Folks, this is wild. Utah Valley is currently the 1 seed in the upcoming WAC Basketball Conference Championship, but they have a little problem. Actually, one million problems.

While you might be thinking the same thing as I was – who the hell is Utah Valley? – to be clear, UVU is the biggest university in the state of Utah.

To state the issue simply, UVU is leaving the WAC, and, despite prior litigation, UVU’s response is “exit fee? We don’t need no stinkin’ exit fee”. They are leaving the WAC to join the Big West, which is a conference that contains most of the smaller Cal schools.

The WAC is instituting football programs for the 2026-2027 season, starting in July, and UVU had no desire to field a team, so there’s that. But have no fear, the money magically appeared.

Clemson and Florida State, take notes. In all seriousness, I doubt there’s a massive media contract to be bought out of for leaving the WAC, so that’s probably the key difference in UVU’s indifference.

Bowl games are getting irrelevant? Too many? Well, not all of them…especially the ones we can wrap into a Power Four deal where rights are controlled by the conferences.

The leaders of the power conferences have been exploring proposals to dramatically change the financial structure and selection process of the non-CFP bowl games — at least those tied to the Big 12, SEC, ACC and Big Ten.

In one proposal shared with high-level administrators, a consortium of 10 bowl games — each pitting power conference programs — would be created and potentially sold on the open market, with its television rights controlled by the conferences themselves instead of the bowls. Presumably, these games will be played in existing bowls, but their participants would vary as the bowl system untethers from its traditional conference affiliations.

Could this mean an SEC team in the Alamo or Holiday Bowl? What about a Big 12 team at the Citrus or Gator?

What’s not to like? Five teams from each power league get tossed into a bucket, paired together based on attractive matchups, meet in interesting, new cities and make more cash than they currently generate.

After all, the top-10 most-watched non-CFP bowls last year averaged a rating of 5.8 million viewers, per Bowl Season. That’s more than the average rating in the NBA’s Western Conference finals last year, which produced the champion Oklahoma City Thunder.

The consortium plan provides flexibility in matchups, potentially incorporates new television partners (Apple, Amazon, Fox?) and, at least for the power leagues, limits the amount of bowl options at a time of opt-outs (perhaps not all bowl-eligible conference teams participate in a bowl?).

They could’ve just said “the deal would translate to more cash” and left it at that. The details would be pointless beyond that.

Also, something tells me that interesting new cities doesn’t include Birmingham or Shreveport. At least, it shouldn’t.

What it does likely translate to, if I’m reading the tea leaves correctly, is that some of the newer satellite bowls that don’t draw the desired ratings will start going the way of the dodo, while the corporate “P4 Bowls” will get increased ad space and hype from Mickey’s Money Making Machine until the viewership goes over what was communicated above in the piece.

Also it could translate to bowl games being streamed on whatever partner the conferences select, like Amazon or Apple TV, so I’d be interested to see how ESPN would capitalize if they didn’t have it on their own network.

If so, please know there’s something called Streameast out there. I won’t provide more details than that, but now you know.

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