News

Jun 29, 2023

Deion Sanders speaks on conference realignment, NIL hypocrisy: 'Everybody's chasing a bag'

Conference realignment is in full swing as six Pac-12 schools, since July 27, have joined USC and UCLA in announcing plans to exit the conference for greener pastures come the 2024-25 athletic season.

Conference realignment is in full swing as six Pac-12 schools, since July 27, have joined USC and UCLA in announcing plans to exit the conference for greener pastures come the 2024-25 athletic season. The latest wave began with Colorado announcing an exit from the Pac-12 for the Big 12 on that timeline, and first-year Buffaloes coach Deion Sanders knows well what is driving the changes.

Sanders, in a press conference amid Colorado football's fall camp for the upcoming season, commented on "money" being the driving force in realingment. He also called out what he sees as hypocrisy from schools who have concerns about student-athletes pursuing lucrative name, image and likeness deals while schools themselves are taking measures to secure the best financial situations possible for their athletic departments.

"All this [realignment] is about money," Sanders told reporters. "It's about a bag. Everybody's chasing a bag, then you get mad at the players when they chase it. How is that? How do the grownups get mad at the players when the colleges are chasing it?"

Of five Pac-12 schools that defected Friday, Oregon and Washington were first to go, announcing decisions to join the Big Ten. The Ducks and Huskies will reportedly only receive $30 million from the conference in their first year of membership, but they nonetheless join a league with a $1 billion-a-year media rights deal that runs through 2030.

Arizona, Arizona State and Utah then joined Colorado in defecting to the Big 12, which also secured a new media rights deal last year. That deal, which runs through 2031, is worth more than $2 billion in total value.

The latest Pac-12 defections came after the league was unable to secure a new media rights deal beyond the upcoming 2023-24 season, despite Pac-12 authorizing negotiations for a new deal 13 months ago. Conference leadership reportedly presented a deal Tuesday to Pac-12 membership with a heavy focus on streaming, but no agreement was reached before defections mounted later in the week.