Last week, the Big 12 confirmed it is in advanced talks with Collegiate Athletic Solutions, a co-investment platform involving RedBird Capital Partners and Weatherford Capital, to offer up to $500 million worth of investments in the conference and Big 12 schools. 

Front Office Sports has learned details that the Big 12 is considering as part of ongoing talks between the league and CAS that haven’t been previously reported.

The details provide a window into the types of transactions under the surface between the conference and the firms. At this point, the conference has voted to proceed to drafting long-form agreements, sources said.

RedBird Capital is a New York–based private-equity firm; Weatherford Capital is a private investment firm with offices in Tampa, Fla., and Dallas, cofounded by former FSU quarterback Drew Weatherford. (Editors’ note: RedBird IMI, in which RedBird Capital Partners is a joint venture partner, is the primary investor in Front Office Sports.)

Last week, FOS and others reported the deal would include a $25 million investment in Big 12 conference assets (an entity called Big 12 Properties), and offer up to about $30 million in cash to Big 12 schools. No school would be required to take the money, however. In total, the infusion of capital could be about $500 million for schools and the conference. The deal would also offer investment expertise and assistance with identifying and securing additional revenue streams at the conference level, and assistance available at the school level as well. 

In exchange, CAS would earn a percentage of conference revenue, but only if it reaches a certain threshold, two sources with direct knowledge of the deal told FOS. If the conference does well, CAS could earn 10% or more, with the amount CAS can earn capped at 15%. One source described it as a deal that looked more like revenue-sharing than private credit.

Schools that take the $30 million investment would not have to pay back the investment plus interest to CAS, sources said. Instead, they would get the money upfront, and CAS would withhold a percentage of the conference’s distributions that schools receive on the back end. (However, those withholdings could be paid for with the extra revenue created by the conference-level partnership.)

In addition, CAS would earn a 10% commission for any partnerships, sponsorship deals, or other revenue-generating agreements it facilitates for the Big 12, sources said. CAS would be able to take an equity stake in new joint ventures that the conference and the firm come up with. Sources also confirmed the potential for a $2.5 million annual retainer fee paid by the Big 12 conference to CAS through 2031.

Several sources described the concept of the retainer fee and the commission fee as industry standard for these types of deals, when firms come in to help companies source revenue.

In addition to the cash infusion and business partnership advisory, another benefit would be exclusivity. CAS would not be able to offer this sort of deal to any other power conference leagues if the partnership is struck, sources said. 

Restructuring the Deal

Sources also revealed more details about the timeline of the proposal. 

Reports regarding the Big 12’s consideration of deals with private-equity firms stretch back to the summer of 2024. But this past May, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark told FOS that the conference was “not ready” to dive into talks, suggesting they had been halted.

What changed between then and now was equity, according to one source. Earlier versions of the proposal had involved offering some kind of equity stake in the conference and/or schools, the source said, which seemed to be a nonstarter for some schools. But this fall, the conference and the firms put together a new proposal that didn’t require the Big 12 or any schools to give up equity stakes in subsidiaries of their athletic department assets. The current proposal was only shared with athletic directors last week, though conference and university officials have been working on it for months, another source said. 

RedBird Capital Partners declined to comment. A Big 12 representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As the College Football Playoff kicks off Friday night, ticket prices for the four on-campus games are a bargain compared with last year’s debut first-round home games.

Every game is sold out, and Miami–Texas A&M at Kyle Field on Saturday at noon ET is this weekend’s most expensive on the secondary market, with the cheapest get-in price hovering around $237.

Here’s a look at resale prices for all four matchups:

• Miami at Texas A&M: $237
• Tulane at Ole Miss: $190
• Alabama at Oklahoma: $168
• James Madison at Oregon: $63

The cost to attend this year’s first-round games is much lower than in the days leading up to 2024’s CFP. Last December, the cheapest resale tickets for Indiana–Notre Dame were more than $900, while Clemson-Texas and Tennessee–Ohio State each topped $300. This weekend’s games feature two Group of 6 visiting opponents in Tulane and JMU, and they don’t have the benefit of the massive fan bases that Notre Dame, Texas, and Ohio State carried last year.

Ticket prices for last season’s CFP quarterfinal matchups, played at traditional New Year’s Six bowl sites, were substantially lower than the first round. The get-in price for the Rose Bowl was nearly $200, but the cheapest seats for the other three games all cost less than $40.

Home Field Advantage

Last year, the home teams swept the four first-round CFP games, as the lively on-campus playoff environments were widely praised by fans and college football pundits, compared to neutral bowl sites where the four-team CFP exclusively played games (and the remainder of the 12-team CFP games will be). Should the CFP expand to 16 teams, four more first-round games would be added, which would likely also be played at teams’ home stadiums.

ABC/ESPN and TNT Sports are splitting the four first-round game broadcasts, with the Disney platforms getting the two more desirable matchups and the Warner Bros. Discovery channels having to face competition from Saturday NFL games on Fox.

ABC and ESPN will simulcast Alabama-Oklahoma on Friday at 8 p.m. (all times ET), and Miami–Texas A&M on Saturday at noon. TNT Sports gets Tulane–Ole Miss on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. and JMU-Oregon at 7:30 p.m. Fox will show Eagles-Commanders on Saturday at 5 p.m. and Packers-Bears at 8:20 p.m.

Coaching Carousel Spins

Five of the eight teams playing this weekend are dealing with various impacts of the college football coaching carousel. 

Tulane’s Jon Sumrall and JMU’s Bob Chesney have accepted head coaching positions at Florida and UCLA, respectively. Ole Miss will play its first game under newly promoted Pete Golding, who took over the reins from Lane Kiffin. Oregon’s offensive and defensive coordinators have both accepted head coaching jobs at Kentucky and Cal, respectively. Alabama’s Kalen DeBoer continues to deal with speculation that Michigan is trying to hire him.

Nike claims it is in the “middle innings” of a large-scale turnaround. Investors, however, remain unconvinced and battered company shares Friday, extending a period of turmoil. 

The sports apparel and footwear giant reported late Thursday its fiscal second-quarter earnings that beat analyst expectations, including revenue of $12.4 billion, up 1%, and net income of $792 million, down 32% from the year before.

The results represented another step forward as Nike and its president and CEO Elliott Hill are continuing the company’s retooling, an often-painful process that has included several large rounds of staff reductions and multiple quarters of weak earnings.

“I’d say we’re in the middle innings of our comeback,” Hill said. “While we’re driving progress through our Win Now [initiative], we’re nowhere near our potential.”

Beneath the latest top-line financials, though, Nike said its revenue from its China business fell 17% to $1.42 billion as store traffic and inventory issues hit there. Additionally, the company warned of another revenue retreat in the current quarter, likely in a single-digit percentage. That’s in part, as Hill said, because “[U.S.] tariffs have also obviously added a significant headwind to overcome.”

Those elements are what investors have locked in, sending the company’s shares down 10.5% on Friday to $58.71 per share. With the latest decline, Nike stock has fallen more than 20% for the year. The Friday drop also represented the biggest one-day loss for Nike since April, when U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled the first of a sweeping set of tariffs. 

“Our progress will not be linear, as each brand, sport, and geography is recovering on a different timeline,” Hill said. 

Complex Task

A big part of Nike’s challenge is that it doesn’t have just one pressing issue to resolve, but many, all at once. The company is simultaneously trying to refine and upgrade its product line while dealing with different sales patterns across various parts of the world, pursuing an enhanced relationship with its wholesale suppliers and retail outlets, and grappling with macroeconomic forces—many of which are entirely out of its control.

“We continue to believe Nike is making the right moves by cleaning up inventory, rebalancing the product portfolio by increasing newness and reducing the focus on classic franchises, and strengthening relationships with wholesale partners,” wrote Telsey Advisory Group in a research note. The firm maintained a “market perform” rating for Nike, but slightly lowered a 12-month outlook for the stock from $75 to $72 per share.

“There remains significant work to revitalize the entire product portfolio, and Nike still faces profit headwinds, tariffs, and lower digital sales,” the firm wrote.