schools I wanted join a year later when the buyout is lower. The key thing about Apple's deal is you aren't caring as much about people watching one game, you want subscribers. If you find high population centers and you're offering $100 packages for the whole year, you could get up at least above one million subscribers pretty easily. Five is a bit tougher but doable.