The biggest college sports news of the week came yesterday when Colorado officially announced that it would leave the Pac-12 to return to the Big 12. Word began to leak out in the couple of days prior that the move was imminent, so it didn’t even take to the official announcement for some folks to begin to write obituaries for the Pac-12.
I caution you not to take the news and run with it too far. This is not the first time in recent memory that the Buffaloes have moved neighborhoods, and it wasn’t the program to start knocking over a bunch of dominoes last time.
It’s hard to remember the exact details off the top of the head now, but Colorado’s prior move was actually one piece of Larry Scott’s Pac-16 scheme. Remember that in 2010, the Pac-10 approved a plan to try to add Colorado, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech.
One of those six schools didn’t want to wait. The Buffaloes’ leadership made the jump alone, though likely expecting the other five to follow soon.
We all know what happened then: zero of the other five followed. The Pac-10 went to the Mountain West to add Utah to get back to an even number and at least be able to stage their own conference championship game.
The Big 12 might’ve been able to hold it together had then-commissioner Dan Beebe not let Texas throw its weight around with the Longhorn Network. The prospect of high school highlights appearing on the LHN becoming a recruiting advantage is what drove Texas A&M to seek admission to the SEC, and then Missouri wasn’t going to say no when asked.
The primary reason CU decided to bolt this time is that the Pac-12’s new media deal is taking forever to become final. Commissioner George Kliavkoff has shown a surprising lack of urgency in trying to get something done, apparently believing bonds within his league were so strong that no one would consider leaving before the deal was finalized. Turns out the power brokers in Boulder still have happy feet in the pocket and desired locking in certainty more than Kliavkoff does.
Despite being one of the first dominoes to fall in two different rounds of realignment, CU isn’t exactly a premier program. Its football team hasn’t been relevant in 20 years, and its men’s basketball team is happy to sneak into March Madness with something like a 9-seed every few years. They’re near the Denver TV market, but that’s a pro sports town.
The Pac-12 can probably replace Colorado with San Diego State and come out with a very similar media deal to what it was going to get with the Buffaloes. Maybe this contract takes a small hit without the draw of Deion Sanders as CU’s head coach, but no one believes he’s a lifer there. Either he flames out and is gone in three years, or he works out and takes a bigger job in three years. Either way, he’s gone in three years. The longer term prognosis for the league is about the same either way.
The Big 12 is set to have 13 teams in 2024. It’s possible to run a football conference with that number; the MAC had 13 schools from 2006-15. It makes scheduling awkward, but it can be done.
That said, all the national pundits I’ve heard and read think the league wants to get to an even number. Whether that means one or three more Pac-12 members or a single non-P5 school remains to be seen.
There are a lot of wants out there in conference alignment, but always remember that it takes two to tango. Boise State would’ve loved to join the Pac-10 a decade and a half ago, but the invitation never came. The Big Ten would’ve added Notre Dame half a century or more ago if it could’ve, but the Irish have always rebuffed the offer. The SEC approached both FSU and Miami in the late ’80s, and they opted for life in the ACC and Big East, respectively.
It’s a game of chicken out west, with all eyes on Oregon and Washington. If they stay in the Pac-12, and it adds at least SDSU to get back to ten members, then they can probably get a similar amount of media revenue per year there as they would in the Big 12. It’s probably in their best interest to hold the conference together because they’ll have an easier path to the 12-team College Football Playoff as the rulers of a new Pac-10 than as part of a larger and tougher Big 12.
But everyone else in the league will always wonder if those two would bolt if the Big Ten comes calling. New B1G commissioner Tony Petitti sounds less interested in expansion than predecessor Kevin Warren was, and going beyond 16 teams really makes a conference unwieldy.
But if you’re Arizona, Arizona State, or Utah, are you willing to stick it out in the new Pac-10 in hopes that the Big Ten doesn’t call Eugene and Seattle in five-to-ten years, or do you want to take a Big 12 invitation now to avoid a potential situation where you’re staring at the Mountain West or independence? Colorado looked at the same state of play and took the invite now.
The SEC doesn’t need to do anything in reaction to anything anyone does in the next year or two. It’s about to add Oklahoma and Texas, and that’s plenty in and of itself. Greg Sankey also helped design and create the 12-team playoff, and he did it in such a way that his league won’t have any incentive to add more teams if it doesn’t want to. In a lot of ways, it’s better for the SEC to have the likes of the ACC, Big 12, and, if it survives, Pac-12 hanging around a tier below it to avoid further legal and regulatory scrutiny.
But nothing is in the SEC’s hands right now. It all comes down to what a handful of current Pac-12 schools want, and what they’re potentially willing to give up to get it.