First off, I feel like I owe everyone an explanation for where I’ve been the past two months. I’ve really wanted to update this blog, but I haven’t had the right time or mind space to where I felt like I could give it the attention it deserved. However, I believe I’m now in a space where I can post regularly again, and I have some ideas coming. So if you’re reading this, thank you from the bottom of my heart and I appreciate your patience. Now with the formalities out of the way, let’s move to the topic of today’s conversation.
The landscape of college athletics has changed dramatically over the past few days, although the root of the issue extends much further back. The Pac-12 as we know it, which was already reeling from the departure of USC and UCLA last summer and Colorado last week, is essentially no more. Arizona, Arizona State and Utah followed Colorado to the Big 12, while Oregon and Washington left for the greener grass of the Big Ten.
Now we’ve seen conferences collapse before, the Big East in the early 2010s comes to mind. However, this one just has a different aura to it, and feels like the end of an era. And with such a seismic event in something that I love, I have some complicated thoughts on the subject.
How We Got Here
To look forward, it’s important that we look back first. To be clear, this issue isn’t the fault of any particular school that’s departing. Not even USC and UCLA, who seemingly started this whole domino effect. No, the Pac-12’s collapse is clearly the fault of its leadership over the past decade and change.
In 2011, the Pac-12 was actually in a great position. Some of the conference’s football teams were among the very best, and the league had just signed the largest media rights deal in college sports history at the time (12 years, $3 billion). Looking back on it now, it’s hard to fathom how far the conference has fallen.
Sure, some teams fell off on the football field, but that’s not even close to the main issue. The Pac-12 made the short-sighted decision to form a network on its own without a media partner in an effort to keep all profits, which drastically eliminated the conference’s exposure.
The Pac-12 also missed a golden opportunity to take advantage of the Big 12’s own issues, as talks of Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State joining the western league never came to fruition. Fast forward a decade later, and an almost identical situation played out after Texas and Oklahoma defected for the SEC, with several Big 12 schools reaching out to the Pac-12 as some sort of a lifeline. Once again, the conference made the grave mistake of not capitalizing on its opportunity.
With this apathetic approach to the conference’s well-being, this collapse was more than a decade in the making. Current commissioner George Kliavkoff deserves some of the blame for his failure to find the conference a new media deal, which was in part due to the Big 12 beating it to the market. However, the main man at fault is former commissioner Larry Scott (2009-2021), who inflated his own salary to an absurd degree while making poor decision after poor decision. If there’s one man to blame in this situation, Scott is the clear answer.
Football Impact
This round of re-alignment has me, and other college football fans, feeling what makes college football special is slipping away. While the NFL can feel very corporate, college football feels so much more authentic because of the passion behind it. What builds that passion is the regional aspect in conferences, which fosters bitter rivalries for decades.
With this round of realignment, so many of those classic rivalries are now just gone. Matchups like Oklahoma-Oklahoma State, Oregon-Oregon State and Texas vs. any of its in-state foes are now in the past. You’re telling me that a game between Oregon and Maryland (almost 3,000 miles apart) is a conference matchup but a game between Oregon and Oregon State (less than 50 miles apart) isn’t?
Sure, new conference matchups could allow for new rivalries, and the returns of classics like Texas-Texas A&M is really nice. However, the cost of those few positives are far too high.
Other Sports
For all my whining about the impact on college football, the effects on it pale in comparison to what’s going to happen to other sports. Football is the money-maker in college sports, so others are often an afterthought in the big picture. As such, those sports are going to suffer greatly due to this realignment.
For sports that feature mid-week travel, imagine how much worse the travel schedule will be with these new super conferences. Traveling mid-week is already stressful enough while juggling classes, and now these players will have to fly thousands of miles in the middle of the week. Some softball players from now-former Pac-12 schools have already shared their displeasure, and rightfully so.
I probably sound like an angry old man in this post, but I really do feel this way. At the end of the day, it’s just unfortunate that the balance of power in college sports lies with television executives, rather than the athletes who make the action happen.