The Big 12 Conference is talking with Allstate about selling the naming rights of the conference to the insurance company, per Action Network’s Brett McMurphy.
The Arizona State Sun Devils’ new conference has been named the Big 12 since 1996, when the conference had its inaugural season after the Big Eight Conference combined with four Southwest Conference teams (Texas A&M, Baylor, Texas and Texas Tech) to form the new league.
McMurphy reported “The Big Allstate Conference” and “The Allstate 12 Conference” are possibilities for the new name.
In 2011, the league dropped two teams after Nebraska left for the Big Ten and Colorado left to help form the Pac-12. The next year, the Big 12 was able to add Texas Christian from the Mountain West Conference and West Virginia from the Big East. However, they also dropped two teams to the SEC (Texas A&M and Missouri).
The conference was still stuck at 10 teams, and had been until 2023 when Central Florida, Houston, Brigham Young University and Cincinnati were added. That still makes 14 teams — and despite Texas and Oklahoma departing this upcoming school year for the SEC — the Big 12 will still be expanding to 16 teams as ASU, Arizona, Colorado and Utah will be joining.
This potential naming rights deal would be for multiple years, and could hand the conference $30 million to $50 million per year to split between these 16 teams, McMurphy reported. This deal going through would mark the first collegiate (or professional) sports league to sell their naming rights. Each school’s athletics program would earn $1.875 million to $3.125 million dollars per year if this deal goes through.
This past season, which marked the Big 12’s most recent expansion, the conference fielded the second-most teams to finish in the AP top 25 Poll (five) in football among all conferences.
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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/report-big-12-talks-allstate-204106355.html
Author : AZCentral | The Arizona Republic
Publish date : 2024-06-13 20:41:06
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