but this really isn't a Costco rotisserie chicken loss leader, to get people in the door so they will buy other products at a mark up.

This is what's fun about this whole thing, trying to figure out what is actually going on and how it will end up.

I could see ESPN low balling the pac, just because they can, which from things heard, that is exactly what happened. The pac has the ability to either ask for more, or find a different partner who would offer more to drive up the price against ESPN. If neither situation happens, then the pac could start defecting to other conferences, but who will be the beneficiary of those defections? The B12, they will absolutely pick up some of the pac teams, which will give them inventory on the west coast.

So maybe ESPN is thinking they don't want to pay over a certain price for the west coast slots, but think they could get at least the B12 tier 2 rights. This would still give ESPN late night inventory at perhaps the same price, or cheaper, so it can still be a win for ESPN, but it would be a win for the B12.

Or something like this isn't even a remote possibility, but it is fun to try to figure out what might be one of a possible hundreds of different scenarios.