Rumors are once again swirling about the potential for conference realignment within the Pac-12, and, as usual, the Memphis Tigers are one of the biggest talking points due to their consistency in football and basketball.
While the Pac-12 made a previous attempt to court Memphis last year, those talks fell through due to the $25 million exit fee from the AAC, which the Pac-12 was only willing to pay $2.5 million.
However, a recent article from ESPN’s Pete Thamel suggests that the Tigers might not be fully out of the picture for the Pac-12. Thamel reported a potential scenario where Memphis joins the Pac-12 for football only and takes all of their other sports, including basketball, to the Big East, calling the Tigers “the most interesting chess piece for future realignment outside of the power leagues.”
Even though Thamel wrote this plan wouldn’t be seriously discussed until at least 2027-28, Memphis moving its basketball to the Big East would have many positives.
Despite the team’s success last year, the Tigers averaged only 6,569 fans per game at the turnstiles. For context, FedEx Forum seats 18,119 people. Low attendance at games has become so bad that the university will be sectioning off parts of the stadium starting next season, reducing the capacity of Tigers games to 14,470.
One reason for the low attendance could be the perception that games against AAC opponents aren’t worth attending, as those teams don’t receive the same national attention or carry the same relevance for fans as power conference programs, like Ole Miss and Mississippi State, both of which drew over 10,000 fans to Beale Street.
If the Tigers were in the Big East and could schedule home games with powerhouses of the sport like UConn, Villanova and St. John’s, fans would likely have an easier time justifying the trip to downtown Memphis to see the game.
Running through the Big East gauntlet during the conference slate would also mean that Penny Hardaway doesn’t have to schedule as aggressively in the non-conference to get wins that will carry into March. The Tigers also wouldn’t be in a situation where one or two untimely losses in conference play would immediately put them out of the conversation for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Ultimately, the Tigers could potentially benefit from increased revenue from media deals under this split conference arrangement. They earned approximately $11 million from the AAC last season, the highest amount any team received from the conference. The Big East’s current media deal is valued at $80 million per year. When divided evenly among the 12 teams in the conference, which includes the current 11 teams plus Memphis, each team receives $6.6 million annually in media rights.
The rest of the money would come from the Pac-12’s contribution from football. While the Pac-12 secured a media deal on Monday, the conference didn’t release terms for the contract. Most estimates believe that the conference’s media deal could fall between $70 and $100 million per year, which would work out to be an even $7 million to $10 million per year when divided 10 ways, eight for the teams already in the Pac-12 plus Memphis and another program that joins for football.
When you do the math, Memphis could be looking at over $13 million in media rights a year at the minimum between the Pac-12 for football and the Big East for basketball, which is more than they made as the top earner in the AAC this past year.
