Welcome back to The Varsity, my private email intently focused on everything that happens in the front offices of your favorite—and most loathed—sports teams. Thanks to everyone who has reached out during the past few weeks to offer feedback. Your notes make the product stronger and our community more valuable. Everyone thinks they’re an editor, of course, so I’ll just accept your decent suggestions and send the bad ideas to Marchand…

I spent my Saturday afternoon watching Major League Rugby from the Maryland SoccerPlex (a 22-22 tie between D.C. and Chicago). Rugby team owners are focused on grassroots efforts to grow the sport locally, and they like their chances—especially since the Rugby World Cup is headed to the States in 2031 and 2033. But they also know that they have their work cut out for them, and their first order of business is finding a new media deal that offers more marketing, distribution, and exposure than the current FS2 sitch.

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Let’s get started…

1. The CFP Iron Curtain: One word being used to describe the new College Football Playoff contract is “ironclad.” The top conferences have signed off on an expanded CFP structure through 2032, and a TV deal with ESPN running through 2032 is all but certain to follow. But what’s causing angst in some quarters of the business is the fact that these deals don’t have any kind of out clause that would protect the conferences should the business of college football change materially during the next eight years, as everyone knows it will.

   Indeed, the business is going through some wild and profound changes right now, with even larger and more significant changes on the horizon—from the courts and regulators, sure, but also the economic realities surrounding its ungodly popularity and media rights value. The fear is that if universities start paying players—and if players unionize, as they recently did at Dartmouth—the conferences will be stuck in fixed long-term deals with escalating cost structures. “These deals are based on the way college sports have looked in the past,” one executive told me. “Colleges don’t have any way to get out of it if their costs increase materially.”

2. Adios, Pac-12: The Pac-12 Networks will only be on-air for another couple of months, but this clip of Ashley Adamson signing off after the conference’s men’s basketball tournament was all over my social feeds on Saturday night. Sure, it’s easy to make fun of these networks as a microcosm of all the problems that befell the conference, but this clip exemplifies how the channel has been able to create memorable moments and connect with its Pac-12 supporters.

   I called Chris Bevilacqua, one of Pac-12 Networks’ architects, to get his perspective on the networks. He harkened back to 13 years ago, one year before the channel’s launch, when the Pac-12 tripled its media rights fees as part of a 12-year, $2.7 billion deal with ESPN and Fox. After seeing the success of Big Ten Network, the conference launched its own sets of channels the following year. “We had conservative, base and upside cases ready, and the networks pretty much hit their conservative assumption, which was that the conference was going to make a little bit of money,” Bevilacqua said. “It was not going to lose money.”

   Problems arose, however, when the networks could not work out a carriage deal with DirecTV. The conference spurned investment overtures from ESPN and Fox, and was locked into a long-term media deal that fell behind the S.E.C. and A.C.C., as those conferences launched their own channels. “The networks met the objectives of having control and independence and being able to experiment with new technologies,” Bevilacqua said. “But they did not hit their aspirational revenue goals, which ultimately put them at a disadvantage. And you know how the story ends from there.”

3. S.I.’s afterlife: I still have more than a decade’s worth of Sports Illustrated issues sitting in my childhood bedroom in Washington, D.C. (Don’t ask!) So I loved seeing the news this morning that S.I. was getting a reprieve, with Minute Media picking up the brand’s digital and print licensing rights. This means that the hard-copy magazine will continue.

   But it’s still going to be a long, hard slog for S.I. I was at SBJ in 2006, when our parent company, American City Business Journals, bought TheSporting News. ACBJ believed that Sporting News had a great brand that resonated, and all it needed was some T.L.C. to reclaim its glory days. Despite ACBJ’s best efforts, however, it couldn’t revive Sporting News. By 2012, it had started the process of selling the brand to Perform Group.

   I think about Sporting News whenever I read about Sports Illustrated’s troubles. Sporting News was a great brand… to older people. I hope Minute Media can figure out a way to get younger people, like my son, to love the S.I. brand as much as I do.

4. NWSL records: I’ve spent a lot of time writing about the increasing popularity of women’s sports over the past couple of years, and the recent spate of NWSL sales—and their massive team valuations—demonstrate that the biggest money in sports still sees huge room for growth in this area. To wit: Just two years ago, billionaire Ron Burkle paid a mere $2 million in an expansion fee for the NWSL club in Southern California. Last Thursday, Burkle sold the San Diego Wave for $113 million, per Sportico, a record price for a U.S. women’s soccer team.

   Just this morning, too, OL Groupe sold the Seattle Reign for $58 million after buying the NWSL team for $3.51 million in 2020. And late last week, Angel City FC hired Moelis & Co. to explore a sale that, certainly, will set another NWSL record.

5. Paramount vultures: Anyone who reads my partner Bill Cohan knows that potential buyers have been circling Paramount for months. That’s why I was interested in this Vulture Q&A with CBS president and C.E.O. George Cheeks about how he used the NFL and Grammys to reboot the network’s primetime entertainment schedule. Why are networks paying upwards of $2 billion per year for the NFL? Because it lifts all tides. “We said, ‘Let’s take advantage of these huge marketing tentpole events to really drive awareness that these shows were back,’ And we were super targeted,” Cheeks said. “In the NFL, we really focused on promoting Tracker, whereas with the Grammys, we focused on shows like Elsbeth.” That said, the amount Paramount owes the NFL is more than its current market cap.

In recent weeks, I’ve heard the emailer’s points echoed throughout the sports community—both inside and outside of Bristol. I won’t go so far as to say that many sports business executives are actively rooting for Pitaro, but sports is a clubby community, and Pitaro is seen as one of their own. (Plus, sports leagues and conferences believe they will benefit if Disney’s board picks someone so steeped in sports.) In my conversations with insiders in Pitaro’s corner, he’s often described as an executive who’s at his best when he has to get disparate groups to work together, which will be a vital attribute for any Iger successor.

For example, take how he tackled ESPN’s erstwhile tensions with the NFL. When Pitaro started at ESPN, in 2018, the relationship between networks and league executives was at a nadir. ESPN’s executives not only resented the amount of leverage the NFL had, they hated how often the league used it. ESPN was used to being the 800-pound gorilla, and its executives chafed at being beholden to another entity. The more the relationship deteriorated, the more the NFL would schedule the Jacksonville Jaguars on Monday Night Football. Each year, the NFL saddled ESPN with the worst possible schedule.

Pitaro largely fixed that problem within his first couple months on the job by putting his ego aside. It was simply a matter of meeting regularly with league executives, listening to their complaints, and making the required changes. The response from the NFL to his Spulu plans is a testament to the repaired relationship: The fact that he kept the league in the dark about the forthcoming streamers appears to be little more than a bump in the road. Under the old ESPN regime, there’s a strong possibility that such a move would have led to open warfare with the league.

Then there’s the widely held—and largely validated—perception that Pitaro is a real team player, surely another strong selling point for the Disney board. One example occurred six years ago, when Disney announced his appointment to run ESPN. Sure, he would take over the business, but unlike his predecessor, John Skipper, he would no longer have various departments—ad sales, affiliate sales, and technology—reporting up to him. But Pitaro embraced the change, which helped cultivate the team player image. Of course, his bid is also given a lift by his great relationship with Iger.

But, as Matt noted, Pitaro’s fate in this bake-off might be inextricable from the success or failure of Disney’s linear-to-streaming transition. In other words, what becomes of the soon-to-launch “Spulu,” and the flagship ESPN direct-to-consumer service that’s coming next year. Disney’s board will be focused on Pitaro’s plans to embrace streaming as the cable business collapses. In any case, Lucas Shaw reported that at this moment, Walden and D’Amaro are considered the frontrunners. But if some of these streaming bets start to pay off, Pitaro stands to have a much better chance.

The notion was consummated last Friday, when Distad was officially tapped to run the forthcoming streamer. In conversations with sources, Distad was described to me as a good cop to then-Hulu C.E.O. Jason Kilar’s bad cop. Whereas Kilar would often butt heads with his corporate bosses, “Pete was a reasonable guy who got the big picture,” one source said. ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery hired Distad because they believe he will be able to navigate the three companies, and he already has a history with executives who work there.

During his decade in Cupertino, Distad was heavily involved in Apple’s MLS deal. But sources said he became frustrated by the slow pace of Apple’s sports strategy, which seemed perennially stuck in tire-kicking mode. Spulu owners also like Distad’s experience in distributing the Apple TV+ app beyond iOS devices and onto third-party platforms. “We have to get our app distributed on all these platforms, and Pete knows that space,” one source said. “His key is that he sees the big picture.”

“Why is it unsustainable for ten college conferences to negotiate their own labor agreements? If I ran a conference outside the Power 2, I’d try to attract better players by making concessions that the B1G and S.E.C. won’t make. Being part of one C.B.A. just strengthens the strongest.” —A network executive

“I’d really like to read an article that clearly explains what’s going on in tennis with the Saudi financial offer on the table and the Premier Tournament series being proposed. I read a few articles but don’t really understand what this means for the sport and for tennis fans like myself.” —A Puck subscriber

John