Tony Altimore

LET'S TAKE A LOOK AT THE STATE OF COLLEGE SPORTS FINANCES: (a thread🧵) 1/ There are areas that I think the media misses the boat on the $ state of college sports It starts with revenue: Rapidly growing gaps are getting worse, and unpromoted G5s are going to be in big trouble

Huh? The faux-victim, wannabe-aggrieved pearl-clutching is cringe, bud Even without USC+UCLA, Pac could have taken more $$$ from ESPN than the XII got, but they didn't bother to do anything for a year (1958 deja vu) If you're going to whine, you need to at least know the facts

@TJAltimore USC and ucla leaving dramatically reduced the pac12’s media value directly resulting in the pac 12 imploding. It’s all USC and UCLA’s fault and they should be ashamed of themselves

I strongly disagree: USC + UCLA made their own decisions to move confs in both 1957 and 2022 '57 PCC + '23 Pac both ineptly then took ZERO actions to patch the holes, resulting in UW later following USC + UCLA to new confs PCC + Pac have only themselves to blame for their fate

Long answer, but needed given those clams... Not being snotty, but do you have a list of the "every bad decision" that you reference, because that doesn't seem to match actual history... Perhaps you're confusing USC with Wazzu's AD Moos or Stanford's AD Bowlsby (via Iowa), who pushed most of the worst ideas from a strategic standpoint in the 10-to-12 expansion? (They called him "Big Ten Bob," [and NOT as a compliment] because there was a reason that the smartest scientist in American history - Glenn Seaborg - and smartest university president in American history - Clark Kerr - set the newly-founded Pac up the way they did in 1958-59 in a very different way from the problematic PCC or the very different Big Ten.) At the end of the day, the key thing that wrecked the Pac was a decade of shitty football, followed by one year of doing nothing from 2022-23. If the 2010s Pac had the on-field product of the 1960s, '70s, '80s, '90s, '00s, or even 2022-24 teams, Oregon + Stanford pulled their weight for the 2010s decade, and Utah built themselves up to task FAST... but nobody else was worth a lick for more than a year or two of the decade or a quick flash in the pan. It's easy to bash Presidents - and I love to imagine a fantasy world where 2010 Pac gives WTA boss Larry Smith's riches to lure Commish Kramer's rising SEC disciple Greg Sankey instead... LOL... but fans might not want to act all superior to wildly successful multi-billion dollar CEOs because they don't understand what actually happens every 3 months at very infrequent, hour-long quarterly Zoom meetings... lol. For example: I got bad news for fans... Dr. Crow is a lot smarter than you are or I am or anybody else reading this is... lol... Even on sports. In two easy examples: He made smart bets to fund both Palentir and the Pac-12 Network. One was wildly successful... and the other would have been if they'd had teams good enough to be worth watching! The strategy and production and talent were elite... but nobody wanted to watch winless Beavs at hapless Bears, or underperfoming Trojans at woeful Zona. In another example, you can bash his Herm hiring for not working out, but he basically invested the CEO coach model with that hiring that everybody else is now suddenly using and calling themselves innovative... lol ...but even with the dumbness, the Pac would have survived + thrived by doing literally ANYTHING in 2022, The XII even laid out the roadmap for it in 2021. If they'd added SDSU + SMU + Zags in 2022, they'd be fully intact and fine today... even without USC+UCLA.

The Pac 12's demise is proof that intelligent people aren't universally intelligent. It took nearly two decades of the collective braintrust of the Pac-12's Presidents & Chancellors making bad, short-sighted decisions to kill the Pac-12. And sadly, the program that bailed first (USC) was front & center for most every bad decision made that led to their eventual fleeing to the Big Ten.

Hey hey, Jim! If USC can win games like we alums expect them to, we'll see those TV windows be much better (though we'll trade some late nights for early mornings at 9am PT) As for USC+UCLA, I think they looked at the landscape and decided a change was for the best strategically, just like in the 50s. A lot of times hindsight looks like it would give opportunities that the reality of the day didn't. For example, Idaho scoffed at the idea of the Pac founders leaving the PCC in 1958, predicting they would come crawling back in the same way many say today from the Big Ten... and I can't fathom the Cougs or Beavs negotiating away 2/3 of their revenue for 'SC+UCLA to match the Big Ten, unless they could get the "Back to the Future" time machine with dire warnings from the future. From a USC+UCLA standpoint, too, I think they thought strategically about where things were going and that it was best to do it now, rather than later... especially with the unique contractual availability that came from the expiring contracts from 2012-24 media deals.

@TJAltimore Been a while since I’ve seen a post Tony. Obviously the additional revenue was key to the move and the Rutgers/Manylands/Minn all thank thst LA market for that. But USC tv window is still the same. Peacock is a de facto Pac12 network. So why didn’t USC negatiate in the PAC?

@NMSportster @zoomcpaaa Please don't whine... lol 😉 We always want to think in forward-looking perspective Note: SP+ believes it adjusts for competition, so that wouldn't matter. It's not perfect by any means, but largely does the job well, and is better than anything public that's generally accepted

@TJAltimore @zoomcpaaa You are using metrics from a full season of the MWC, a much tougher conference, then either conference will be next year. Both conferences get watered down with the split, because the P4 polls will start both conferences lower. That's the P4 bias.

CONF STRENGTH: 🏈 SP+ by Quartiles The recent overall SP+ data release gives us a cool look at conference strength through depth. Here they are, sorted by median: (Ranks include ALL of the CFB teams at ALL levels)

People like to blame that, but if we want to get philosophical about bigger picture, situational, pre-2022 issues, the problem wasn’t the TV windows… it was not having teams good enough to warrant better TV windows, which were all available under the TV contracts. Ha… picture this: 😜 If we’d have the 80s, 90s, or 00s Pac teams playing on the 2010s TV deals, the conf would have thrived and Pac Network would have been on every cable box in the country… I agree with you on ‘SC, but I also believe that was ALSO another PAC failure to act… Compare that to how SEC, ACC, and B1G handled the NCAA. PCC sat haughty at their infamous 1956 meetings shaming teams, and Pac let USC get the same BS in 2010s… They didn’t do much for Zona hoops, either. Ha… it’s Déjà vu!

@TJAltimore The NCAA took out USC and PAC playing games without broadcast (or broadcast when the country slept) are the top two reasons the PAC lost its appeal.

You’re totally right re: on-field product… but remember that UW’s move was the lynchpin that kept the whole thing afloat as financially viable… both in 1958 and again in 2023, because (in both cases) that knocked out all four of the biggest value brands of the time. In 2022, because the Pac Presidents did not muzzle the XII’s vulture goals and dirty tricks campaign early on (when they could have VERY easily done so early on), losing UW + UO meant losing a lot more, too In both cases, also, there were also some key academic equities that everybody forgets. 😜

@TJAltimore Cal and Stanford Killed the PAC-12. The conference would have been viable adding 8 new members from the MW and AAC until they left. SMU+Gonzaga+the top of the MW could still be a power conference. Cal should be paying UCLA since they destroyed the conference

@Genetics56 …except…. not at all. They could have been just “fine” without ‘SC & the Bruins, if they’d done… well… *anything* at all. They’d be on par with the ACC + XII… and just fine, comparatively. The problem was the doing absolutely nothing… identically in 1958 and 2023

Yes, that is all true. I am just saying the movement of the asset. Once USC was removed it died for all the reason we have already gone over since 2022.

@NMSportster @zoomcpaaa FFS don't be a bitter, idiotic whiner. Once a school makes a move, the only people who don't think in a forward-aligned way are bitter left-behinds. Don't be one of them.

@TJAltimore @zoomcpaaa They shouldn't be listed until next year. 5 of those teams numbers go to the MWC this season. For this season, Whack Pac is still only 2 terrible teams.

@jeffreywatters Oh heyyyyyy... <wink wink> Can we get a DeLorean and take it back in time, because my Dad deserved a Grandson that he could have raised to throw a football with a cannon-like arm, and we could've made sure the kid was smart enough not to throw across his body (causing an INT) 🤣

HR just sent out a lunch and learn the invite about our new fertility benefit. I suppose I should update my dating profile to include this crucial new reason to be my boyfriend: I come with a fertility benefit!

Strengthening men's soccer opportunities in the West! 💪⚽️️ 🤝 @BigWestSports 📰 pac12.me/msoc #BackThePac

END OF AN ERA? Did we strike midnight for Cinderella? Not enough focus is on the consolidation of power and success in the Big Dance this year. With 2/3 of Sweet 16 from the P2, and 100% from P4 + Big East, we see the winds of change in front of us... Even worse: Since 1966, only ONE team outside those 5 confs has won a title: Tark's (semi-pro) UNLV team in 1990.

@perceptis_ai SLIDES

Most slide templates were never designed for real work. So we built something that is, and now we're sharing it for free. Millions of business professionals start every presentation from a blank slide with no idea where to begin. The free templates out there are too generic, too shallow, and not built for real business use. We know because we tried them all. There's a massive gap between a typical "PowerPoint template" and the kind of slides where structure, clarity, and visual hierarchy actually influence how decisions get made. The kind you see at @McKinsey , BCG, or @Deloitte. So we decided to close that gap. Our team created a professional slides pack from scratch. We even brought in a design agency to make sure every layout is not just functional but genuinely beautiful. Clean. Structured. Ready to use. Built for professionals, not for people who decorate slides. Want it? Just do this: Follow our page Comment "SLIDES" below We'll DM it to you. ♻️ Repost to help a colleague who's still building decks from scratch ⏳ This is just Part 1. Follow us for more packs coming soon. #Presentations #AI #Slides #Business #Professional #Microsoft #Excel #Consulting

@Eccentric0Eagle There have got to be some places that still do that kind of stuff on special occasions…. London maybe? Mumbai! …a friend of mine organized something like it once at the Rainbow Room on top of Rockefeller Center for a special event and it looked amazing

This was the era that my great grandparents got together.

I might be lame but this is the sort of nightclub I would enjoy

@PeterTwinklage Was there ever any doubt? ...lol This short bus ain't their varsity team at any level, from intern on up They were adamant wrecking govt is cool so long as they can say "retarded" + "pu$$y" without HR cringing... We didn't appreciate then how that was actually their tribal name

these fuckin’ losers had an opportunity to nab 15 *years* of cultural supremacy and they squandered it in 15 seconds

@ayematthias Congrats, bud! Glad you're feeling better!

super proud of this progress after a bad shoulder dislocation last year. recovery was an agonizing 6 months. feels so good to be able to move my body without being in pain

@AlexanderPayton Words have meanings, Payton. Nobody's "philosophy" to "create martyrs" FFS. Not sure what drivel you're reading or cocktails you're having, but that's just asinine nonsense about an imaginary "they.' You're too smart to constantly invent more "they" monsters under your bed.

So true! ...and also huge elements of luck and timing! For example... The thing that drives me nuts about the Gladwell "Tipping Point" book is that most of its "hero" characters seem to have done a reasonably competent job as an enormously lucky situation - that they did nothing to bring on - wonderfully fell upon them. It makes me think of the great people who experienced the reverse of that... or how a lot of times I've seen most impressive work be a mediocre result outcome that was salvaged from impending disaster... ha

@themgmtconsult I could apply the credentials argument to some who get the title of Partner in PS firms - often the result of staying the course (even lack of alternative options) than any particular brilliance For the avoidance of doubt, I very much don't think that's true of you!

We have historically used proxies (degrees and titles) to measure potential (intelligence), and those proxies are becoming increasingly decoupled from reality. In my screenshotted post, I reference 3 confused concepts: intelligence, education, credentials. 1) Intelligence: This is the "hardware." It involves raw processing power, pattern recognition, the ability to solve novel problems. It is largely innate but can be sharpened... 2) Education: This is the "software" or the data input. It is the structured process of acquiring knowledge. As most of use would agree, you can be highly educated (read 1,000 books) without being particularly "smart" (knowing how to apply them). 3) Credentials: This is the "receipt." It is a social signal designed to reduce the cost of evaluation (mostly for employers). It proves you can navigate a system and satisfy a set of requirements, but it doesn't necessarily prove mastery. Is Electrical Engineering (EE) "harder" than Comparative English Literature? Well, EE requires a higher floor of mathematical computational ability, but English Lit requires a higher floor of ambiguity tolerance and synthetical reasoning. We kind of confuse "difficulty" with "scarcity." Because fewer people can do high-level calculus than can read a novel, we assign "intelligence" to the mathematician. However, a "smart" engineer might be "unintelligent" when it comes to navigating complex social dynamics (again, I'm sure you all agree here!) or historical patterns, and vice versa. The reason this debate is so heated right now is that the Credential is losing its value faster than the other two. In 1960, a degree was a hi-fi signal of both intelligence and education because access was restricted, but in 2026 the "democratization" of degrees means a credential might just signify financial endurance or "playing the game". It basically means jacksh*t!! I would therefore define true cognitive excellence as the ability to transfer skills from one domain to another. An "intelligent" English Lit major can learn the logic of a system, and an "intelligent" Engineer can learn the nuance of a narrative. The "credential" is just the box they were forced to sit in for 4 years...

Probably a near-zero chance they actually build that nonsense, but it *WILL* be fun to see his various absurd (and often illegal) self-aggrandizements brought crashing down and hauled to the dump...