The conference of champions appears to be in crisis.
Colorado’s announcement Thursday that it will return to the Big 12 comes a little more than a year after Southern California and UCLA said they were ditching the Pac-12 to join the Big Ten. The departure of all three next year leaves the league that has won more NCAA championships than any other facing an uncertain future.
Still without a media rights contract to replace ones that expires next summer, Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff keeps promising that all will be well. It is becoming harder to sell that no news on a deal is good news.
“We are focused on concluding our media rights deal and securing our continued success and growth,” the Pac-12 said in a statement after CU’s announcement. “Immediately following the conclusion of our media rights deal, we will embrace expansion opportunities and bring new fans, markets, excitement and value to the Pac-12.”
Pac-12 presidents and chancellors, athletic directors and Kliavkoff were expected to meet Thursday to discuss next moves for the conference, two people with knowledge of the meeting told AP on condition of anonymity because the conference was not making its internal discussion public.
Colorado’s exit alone is not a death blow for the Pac-12. Losing a school that has been fielding one of the worst Power Five football programs for most of the last decade is recoverable, even with new coach and retired NFL star Deion Sanders grabbing headlines in Boulder.
However, there is no way to spin this latest hit as anything but a loss for a conference that has been the power center of West Coast college sports for decades. Colorado is a newbie, but USC’s membership dates to 1922, UCLA’s to 1928. The roots of the Pac-12 date to 1915 and its sports alumni include such names as Jackie Robinson, John Elway, Marcus Allen, Reggie Miller, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Jenny Thompson, Bill Walton and Barry Bonds.
To survive, the Pac-12 will almost surely try to add new member schools.
The questions now: Can the Pac-12 stop bleeding membership? And if not, does it trigger conferences beyond the Big 12 to target its schools? Will CU’s move trigger another wide-ranging round of realignment?
“I don’t believe it does” said former Fox Sports executive Bob Thompson. “A lot of that comes down to how fast the Big 12 wants to expand. I don’t see the SEC, the Big Ten, the ACC doing anything at this point.”
Under previous Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren, the Big Ten still had eyes out west, with Oregon and Washington having the most appeal of the remaining Pac-12 schools. But Warren is gone now and his replacement said the Big Ten isn’t eager to expand more.
“All the direction I’m getting from leadership … is to focus on USC and UCLA. We have a lot of work to do there,” new Commissioner Tony Petitti said at Big Ten football media days earlier this week.
The continuing threat to the Pac-12 is primarily the Big 12, despite Kliavkoff’s dismissals (“The truth is we have bigger fish to fry,” he said last week in Las Vegas at football media day.)
Brett Yormark has outmaneuvered Kilavkoff since being named Big 12 commissioner a day before USC and UCLA announced they planned to switch conferences. He has envisioned a 16-team league that covers all time zones.
The Big 12 jumped the Pac-12 in line last year and grabbed a deal with ESPN and Fox that probably could have been the Pac-12’s. While Kliavkoff was trying to figure out a way to close the revenue gap on the Southeastern Conference and the Big Ten, Yormark realized survival was at stake for the other Power Five conferences.
