New wildly lucrative media deal proves why USC football joined Big Ten

USC football's new conference, the Big Ten, just finished a seven-year media rights agreement that is worth $7 billion. The agreement was completed with CBS, NBC, and Fox. It goes to show that the Big Ten is light years ahead of the lowly Pac-12 in acquiring TV/media revenue for its programs, and particularly its blue bloods.

Imagine if USC was still with the Pac-12. That would mean that USC would continue making the same amount of money as Washington State, Oregon State, and the other lightweights of the already poor conference.

For a conference that's...well, poor...making the same amount of money every other program is under equal revenue sharing is just going to lead to SC not making the money that they are bringing in for the conference.

That's not nearly enough money for a blue blood program to support itself the way the blue bloods in other conferences do.

This is another perfect example of how much further the Big Ten is than the Pac-12. The Big Ten literally just completed a $7 billion media rights agreement with CBS, NBC, and Fox...while the Pac-12 is still using the Pac-12 Network.

This new Big Ten media rights agreement will begin one year before USC football goes to the Big Ten.

That means that this new media rights agreement will start in 2023, and be ready for when USC football gets there in 2024. Check out what Adam Rittenberg of ESPN had to say about what type of revenue this is expected to bring to the conference:

"The Big Ten is projected to eventually distribute $80 million to $100 million per year to each of its 16 members," said Rittenberg. "According to USA Today, the league distributed $54.3 million to most of its members during the most recent fiscal year (2019-20) not impacted by the coronavirus pandemic."

So, the conference was already doing SIGNIFICANTLY better in providing its athletic programs with adequate money to succeed than the Pac, and is now about to take another absurd jump. Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren addressed what he's doing to provide as much support to his athletic programs as he can. He gets it.

"It's very expensive to operate our athletic departments," said Warren to ESPN. "These new deals will continually provide stability for our athletic departments to service our students in a highly productive manner, allowing them to get a world-class education but be treated in a manner that they rightfully deserve."

Fox will remain the primary broadcast partner of the conference and will broadcast the Big Ten Championship game for 2022, 2023, 2025, 2027, and 2029. CBS will broadcast the conference title game in 2024 and 2028. NBC gets it for 2026. Arguably the best part about the deal, though, is that Warren was very strategic in getting everyone onboard as far as scheduling goes.

Fox will have games on starting at 12 ET. CBS will be airing games in the mid-afternoon window they currently have with the SEC. For 2023, they will still be with the SEC, but by the time USC is in the Big Ten the conference will be able to take advantage of mid-afternoon CBS slots.

The best part: "Big Ten Saturday Night" will be airing during prime time on NBC. NBC's streaming platform--Peacock--will also be airing games. And for Big Ten Network fans, the Big Ten Network will be showing plenty of games as well during this deal.

Everything's firing on all cylinders. USC is in a real conference now, which acts like they care about and want to support what will be the best program in the conference when USC soon gets there in 2024. It's so nice.