Big Ten plans to vote on massive private equity deal
College Football Enquirer co-hosts Andy Staples, Steven Godfrey and Ross Dellenger discuss how Big 10 executives are ready to move forward with a vote on a private equity deal with or without Michigan and USC. Hear the full conversation on the “College Football Enquirer” podcast - and subscribe on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , YouTube or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
We all know, we all talked about it maybe a month ago or so when the kind of first came to light publicly, the Big Ten's PE deal, $2.4 billion with University of California investment fund, a pension system in California, and they would buy 10% of the Big 10.
And they would give the Big 10 $2.4 billion for it, and that money would be distributed unevenly to, to the, the, uh, 18 schools.
That's one part of the deal, right?
The second part of the deal is a, a new sort of business enterprise called Big 10 Enterprises that would, uh, be the business kind of for-profit part of the Big 10 sort of created from this.
And then the third part is sort of a long-term uneven distribution of revenue.
So that's sort of the baseline of the deal.
None of that's really changed.
Um, we know that about 3 weeks ago, this was all put on pause because Michigan and USC, specifically, USC's, some of their administrators in their board, and Michigan's board specifically does not agree with the deal and they were not going to vote for it.
So the vote, which was supposed to happen around 3 or 4 weeks ago, there was thought to be a vote, got paused.
Well, now, over the last 2 or 3 weeks, enough Big 10 schools perhaps.
The 16 other schools want to do this deal bad enough that they are certainly encouraging.
This deal to come to a vote, um, even though Michigan and USC seem to be fairly against it still, um, and the vote is sort of penciled in for November 21st, and Michigan and USC were told about that earlier this week that they have until then to decide, or the Big 10 will be going to vote on this deal.
The 16 Big 10 schools, if they agree on November 21st to adopt this deal, that means they're going to.
Uh, get the benefits, the financial benefits and windfall of the capital infusion in Michigan and USC won't get that, and we're talking over $100 million per school, um, in immediate infusion.
And they also, maybe this is the most important, that has piqued, I know Andy's interest especially is this comes with an extension of the grant of rights for 10 additional years from 2036 to 2046.
This is not about the money.
Like, the Michigan region who called this a payday loan was exactly right.
It's not about the money.
This is about tying these schools together so that Michigan and Ohio State don't think to call Alabama and LSU and be like, you know what, we could have a lot more money and a lot less headaches if we just did this thing together and left Purdue and Vanderbilt on the side of the road.
Cause you know what will happen if Michigan is a free agent in 2036?
Michigan will become a member of the SEC.
