Update (1:40 AM ET, Saturday): Full update here.
Update (1:25 PM ET): What follows below was published this morning at 10:50 AM EDT. Cold feet work both ways, though, and it currently appears Oregon and Washington saw the same writing on the wall we outline in here. The Pac-12 wasn’t long for this world, whether it survived through one more media deal or not. As of now, it appears Oregon and Washington are pivoting back to the Big Ten option, despite the travel costs and the partial revenue share, and that this will lead to Arizona, Arizona State, and most likely one other Pac-12 school jumping to the Big 12. Utah is the favorite to be that third school, but Stanford and Cal are theoretical possibilities, and we wouldn’t rule anything out yet regarding Washington State and Oregon State.
The situation of the four left behind—potentially Stanford, Cal, Washington State, and Oregon State—is the thing most up in the air. Consensus inference says Washington State and Oregon State will move to the Mountain West, but Stanford and Cal are harder to place through inference alone. Rumors are going around about those two and the ACC, but it’s hard to separate which rumors are coming from actual substance and which rumors are coming from speculation being misinterpreted as action. We wrote a little bit about this part of the situation yesterday.
Well, we’ve got a plot twist, and it seems to be in the direction public sentiment wants this to go: The Pac-12 could briefly hold together.
I want to be clear on this public sentiment piece: I too prefer a world where the Pac-12 exists. The problem for me is that the Pac-12 doesn’t exist anymore. USC and UCLA are leaving, cutting off the league’s Southern California flank, and replacing those with San Diego State doesn’t fill in the nostalgia or the emotional ties. San Diego State is less a Pac-12 school than Colorado was. Worse still, any Pac-12 resurrection here at the eleventh hour is only a temporary fix. The Apple TV deal is short-term, and it’s going to make it very difficult to watch the Pac-12 anyway. If it follows the MLS model, you might have to pay $100 a year for Pac-12 sports. If the point of the Pac-12 holding together is continuing to see Washington State and Cal in our lives, this isn’t a path that actually gives us that. If the point is just that those schools remain in a conference with one another, a league existing so we have the comfort of knowing it exists, this likely only prolongs the inevitable. If the Pac-12 survives beyond the expiration of this proposed Apple TV deal, it will require either a miraculous turn in fate or the schools involved having damaged their own value to the degree that the other power conferences don’t want them anymore.
On a similar bent, it’s frustrating how willing people are, people who should know better, to ignore history on all this. The Pac-12 is very, very old, but that’s unusual, and really, it’s only the Pac-8 that’s old. Arizona and Arizona State are new to the party. Utah and Colorado are/were even newer. The Pac-12 has—gasp—expanded over time. So has the Big Ten, *even before it added Penn State.* In 1948, 42 years before it added Penn State but only an additional 32 before adding UCLA and USC, the Big Ten added Michigan State. I wonder if people said this would kill college sports. Conferences change. It’s what they do. It’s a part of how college sports operate. It might not be your favorite part, and that’s fine, it’s far from my favorite part. But the same way we get TCU rising to compete in the national championship—something the equivalent of which could never happen in American professional sports due to their cartel nature—is what leads Washington to run a cost-benefit analysis on sending its volleyball team to Rutgers every other year. It’s all a large, natural part of college sports.
I understand the lament that this seems to all be about money, because every decision comes with a loud recitation of the price tag. But the thing about money is that it’s a store of value. These TV packages are landing at these specific prices for a reason, and that reason is that it’s what each of these schools, in conjunction with its chosen peers, are worth to the public. The viewing public. In other words: Us. We decide what these schools are worth, and it’s messy and it’s indirect, but ESPN and Fox and Apple aren’t pulling these numbers out of a hat.
If Arizona can earn 50% more money hanging out with Big 12 schools than with the embers of the Pac-whatever, why shouldn’t Arizona do that? Arizona is worth it. And sure, some of that goes to executive salaries and some of it just cycles back into the athletic department, but not all of it does, and even those things…aren’t necessarily bad? Higher salaries give Arizona the long-term ability to compete for better executives, something that helps the school *and its students.* A better-resourced athletic department deepens the college experience *for those students.* It’s hard to have a problem with someone capturing the financial benefit of their value, and it’s especially hard when the alternative—the proposed short-term Apple TV deal—would lessen that value and potentially relegate the school in question to becoming a mid-major sometime next decade. That would *hurt the students.*
Also? It’s not only about money. A lot of this boils back to schools’ cultural identities and which institutions want to be friends with which other institutions. If this were only about money, Ohio State and Georgia and Texas and USC would be in one conference, not two, and even if in two, those two conferences wouldn’t include Minnesota and Mississippi State. It’s about money, but it’s not only about money. Saying it’s only about money is convenient rhetoric for those who don’t like this and are struggling to identify and/or articulate the reason why.
What is that reason, then? I think it’s this:
We like the things we like.
Have you ever liked a band, only to see that band’s music change with their later albums and find you enjoy the new music less? Have you wished they’d play more of their old stuff when you see them at concerts? That’s how we approach a lot of things in life, and it makes a ton of sense. If you like an album enough to begin following that band, you really liked that specific album, and any deviation from that specific core is going to feel different to you, and probably won’t hit that sweet spot of your preferences so sweetly.
It’s the same way with college sports.
Many within the current media, many making these mournful lamentations that conference realignment is tearing apart something beautiful, fell in love with college sports in the 80s and 90s. For me, it happened around 2004, when I was in fifth grade. Whatever the timing, there’s a tendency with sports to think that however the sport was built when you first encountered it is how that sport always was. For you, it really is how it always was.
For a lot of college football fans, Penn State was always in the Big Ten. For others, Arkansas was always in the Southwest Conference. For others, further back, Houston was never in the Southwest Conference. For still others, Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) was always in the Missouri Valley. When each of those things changed, it was a profound shift, and for a lot of those really torn apart over this round of conference realignment, I think what’s really happening is simply that the thing they love is changing, and while that’s how that thing works, they want it to stay the same. There’s nothing wrong with feeling that way. We feel that way about all sorts of things in our lives, from apartments to iPhone software updates. It’s ok to be sad about conferences changing shape, especially when one like the Pac-12 or the Old Big East dies. But I fear that lamenting this with too much passion not only tears the lamenter away from a realistic account of how common and natural this is but also makes the lamenter discourage others from falling in love with the thing they love or loved. In 2032, a fifth-grade kid is going to fall in love with college football. To them, UCLA will have always been in the Big Ten.
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As for what’s actually happening:
There are two known fronts to the Pac-12’s potential dissolution.
The Big 12 Front
The Big 12 is reported to have approved inviting Arizona to join the conference. Arizona is reported to want to leave, but there is speculation that Arizona State and Arizona don’t want to split up. One way to reconcile this would be for Arizona State to also leave, but Arizona State is not as far along in the process, so the Big 12 hasn’t formally invited them. Also? Arizona State reportedly does not want to leave unless it feels the Pac-12 is no longer going to exist.
Utah keeps getting named in these discussions, but we aren’t hearing any reports or even rumors out of Utah. Doubtlessly, they’re having conversations, but there has been a lot of assuming done about Utah, that assuming saying that if Arizona and Arizona State leave, Utah will follow. This might be correct—I think it’s correct, I assume it myself—but it’s all inference.
The Big Ten Front
The Big Ten front is much more interesting, and it’s the thing that initially really seemed to put the nail in the coffin for the Pac-12. Initially, when the reports came out that Washington and Oregon could be added to the Big Ten for a partial revenue share, meaning they’d take less money than the other Big Ten schools for the entirety of the Big Ten’s next TV deal (the one which begins next summer), that seemed to be curtains for the Pac-12. The Big Ten would offer Washington and Oregon more money and more visibility than the Pac-12, Washington and Oregon would take it, and across the way, Arizona would feel more emboldened to step out the door themselves.
None of this has changed. All of this has gone exactly as it was said to be going. But: Washington and Oregon aren’t worth very much money. Ross Dellenger reports for Yahoo that the Big Ten is offering the pair somewhere between $35M and $40M each annually, which is a lot more than the $20M the Pac-12 deal with Apple would likely land them but nowhere close to the $60M apiece the Big Ten is set to pay Rutgers, Maryland, and the rest of the league. Worse still, there’s no adjustment for travel expenses, and Dennis Dodd reports for CBS that Washington is fearful those could cost it $10M a year. Is $5M or $10M worth it to sever what’s left of your historic ties and face blowback from your state legislature for hanging the ag school out to dry? Washington is now reportedly not thinking so, and if Washington doesn’t go, it doesn’t sound like Oregon will, possibly because the Big Ten won’t take them alone.
The Two Fronts, Together
These two fronts are very much associated, for the core reason that if Washington and Oregon bolt, Arizona and Arizona State and someone else (presumed to be Utah) will have a much higher incentive to bolt. The same is true in reverse if Arizona and Arizona State bolt. That would raise Washington and Oregon’s incentive to bolt themselves. There’s some Prisoner’s Dilemma happening here.
Back to the Big 12
If the Big 12 doesn’t land Arizona, the league will be left with 13 teams. That’s probably fine logistically, especially since the Pac-12 isn’t exactly aimed in a prosperous direction, so it’s most likely a short-term arrangement. The speculation says that Brett Yormark wants the Big 12 to add UConn in this scenario, but the speculation also says that Yormark might be fronting, making a leverage play to try to pressure Arizona. The speculation further says that since adding UConn would mean every Big 12 member taking a pay cut (since UConn’s worth less than the average Big 12 school, owing to the status of its “football program”), the Big 12 schools would not actually invite UConn.
Back to the Pac-12
The Pac-12 could conceivably be left with six schools, or with seven, or with eight, or with nine. I have no idea what it would do in those scenarios, especially with the Mountain West closed off for at least next year unless someone wants to pay $34M per school. Maybe SMU gets the invitation, they’re not in the Mountain West, they’ve reportedly been willing to pay whatever their buyout is if it gets them into a power conference. But how much a power conference is this Pac-12 going to be? And will SMU balk now that it knows the annual revenue is only $20M and it means having to tell fans to buy a special subscription package on Apple TV? Maybe so. If any mid-major is comfortable telling its fans to pay one hundred dollars to watch the football team, that mid-major is SMU. As with a 13-team Big 12, there is no law, Newtonian or legislated, saying that an eight-team or nine-team Pac-12 cannot exist.
What’s Going to Happen?
The Pac-12 is reportedly meeting this morning, and some are pushing to sign the grant of rights which would leave the league affiliated with Apple. We assume the revenue number deal hasn’t changed with the elimination of Colorado, but we don’t know that for sure. There’s a lot we don’t know for sure.
My personal guess, and this is only a personal guess, is that the Arizona Board of Regents—which oversees both Arizona and Arizona State—relents and lets the two schools separate, each doing what they want to do. My guess is that this is then it for this round of realignment, but that the Pac-8 (funny how these things come full circle in certain ways) isn’t long for this world. Washington might not want the Big Ten right now (and to be clear, Oregon might still want it, the rumors point towards Washington being the one holding that up), but in the long run, it’s still their goal. With the proposed Pac-12 deal being on the short side, that goal might be attainable rather soon.
