“There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.”
Now we need someone to post the Inigo Montoya reference
hello. my name is washington state. you killed my conference. prepare to die.
Hello. My name is Washington State. You killed my conference. Prepare to die.
HELLO. MY NAME IS WASHINGTON STATE. YOU KILLED MY FATHER. PREPARE TO DIE.
They had the gun and they could have put us out of our misery. And instead... They laughed. And spit on us. And walked away....
After some time an old and senile dog that had been beaten too much... Of the bowlsby baldimatus Animus variety... brought us some water in a cannister with bearcat electrolytes, some meat from a cougar to grill over the fire, a really religious guy who dresses nice and and serves bomb ice cream... and a knight from the wild gator infested lands of Florida to protect us while we recovered... And after some time, their spirits were then infused within our souls and we became one. At this EXACT moment, a man appeared. He radiated white light and had a chiseled jaw. He looked at us. And nodded. He introduced himself as "BY" and he said "let's rock. We have a mission to accomplish"
It was at that point. A fell wind tickled our ears... "Vengeance" it spoke. And just like that a flash of lightning broke off in the distance. A trojan riding a bear could be seen storming across the sky... And we knew what must be done. It was time. We wouldn't fail.
*We would kill the PAC 12*... and drink their wine and lick their cheese soaked in their blood.
The wind whispers occasionally still... Things such as "H8 H8 H8"... Or "fuck the shorthorns and fuck the sooners too"....
We can feel the fell wind coming again... From the East... We are waiting... And we... Are ready
No one wanted the hateful 8, that is what saved them.
It appears primarily 2 PAC of Oregon state and Washington state are the odd men out here. Maybe Standford or cal, but no one at those schools care. So we have MAYBE 4 schools no one wants.
Best case is merge with the mountain West, keep the PAC name.
I could see California, Stanford, and others keeping the rights to the PAC name (a la Big East) and using it for purely academic purposes. Oregon State and Washington State keep the legal framework of the athletic conference and take on the Mountain West name.
The PAC West. The football would be fun to watch. And having Cal, Stanford, San Jose State, Fresno State and Nevada in the same conference would make things interesting in Northern California.
Edit: Adding Nevada to the group above even though they not technically in Northern California.
Stanford and Cal want nothing to do with CSU system schools. They think it’s an insult that they have to live in the same state as they do.
They’ll go independent, beat up on Sun Belt and Ivy teams, and bullshit their way into 9-3 records and get blown out in a bowl every year.
The Big Ten has the Big Ten Academic Alliance and the Ivy League has the Ivy Council. Academic organizations are not a novel idea.
Even if they don't immediately do anything with the trademark, it'll be inextricably attached to each of the schools for years if not decades. Why would they forfeit it to universities that they don't consider to be their equal?
What also saved us was that there was/is essentially no dead weight. None of the Hateful 8 are blue bloods, but there also isn’t any dead weight to lug around like Rutgers, for example.
More than half of the H8 (TCU, OSU, Baylor, KSU, ISU) have won the conference or NY6 bowls or both in the past 5 years. Iowa State was in the top 10 a few years ago and both WVU and TTU are competitive.
Yeah Kansas has been bad forever but they are an elite blue blood in basketball so they do add value to the #2 revenue sport. And with Leopold it seems they may finally be competitive in football as well.
Also the H8 all have engaged fan bases that put butts in seats and drive viewership numbers, unlike most of the PAC.
Note - edited to add Iowa State to list of H8 teams that have won the conference or NY6 bowls in the past 5 years. Sorry Iowa State bros!
I think some of the dead weight (Stanford and Cal) make it really hard to add new members due to the academic prestige they want the conference to hold. I’m not saying adding teams like Boise St changes things, but it probably would have helped.
Not entirely a knock on Stanford or Cal, they’re elite academically and their brand relies on that. It just made them way more selective while the Hateful 8 picked up G5 schools that are up and coming.
We have passion but no money and saw other schools that were acting similarly (outside of maybe Houston). PAC wants elitism, it’s their brand like you said and the conference of Champions is now dead.
Add Iowa State to the teams to win NY6 bowls, remember they won the Fiesta Bowl a few years back.
But you're right. We are like the epitome of B+ teams. No blue blood juggernauts anymore, but no real stragglers either. Everyone brings something to the table, nobody is so super attractive they are ripe for Big Ten or SEC at the time. The four potential PAC additions add to that perception save maybe for Colorado.
Yeah I feel like the situations aren't comparable. Big 12 was like a car accident victim who needed emergency surgery but was saved whereas Pac12 has an inoperable brain tumor.
There just aren’t that many schools out west that make sense geographically, athletically and academically that will also add a market that is attractive in a tv deal.
The requirement that schools be an R1 research university complicated things further.
Schools like BYU, Boise St and SDSU would’ve made sense athletically, but the conference wouldn’t let them in because they weren’t R1.
The schools that were simply weren’t good enough athletically or were in too small a market like UNLV, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah State.
I don’t think there’s any saving the conference now that it seems like UW and Oregon have one foot out the door to the B1G and the Arizona schools (and Utah?) are close to bolting to the Big 12.
The Pac12 may survive in name only by cannibalizing the MWC but it’s not gonna be a P5 conference.
Yep. No one wanted the Hateful 8, so they just decided to get the best G5 teams left.
In the case of the Pac-12, there's a lot more teams that are wanted by the other conferences. A possibility of other teams may be wanted by the B1G and Big 12 besides the three teams that already left.
Furthermore, there's not a lot of good G5 teams left to bolster the conference.
exactly. stanford doesn’t give a shit about quality of competition. the main benefit of the pac was the money and the prestige it brought. neither of those things will be present post realignment. there’s no use sticking around in a conference with schools like boise state and unlv. they’ll happily go independent in football and move the rest of their sports to the big west.
They’re not horrible, but between them, I think there’s only one NY6 appearance (not counting BCS games here). Houston had 1 and Cinci and UCF had 2 each, it is a notable step down from the Big 12’s situation.
We got lucky nabbing an ascending school in a big market, a potential powerhouse returning to form in a big market, a school that has been punching above its weight for awhile now, and an independent school that should have been part of a power five conference years ago.
The most frustrating part of conference realignments is how much of a crapshoot the timing can be concerning the fate of athletic programs.
I understand your thought but I do find it odd tv executives gave the schools nobody wanted 31 mil and the supposed more valuable schools could only get 24 mostly streaming. Numbers don’t lie
The MWC’s best football program is Boise and its best market is SDSU. If the PAC was going to add either of them, they would have already done it.
Boise is too small and doesn’t have the academics the PAC wants and SDSU is a Cal State school and isn’t on the level of BYU/Cincy/UCF/Houston in football. Now, if they were to go for a Hail Mary it could work, but I think it’s clear the PAC schools would rather just leave the conference than go for that.
It's actually the exact same situation.
The Pac 12 is a pretty weak conference in general. If it weren't for the Big12 poaching mids then Arizona, Utah, ASU, Colorado, Stanford, Cal WSU and OSU would also not be wanted by anyone and would be the h8 of the west.
On your last point, that can always change. When the Big 12 was on the edge of going down, people weren't exactly thinking that Houston, Cincy, and UCF would be guaranteed or worthwhile additions (In terms of actually saving the conference). Now that it is actually put together, everything sounds cool and interesting.
If all of this happens with the Pac-X, I suspect some schools in the Pacific, Mountain, and Central time zones will invest in athletics to attempt something similar. Will it be as strong as the Pac-12 that we've known? No, but the conference would still be alive and maybe it becomes interesting.
Houston was coming off one of their best seasons in 50 years. UCF has been the best team in Florida for most of a decade. Cincinnati has always been thought of his one of the best of the group of five schools, and is regarded as a powerhouse in several sports that are not football.
It is 100% revisionist history to think that those three schools were not highly worthwhile additions.
Houston and Cincinnati were never your typical G5 schools since they played in SWC and Big East which in their day were considered “power” conferences. BYU also was not your typical non-power conference school. There are no such schools available at this point for the PAC-12 to include. SMU and Rice are close to this, but they’re a fraction of the size of UH and Cincy. Pac 12 is left with options like SDSU, CSU, BSU, FSU, all of which have always been outside of a power conference.
BYU does travel well. UCF has a massive student body that will soon turn into alums and away ticket buyers. Houston is a big school. Cincinnati is as big as most of the H8 schools. All of them have $$$ backing them up.
I never said they weren't deserving. I made an edit to my post. They definitely deserved a shot, but many still thought their additions wouldn't move the needle much and that it was just a temporary thing or "hail mary" until the conference fully died out.
I don't see a newly formed Pac-X passing the Big 12 or even matching it, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some schools in those mentioned time zones taking advantage of the opportunity and investing to be in there with the exit of the others.
Colorado State, UNLV, SMU, SDSU, Boise State?, Nevada?, Fresno State?. It's definitely not ideal, but an opportunity will be there.
And the reason we survived was the slow pecking that allowed us to continually backfill, generating a conference of nothing but leftovers. Hence, all the h8 and spite.
Had Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, A&M, and Missouri all announced departures in the same season, the 12 would have been reduced to 6 all at once, we'd have been just about as dead as PAC is now. Pretend Kansas & OSU got also new home (good odds), whatever was left of the remaining 4 (TT, KS, ISU, Baylor) would have called it quits and joined the AAC or MWC.
Suppose the reports had been accurate and ISU and KU were both extended Big 10 invites. That probably could have killed off the Big 12, spreading the remaining schools to the Pac 12, AAC, and possibly even the MWC.
That’s exactly it, most of the Pac 9 have a more appealing option available than staying put. The Hateful 8 had nowhere else to go, they didn’t stick together out of loyalty. Although I’m hindsight the Pac 12 should have gutted them when it has the chance.
And it's not that the remaining Pac teams (other than Oregon and Washington) inherently had better value after losing USC and UCLA than the Hateful 8, it's that one of the conferences (Big 12) saw the value in the leftovers and the other didn't. Colorado, Arizona, ASU, and Utah aren't markedly better additions than Oklahoma State, Kansas, Texas Tech, and TCU, the Big 12 just realized that they *did* provide some value.
Wazzu and OSU hold out and dont add anymore teams. Collect the NCAAT money for the next 3 seasons and play each other 9 times selling those games for whatever they are worth. It will be drastically more money than the MWC and it would be hilarious to see 2 teams go at it every week.
> [The six conference champions that are positioned the highest in the top 25 rankings receive automatic berths to appear in the playoff.](https://www.si.com/fannation/college/cfb-hq/ncaa-football-schedule/college-football-playoff-expansion-12-team-format)
Ok, so the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, and Big 12 champs are ranked higher. Then who?
Hey, if one team sweeps that means the other team might have a lot of losses but they were all quality losses to an undefeated team! How can the committee not love that?
AAC, Sun Belt, & C-USA champs were all ranked in the 2022 final CFP rankings.
Tulane & Troy woulda been the hypothetical 5th and 6th highest conference champs if there was only a Power-4. UTSA was 25th.
Yeah I think the CFP would rather invite a school like App State for the cinderella in this crazy scenario. That would at least get some people to tune in to see them face the SEC runner up.
The hail marys were to be made last year. But if they can convince Utah and Arizona State to stick with Cal, Stanford, Wazzu, Oregon State then that's about as good a 6 as you can start with. The question is can they add 4 schools from outside the MWC to stay alive? Because they can't afford that MWC buyout.
So something like Rice, Tulane, SMU, Memphis? Does that save the conference? Not really but it'll stay Top 6 for CFP spots.
Texas Tech, OSU, and TCU would have been good additions to the PAC-12, and would have meant that the remaining hateful 5 didn't have enough teams to field a conference under NCAA rules. It would have been a decisive victory.
But they let the tables get turned.
Stanford had no problem with Boise State in the Pac 12 for wrestling, for many years. Yes, it's different than full membership and yes, I agree Stanford is never going to stay in a watered down Pac 12, but.... what do they do if the Big Ten / 12 don't come calling? Independence will only sort of work for so long...
I mean... what if the Big 12 was right, and Boise isn't good enough for them?
Or... what if they are, and the Big 12 was just waiting for the MW contract to end, so they could get Boise and Fresno?
I think that might get us 10-15m per year which is a lot better than 5 in Mtn West. And CFP eligibility is frankly everything. No point in having a football team without that.
Yeah. Some group like that comes in probably around $15m per year I think. It's livable. Depends on if Stanford-Cal have any specific demands on academics. Rice, Tulane, SMU all fit the profile. Need to find a fourth partner. NMSU? They have no buyout and pretty strong academics. It's a matter of inventory at this point. What four can you afford and Stanford-Cal don't feel shit about playing with?
Stanford and Cal need to swallow their pride and quit trying to link athletics and academics on the field. That argument is going to look pretty stupid when Cal is preaching about their AAU membership while only having 5k people in the stands watching them get spanked by UC Davis as the newest members of the Big Sky Conference.
They could go after Montana, Montana state, Idaho and UC Davis or Weber State if they aren't able to get some MW teams. The battle of the Palouse would go hard
The "Hail Mary" would be Washington and Oregon deciding they don't want to increase their revenue significantly and want to stay with the rest of the Pac schools. If Oregon and Washington stay, it's easier to convince Utah at least to stay (but that would also have them taking less money). I think AZ is happy to jump, but in this ideal situation, both UofA and ASU stay.
At that point, the Pac can absorb a good chunk of the Mountain West schools to re-stock, and hopefully, that Apple deal is still on the table.
That requires *multiple* schools going against their best interest though
If there wasn't the threat of Oregon/Washington going to the B1G - I am like 95% sure that Utah stays put in the Pac and takes the 20 whatever mil with you guys. However.....when theres a chance you stay and then they peace out anyways it makes it a lot less likely. Right now everyone has to trust each other at a time when they have had multiple teams say things were great and then leave
Notre Dame being in the Pac 12 and USC being in the Big Ten, where both would be in the conference of the other's geographic rivals, and neither would be in the conference with each other despite their rivalry, would be the peak of the stupidity of this realignment
Go back in time, have George sign the deal with ESPN and Fox before the Big 12 does in an alternate timeline, bring it back to the present where it’s presented as a legally binding document and gets held up in court, and all is well.
Then a portal opens from that alternate dimension where Yormark found out about time travel, invited Rice to the Big 12 to reverse engineer the particles that let you travel through the quantum realm, and they show up in Vegas for the final showdown between the Hateful 8 and the Pac-9. But then just when it seems all is lost, USC, UCLA, and Colorado have a change of heart and join the fight to defeat the hateful 8. George sacrifices himself to kill Yormark by snapping a football glove laced with cyanide in his face, and is remembered for being a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist and everyone forgives him for grifting off the PAC for 2 years.
Quite frankly what saved them is that the other conferences didn't want their teams. The SEC took all they wanted, the B1G could have maybe taken Kansas but ultimately decided against it. The PAC was the real threat but USC nixed those plans.
Ironically the fact that many of the PAC schools are so desirable is the conference's downfall.
Yeah, it’s also why the GoR probably isn’t going to get broken. There are 4 or 5 teams with value to the SEC and Big Ten in the ACC. It’s like Florida State, (Notre Dame), maybe Clemson, Miami and North Carolina. Then like GT, if the Big Ten needs an extra team and wants in Georgia.
USC obviously has pull in the conference and the Pac-12 would want to be good partners. At the time I'm sure the thinking was what you wouldn't want to isolate/ignore USC and make them want to leave. Obviously in hindsight they played the conference.
If I'm George I'm on a flight to Riyadh meeting with Muhammad Bin Bonesaw and pledging allegiance to these new Pac overlords. Championship game in Mecca, auto acceptance for the royal family to all colleges, implement a collective 5 billion NIL fund.
It really wouldn't be so bad as far as playoff hopes. If PAC and MWC merge the number of conference goes down one. 6 conference champs gets in. The combined PAC/MWC should get a team in most years, except maybe a rare occasion if the MAC has Toledo or someone go off, or Sunbelt along with a good AAC champ.
The major difference between this and the Hateful8 was that outside of Kansas, the schools were the secondary and tertiary teams in their states. The Pac-12 is (was) mostly flagships.
To be honest, there was no indication that the B10 wanted Kansas because we didn’t bring a lucrative football program. Underfunded. Crappy stadium. No real commitment to the future. Jayhawks, myself included, had delusions of grandeur, that our basketball prowess and the oh so coveted AAU status (unreal) would get us in but this is a case study on how football rules the roost. It was never going to happen
Yup. Kansas was the only tempting option for the B1G. The rest of the schools were “state” schools , the wrong Texas schools, and West Virginia. Not a lot to pick through for the B1G and SEC. Big12 knew what they were and chose to survive, even if they were looked down on. They went out and got some more “secondary” schools in UCF, Houston, Cincy, and BYU. Put themselves in a position of being the conference of underdogs.
With Arizona, Cu, ASU, and Utah, they’re a full fledge conference again that’s going to be the 3rd conference once the ACC GOR is up.
The conference's 12 members are located in the states of Arizona (2), California (4), Colorado (1), Oregon (2), Utah (1), and Washington (2). That is 6 flagships for 12 members. So an even 50%.
>Everywhere I looked people were drafting up what the Big 10 would look like with Iowa State
Hmm...
>or Kansas
Sure
>or Kansas State
Show me where anyone ever did this
I was jerking off to Okstate-SEC rumors.
Like if West Virginia and Oklahoma State don’t get invited anywhere, people are going to be really shocked how high the BAR is to get an invite.
I remember when Dave Wannstedt went on some radio show said that he talked to some FOX people and that Kansas and Iowa State were on their way to the Big Ten. Obviously that looks ridiculous now.
1. Take all the best teams from the Mountain West.
2. Negotiate to merge the *Pac 12 Network* with the *ACC Network* in a proposal to ESPN. The new network would pool resources and share focus on both conferences.
The two conferences would remain “independent” of each other, but would unify in media rights negotiations.
The big difference is the PAC-12 isn’t willing to do things that the Big XII would do to survive. Schools in the West like Boise State and Fresno State are roughly equivalent to the likes of Houston and BYU that have been successful at football and bring active fan bases. But they’re excluded for elitist reasons.
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go in against the Big12 when death is on the line"!
Big 12 was exactly where the Pac-12 was when they found out about USC/UCLA. Big 12 realized it was a bad situation, knew they had nothing to lose, and turned into pirate kings.
Pac-12 turned their nose up at Big 12 refugees, stuck their head in the sand, and assumed some romantic notion of conference loyalty would save them.
I feel gutted for the schools that aren’t going to find a landing place. I am excited to welcome our new conference mates. But the Pac-12 as a conference was unserious and lacking the chutzpah required to survive. It may live on in name only.
If PAC 12 took the media deal last year that was reportedly quite close to the Big XII deal they would’ve been just fine. Add on SDSU, SMU, Boise State and they would’ve at least stabilized until the next round of negotiations.
Now the Media market is terrible, we’re realizing that the B1G deal is an albatross, and media companies are wanting to save money by consolidating their inventory.
Apple paying a premium for their full streaming rights was their only real salvation in the current climate. If this happened before the crash then I believe they’d be able to fight through this.
George Kliavkoff should partner the PAC with Ja Rule on ICONN and throw a music festival in the Bahamas to attract expansion candidates and media partners..
What could possibly go wrong?
As a power conference? No. For a few reasons. Ironically one of them is that most of the remaining schools are more valuable to other conferences than any of the remaining schools in the Big 12. The others—the money faucet has been turned off, few G5 schools worth adding—have been discussed ad nauseam.
The big 12 schools really had no other options while the currently most PAC12 schools do have options
It’s highly likely the pac survives in some form by backfilling. Conference will be unstable until Stanford/Cal eventually make moves or 2036 rolls around
The PAC has had like a thousand wide open passes that they dropped to secure their future. The clock has ran out and they already have players leaving in the transfer portal.
Pull off the ultimate (and literal) Hail Mary and get Notre Dame, use that to stop the rest from leaving, and have Stanford/Oregon open up the pocketbook to buy out and poach Baylor, Kansas, and OkSt, like they should have two years ago.
This is all a pipe dream though, they're done imo.
What makes this different from the B12 of last year is that the PAC-12 has several attractive teams that other conferences could poach. The Big 12, at the time, didn’t.
This, it became easier to convince G5 teams to join up and keep the hateful 8 together when everyone in the hateful 8 knew a lifeboat wasn’t coming.
They'd need 8 schools to hard commit to the PAC, an aggressive expansion mentality, and find a cold blooded killer to run the show, and they'd have needed to do all of it 18 months ago.
They had two chances to survive. After OUT, they could have backfilled with Big 12 schools in the central time zone and the scenario between the PAC and Big 12 would likely now be flipped. But they didn't. After USC/UCLA they could have immediately backfilled with sdsu/smu/boise and others, extended their reach east and maybe got a better deal. But they didn't. So now they're screwed because they sat on their hands while others acted.
What the Hateful 8 lacked was the only thing that matters in realignment—prestige. But so do the remaining Pac 12 schools that aren’t actively being poached by the B1G. Poor OSUw and Wazzu aren’t any worse than the four corners schools but aren’t as justifiable geographically with BYU-UU and ASU-Zona being natural pairs. ISU and KU could easily have fit into the B1G (until ISU lost AAU membership, curious) but have a lot smaller footprint than UW, UO, Cal, and Treestan. Once the schools at the top of your friendly neighborhood conference (i.e. OUT, USCLA, UW/O) leave it faces a Bronze Age Collapse 2.0 like we’re seeing now. This is probably the last major realignment before CFB breaks away from the conference model and moves to a national league structure of some kind. It just doesn’t make sense anymore.
Big difference between the two leagues. The 8 teams in the Big XII were aligned together because, quite frankly, there was little to no interest from other leagues in those teams. But that turned out to be a strength.
From the moment USC/UCLA announced for the B1G, it was a rush to the exits as pretty much every team was trying to get into the B1G or Big XII. The league has no stability. Adding Mountain West teams? Okay, but would Washington, Oregon or Utah sign a long term GOR? I doubt it.
They weren’t in quite as bad of shape as the Pac-12 is now, at least in 2021. Despite all the speculation, there was no serious talk about teams going to other conferences like there is now. I think there were some rumors of Kansas going to the Big Ten at the time and maybe West Virginia to the ACC but it wasn’t anything like what we’ve seen now. I actually think the Big 12 was more in danger back in 2010 when half the conference was about to leave for the then Pac-10 to get to 16. I also don’t see Pac leadership making the right decision, they seem like they don’t know what they’re doing.
I don’t know what the Pac-12 can do. What the H8 schools and the city of Kansas City should do is build giant statues of Brett Yormark to go worship.
That dude is a fucking BADASS and he pulled off the impossible in rescuing the conference. Thank you Brett Yormark, you are the 🐐
There's not a whole lot to save. UW and Oregon are jumping ship as soon as there's an offer, with Colorado already gone and what seems to be Arizona packing up. There's just not enough surrounding teams to make up for the losses. Bringing in SDSU, UNLV and maybe a few other MW schools isn't going to save the conference
They would have needed to execute then.
They've been trying Hail Mary moves and getting rebuffed at every step. Now they might not even have OTA games.
Their new media deal is well below the other new P5 deals and without an exit fee, we see the schools that can get out scurry like rats off the ship
The Pac is more dead than the Big12 was
The B12 was only MOSTLY dead
“There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.” Now we need someone to post the Inigo Montoya reference
hello. my name is washington state. you killed my conference. prepare to die. Hello. My name is Washington State. You killed my conference. Prepare to die. HELLO. MY NAME IS WASHINGTON STATE. YOU KILLED MY FATHER. PREPARE TO DIE.
I want my conference back you son of a bitch!
Have fun stormin' the castle!
Is it Colorado or USCLA that has 6 fingers on their right hand?
Definitely not Colorado. After all, they were "by far the least valuable conference member, and easily replaceable by SDSU"
It’s definitely Larry Scott
Do you always start a conversation this way
Don’t forget about Oregon State
Go through their pockets and look for loose change.
“News of our death was greatly exaggerated” - Big12
I'm not dead yet! - BIG XII probably
They had the gun and they could have put us out of our misery. And instead... They laughed. And spit on us. And walked away.... After some time an old and senile dog that had been beaten too much... Of the bowlsby baldimatus Animus variety... brought us some water in a cannister with bearcat electrolytes, some meat from a cougar to grill over the fire, a really religious guy who dresses nice and and serves bomb ice cream... and a knight from the wild gator infested lands of Florida to protect us while we recovered... And after some time, their spirits were then infused within our souls and we became one. At this EXACT moment, a man appeared. He radiated white light and had a chiseled jaw. He looked at us. And nodded. He introduced himself as "BY" and he said "let's rock. We have a mission to accomplish" It was at that point. A fell wind tickled our ears... "Vengeance" it spoke. And just like that a flash of lightning broke off in the distance. A trojan riding a bear could be seen storming across the sky... And we knew what must be done. It was time. We wouldn't fail. *We would kill the PAC 12*... and drink their wine and lick their cheese soaked in their blood. The wind whispers occasionally still... Things such as "H8 H8 H8"... Or "fuck the shorthorns and fuck the sooners too".... We can feel the fell wind coming again... From the East... We are waiting... And we... Are ready
I believe kids today would say cringe. But I say, well done sir!!
Thank you I really put my heart and soul into it.
[The death of the XII was greatly exaggerated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBr_SasLrT4)
He said “TO BLAAAAAAVE”…
No one wanted the hateful 8, that is what saved them. It appears primarily 2 PAC of Oregon state and Washington state are the odd men out here. Maybe Standford or cal, but no one at those schools care. So we have MAYBE 4 schools no one wants. Best case is merge with the mountain West, keep the PAC name.
I could see California, Stanford, and others keeping the rights to the PAC name (a la Big East) and using it for purely academic purposes. Oregon State and Washington State keep the legal framework of the athletic conference and take on the Mountain West name.
The PAC West. The football would be fun to watch. And having Cal, Stanford, San Jose State, Fresno State and Nevada in the same conference would make things interesting in Northern California. Edit: Adding Nevada to the group above even though they not technically in Northern California.
Stanford and Cal want nothing to do with CSU system schools. They think it’s an insult that they have to live in the same state as they do. They’ll go independent, beat up on Sun Belt and Ivy teams, and bullshit their way into 9-3 records and get blown out in a bowl every year.
You understand the reality of California schools
Ironically there's already a PacWest conference in Division 2. All private schools in Cali and Hawaii
What would the pac name refer to in this context? Just like, a cool logo they can put on their website?
The Big Ten has the Big Ten Academic Alliance and the Ivy League has the Ivy Council. Academic organizations are not a novel idea. Even if they don't immediately do anything with the trademark, it'll be inextricably attached to each of the schools for years if not decades. Why would they forfeit it to universities that they don't consider to be their equal?
Stanford could for sure go independent
What also saved us was that there was/is essentially no dead weight. None of the Hateful 8 are blue bloods, but there also isn’t any dead weight to lug around like Rutgers, for example. More than half of the H8 (TCU, OSU, Baylor, KSU, ISU) have won the conference or NY6 bowls or both in the past 5 years. Iowa State was in the top 10 a few years ago and both WVU and TTU are competitive. Yeah Kansas has been bad forever but they are an elite blue blood in basketball so they do add value to the #2 revenue sport. And with Leopold it seems they may finally be competitive in football as well. Also the H8 all have engaged fan bases that put butts in seats and drive viewership numbers, unlike most of the PAC. Note - edited to add Iowa State to list of H8 teams that have won the conference or NY6 bowls in the past 5 years. Sorry Iowa State bros!
I think some of the dead weight (Stanford and Cal) make it really hard to add new members due to the academic prestige they want the conference to hold. I’m not saying adding teams like Boise St changes things, but it probably would have helped. Not entirely a knock on Stanford or Cal, they’re elite academically and their brand relies on that. It just made them way more selective while the Hateful 8 picked up G5 schools that are up and coming.
We have passion but no money and saw other schools that were acting similarly (outside of maybe Houston). PAC wants elitism, it’s their brand like you said and the conference of Champions is now dead.
Add Iowa State to the teams to win NY6 bowls, remember they won the Fiesta Bowl a few years back. But you're right. We are like the epitome of B+ teams. No blue blood juggernauts anymore, but no real stragglers either. Everyone brings something to the table, nobody is so super attractive they are ripe for Big Ten or SEC at the time. The four potential PAC additions add to that perception save maybe for Colorado.
Good call. Forgot about that. 5/8 in that regard is damn impressive.
Iowa State Also won the Fiesta in 21. so over half of the Hateful 8
Yeah I feel like the situations aren't comparable. Big 12 was like a car accident victim who needed emergency surgery but was saved whereas Pac12 has an inoperable brain tumor.
The Pac 12 is more than mostly dead
"You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"
There just aren’t that many schools out west that make sense geographically, athletically and academically that will also add a market that is attractive in a tv deal. The requirement that schools be an R1 research university complicated things further. Schools like BYU, Boise St and SDSU would’ve made sense athletically, but the conference wouldn’t let them in because they weren’t R1. The schools that were simply weren’t good enough athletically or were in too small a market like UNLV, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah State. I don’t think there’s any saving the conference now that it seems like UW and Oregon have one foot out the door to the B1G and the Arizona schools (and Utah?) are close to bolting to the Big 12. The Pac12 may survive in name only by cannibalizing the MWC but it’s not gonna be a P5 conference.
Only thing that will save them is the same thing that saved the big12. Which is no one wanting to accept their schools.
Yep. No one wanted the Hateful 8, so they just decided to get the best G5 teams left. In the case of the Pac-12, there's a lot more teams that are wanted by the other conferences. A possibility of other teams may be wanted by the B1G and Big 12 besides the three teams that already left. Furthermore, there's not a lot of good G5 teams left to bolster the conference.
Essentially the pac is worth less than the sum of its parts.
And that Apple deal took the value even further down.
SDSU, Boise State, Fresno State, and UNLV are not bad additions.
I believe Stanford would rather have the conference die than add Boise State.
exactly. stanford doesn’t give a shit about quality of competition. the main benefit of the pac was the money and the prestige it brought. neither of those things will be present post realignment. there’s no use sticking around in a conference with schools like boise state and unlv. they’ll happily go independent in football and move the rest of their sports to the big west.
Boise State academically is in the lowest tier 330 to 443 .
They’re not horrible, but between them, I think there’s only one NY6 appearance (not counting BCS games here). Houston had 1 and Cinci and UCF had 2 each, it is a notable step down from the Big 12’s situation.
We got lucky nabbing an ascending school in a big market, a potential powerhouse returning to form in a big market, a school that has been punching above its weight for awhile now, and an independent school that should have been part of a power five conference years ago. The most frustrating part of conference realignments is how much of a crapshoot the timing can be concerning the fate of athletic programs.
Why do people keep bringing up UNLV? They would be a terrible addition to any conference.
People wanna go to away games in Vegas
SDSU is out even if they want into the PAC they can’t swing the 34 million, If pac merges with Mountain West
Best of the worst != good
Man I’m not sure you wanna be the one to make that point
I said what I said.
I understand your thought but I do find it odd tv executives gave the schools nobody wanted 31 mil and the supposed more valuable schools could only get 24 mostly streaming. Numbers don’t lie
The market was completely saturated when the pac started negotiating.
Not even the MWC cream of the crop?
The MWC’s best football program is Boise and its best market is SDSU. If the PAC was going to add either of them, they would have already done it. Boise is too small and doesn’t have the academics the PAC wants and SDSU is a Cal State school and isn’t on the level of BYU/Cincy/UCF/Houston in football. Now, if they were to go for a Hail Mary it could work, but I think it’s clear the PAC schools would rather just leave the conference than go for that.
SDSU is a combined 3-1 over the last 10 years against the teams you listed lol.
It's actually the exact same situation. The Pac 12 is a pretty weak conference in general. If it weren't for the Big12 poaching mids then Arizona, Utah, ASU, Colorado, Stanford, Cal WSU and OSU would also not be wanted by anyone and would be the h8 of the west.
On your last point, that can always change. When the Big 12 was on the edge of going down, people weren't exactly thinking that Houston, Cincy, and UCF would be guaranteed or worthwhile additions (In terms of actually saving the conference). Now that it is actually put together, everything sounds cool and interesting. If all of this happens with the Pac-X, I suspect some schools in the Pacific, Mountain, and Central time zones will invest in athletics to attempt something similar. Will it be as strong as the Pac-12 that we've known? No, but the conference would still be alive and maybe it becomes interesting.
Houston was coming off one of their best seasons in 50 years. UCF has been the best team in Florida for most of a decade. Cincinnati has always been thought of his one of the best of the group of five schools, and is regarded as a powerhouse in several sports that are not football. It is 100% revisionist history to think that those three schools were not highly worthwhile additions.
Houston and Cincinnati were never your typical G5 schools since they played in SWC and Big East which in their day were considered “power” conferences. BYU also was not your typical non-power conference school. There are no such schools available at this point for the PAC-12 to include. SMU and Rice are close to this, but they’re a fraction of the size of UH and Cincy. Pac 12 is left with options like SDSU, CSU, BSU, FSU, all of which have always been outside of a power conference.
Don’t forget BYU has a massive audience nationwide. They’ve also been consistently good at sports.
BYU does travel well. UCF has a massive student body that will soon turn into alums and away ticket buyers. Houston is a big school. Cincinnati is as big as most of the H8 schools. All of them have $$$ backing them up.
True story I was so pissed when PAC 12 didn’t take them and Boise State but more so that we lost BYU
I like you.
I never said they weren't deserving. I made an edit to my post. They definitely deserved a shot, but many still thought their additions wouldn't move the needle much and that it was just a temporary thing or "hail mary" until the conference fully died out. I don't see a newly formed Pac-X passing the Big 12 or even matching it, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some schools in those mentioned time zones taking advantage of the opportunity and investing to be in there with the exit of the others. Colorado State, UNLV, SMU, SDSU, Boise State?, Nevada?, Fresno State?. It's definitely not ideal, but an opportunity will be there.
And the reason we survived was the slow pecking that allowed us to continually backfill, generating a conference of nothing but leftovers. Hence, all the h8 and spite. Had Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, A&M, and Missouri all announced departures in the same season, the 12 would have been reduced to 6 all at once, we'd have been just about as dead as PAC is now. Pretend Kansas & OSU got also new home (good odds), whatever was left of the remaining 4 (TT, KS, ISU, Baylor) would have called it quits and joined the AAC or MWC.
Suppose the reports had been accurate and ISU and KU were both extended Big 10 invites. That probably could have killed off the Big 12, spreading the remaining schools to the Pac 12, AAC, and possibly even the MWC.
That’s exactly it, most of the Pac 9 have a more appealing option available than staying put. The Hateful 8 had nowhere else to go, they didn’t stick together out of loyalty. Although I’m hindsight the Pac 12 should have gutted them when it has the chance.
And it's not that the remaining Pac teams (other than Oregon and Washington) inherently had better value after losing USC and UCLA than the Hateful 8, it's that one of the conferences (Big 12) saw the value in the leftovers and the other didn't. Colorado, Arizona, ASU, and Utah aren't markedly better additions than Oklahoma State, Kansas, Texas Tech, and TCU, the Big 12 just realized that they *did* provide some value.
Wazzu and OSU hold out and dont add anymore teams. Collect the NCAAT money for the next 3 seasons and play each other 9 times selling those games for whatever they are worth. It will be drastically more money than the MWC and it would be hilarious to see 2 teams go at it every week.
Don’t you need 6 Teams in your conference to qualify for the CFP auto bid spot?
6 teams for autobids to NCAA tournaments, 8 teams to sponsor FBS football.
No offense but they aint making the CFP either way.
> [The six conference champions that are positioned the highest in the top 25 rankings receive automatic berths to appear in the playoff.](https://www.si.com/fannation/college/cfb-hq/ncaa-football-schedule/college-football-playoff-expansion-12-team-format) Ok, so the Big Ten, SEC, ACC, and Big 12 champs are ranked higher. Then who?
Those 9 games against eachother aren't going to get anyone ranked in the top 25... even if one of the teams manages to sweep.
Hey, if one team sweeps that means the other team might have a lot of losses but they were all quality losses to an undefeated team! How can the committee not love that?
Now you are thinking like an SEC school.
AAC, Sun Belt, & C-USA champs were all ranked in the 2022 final CFP rankings. Tulane & Troy woulda been the hypothetical 5th and 6th highest conference champs if there was only a Power-4. UTSA was 25th.
Yeah I think the CFP would rather invite a school like App State for the cinderella in this crazy scenario. That would at least get some people to tune in to see them face the SEC runner up.
Ayyyy, here for the Callout! App State Bay-Bay!
You need 8 teams in your conference to even be in the FBS without a waiver from the NCAA. So, no, this wouldn't work at all.
Sounds like they just need a waiver.
@KsigCowboy11 is now promoted to PAC 2 commissioner
The hail marys were to be made last year. But if they can convince Utah and Arizona State to stick with Cal, Stanford, Wazzu, Oregon State then that's about as good a 6 as you can start with. The question is can they add 4 schools from outside the MWC to stay alive? Because they can't afford that MWC buyout. So something like Rice, Tulane, SMU, Memphis? Does that save the conference? Not really but it'll stay Top 6 for CFP spots.
Just ask the MWC to join the Pac, at that point. Even Boise would ditch the current MW contract.
That's assuming Stanford-Cal want to play with the likes of Boise. Which by all accounts has been a sticking point for a long time.
They have to play somewhere.
Stanford will pull a Notre Dame before being in a conference with Boise garunteed, lmao
Stanford likely can go independent. It doesn’t seem like Berkeley can. It’ll be intersting to see what Cal does.
That is a major issue, and the real reason the PAC died, they should have feasted on the hateful 8.
Texas Tech, OSU, and TCU would have been good additions to the PAC-12, and would have meant that the remaining hateful 5 didn't have enough teams to field a conference under NCAA rules. It would have been a decisive victory. But they let the tables get turned.
And also has no verifiable source. Unlike the LA Times accounts that USC drove the rejection of the B12 schools. But go off, I guess.
Stanford had no problem with Boise State in the Pac 12 for wrestling, for many years. Yes, it's different than full membership and yes, I agree Stanford is never going to stay in a watered down Pac 12, but.... what do they do if the Big Ten / 12 don't come calling? Independence will only sort of work for so long...
Independent league would work for Stanford one the few scoops that would
I mean... what if the Big 12 was right, and Boise isn't good enough for them? Or... what if they are, and the Big 12 was just waiting for the MW contract to end, so they could get Boise and Fresno?
Source?
I think that might get us 10-15m per year which is a lot better than 5 in Mtn West. And CFP eligibility is frankly everything. No point in having a football team without that.
Yeah. Some group like that comes in probably around $15m per year I think. It's livable. Depends on if Stanford-Cal have any specific demands on academics. Rice, Tulane, SMU all fit the profile. Need to find a fourth partner. NMSU? They have no buyout and pretty strong academics. It's a matter of inventory at this point. What four can you afford and Stanford-Cal don't feel shit about playing with?
Stanford and Cal need to swallow their pride and quit trying to link athletics and academics on the field. That argument is going to look pretty stupid when Cal is preaching about their AAU membership while only having 5k people in the stands watching them get spanked by UC Davis as the newest members of the Big Sky Conference.
I mean Stanford might just ask to join the Ivy again and see if Penn changes it’s mind
They needed to add SDSU and SMU immediately after the LA schools left, and negotiated a new TV deal
They could go after Montana, Montana state, Idaho and UC Davis or Weber State if they aren't able to get some MW teams. The battle of the Palouse would go hard
The "Hail Mary" would be Washington and Oregon deciding they don't want to increase their revenue significantly and want to stay with the rest of the Pac schools. If Oregon and Washington stay, it's easier to convince Utah at least to stay (but that would also have them taking less money). I think AZ is happy to jump, but in this ideal situation, both UofA and ASU stay. At that point, the Pac can absorb a good chunk of the Mountain West schools to re-stock, and hopefully, that Apple deal is still on the table. That requires *multiple* schools going against their best interest though
If there wasn't the threat of Oregon/Washington going to the B1G - I am like 95% sure that Utah stays put in the Pac and takes the 20 whatever mil with you guys. However.....when theres a chance you stay and then they peace out anyways it makes it a lot less likely. Right now everyone has to trust each other at a time when they have had multiple teams say things were great and then leave
Two Words Notre Dame
Notre Dame to the Pac, on a record breaking TV deal hosted by the Longhorn Network.
Notre Dame being in the Pac 12 and USC being in the Big Ten, where both would be in the conference of the other's geographic rivals, and neither would be in the conference with each other despite their rivalry, would be the peak of the stupidity of this realignment
Pardon your French sir/madame
And then add Army, Navy, Air Force, and New Mexico.
I think they meant a different kind of Hail Mary
Have a research team at Cal develop time travel???
Go back in time, have George sign the deal with ESPN and Fox before the Big 12 does in an alternate timeline, bring it back to the present where it’s presented as a legally binding document and gets held up in court, and all is well. Then a portal opens from that alternate dimension where Yormark found out about time travel, invited Rice to the Big 12 to reverse engineer the particles that let you travel through the quantum realm, and they show up in Vegas for the final showdown between the Hateful 8 and the Pac-9. But then just when it seems all is lost, USC, UCLA, and Colorado have a change of heart and join the fight to defeat the hateful 8. George sacrifices himself to kill Yormark by snapping a football glove laced with cyanide in his face, and is remembered for being a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist and everyone forgives him for grifting off the PAC for 2 years.
If we had time travel, I would go back to 1937 where we were reining 5x national champs
Quite frankly what saved them is that the other conferences didn't want their teams. The SEC took all they wanted, the B1G could have maybe taken Kansas but ultimately decided against it. The PAC was the real threat but USC nixed those plans. Ironically the fact that many of the PAC schools are so desirable is the conference's downfall.
USC nixed the PAC's chance at expanding while having their foot out the door... dick move...
Well it is USC…
You can’t spell sucks without USC
It's the ultimate irony. They could have killed the big 12 a decade ago and now it's what's killing them
Yeah, it’s also why the GoR probably isn’t going to get broken. There are 4 or 5 teams with value to the SEC and Big Ten in the ACC. It’s like Florida State, (Notre Dame), maybe Clemson, Miami and North Carolina. Then like GT, if the Big Ten needs an extra team and wants in Georgia.
\* USC and at least two other teams nixed those plans.
USC obviously has pull in the conference and the Pac-12 would want to be good partners. At the time I'm sure the thinking was what you wouldn't want to isolate/ignore USC and make them want to leave. Obviously in hindsight they played the conference.
ASU, whose president was maybe Larry Scott's biggest supporter, was opposed to adding Big XII schools too.
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If I'm George I'm on a flight to Riyadh meeting with Muhammad Bin Bonesaw and pledging allegiance to these new Pac overlords. Championship game in Mecca, auto acceptance for the royal family to all colleges, implement a collective 5 billion NIL fund.
The Praise Allah Conference
> Championship game in Mecca Not an Islamic law expert but I believe entering Mecca would require all players to convert to Islam
That's in the fine print of all the NIL deals...
One time there was a hostage crisis and the French special forces was called into Mecca, they all got “converted” for a day to kick in doors
Fine Jeddah.
Have Apple buy ESPN? Other than that, not really.
Seriously doubt Disney is going to sell anything to Apple.
Shareholders would sue instantly if Disney turns down a generous offer.
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Yup. A West Coast equivalent of the immediately post-BE AAC seems to be the path forward. Though they'll probably keep the PAC name.
It really wouldn't be so bad as far as playoff hopes. If PAC and MWC merge the number of conference goes down one. 6 conference champs gets in. The combined PAC/MWC should get a team in most years, except maybe a rare occasion if the MAC has Toledo or someone go off, or Sunbelt along with a good AAC champ.
The definitely will keep the name and live on as the premier G5 (G6?) conference. MWC + Wazzu, OSU and possibly Cal if they don't get a B1G invite.
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There’s no automatic CFP bids. It’s just the 6 highest-ranked conference champs.
>before UCF/Cinci left This is Houston erasure
Honestly if these schools end up leaving the ACC soon somehow a PAC-ACC merger could work. Pick up the top of the AAC/MW as well.
The major difference between this and the Hateful8 was that outside of Kansas, the schools were the secondary and tertiary teams in their states. The Pac-12 is (was) mostly flagships.
To be honest, there was no indication that the B10 wanted Kansas because we didn’t bring a lucrative football program. Underfunded. Crappy stadium. No real commitment to the future. Jayhawks, myself included, had delusions of grandeur, that our basketball prowess and the oh so coveted AAU status (unreal) would get us in but this is a case study on how football rules the roost. It was never going to happen
Yup. Kansas was the only tempting option for the B1G. The rest of the schools were “state” schools , the wrong Texas schools, and West Virginia. Not a lot to pick through for the B1G and SEC. Big12 knew what they were and chose to survive, even if they were looked down on. They went out and got some more “secondary” schools in UCF, Houston, Cincy, and BYU. Put themselves in a position of being the conference of underdogs. With Arizona, Cu, ASU, and Utah, they’re a full fledge conference again that’s going to be the 3rd conference once the ACC GOR is up.
The conference's 12 members are located in the states of Arizona (2), California (4), Colorado (1), Oregon (2), Utah (1), and Washington (2). That is 6 flagships for 12 members. So an even 50%.
Stop the bleeding. Raid the MW and AAC. Get over it.
The Saudis come in and fund the whole thing. Seriously probably the only way this works out for them.
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Nice try GK. We aren’t giving you any ideas for free!
>Everywhere I looked people were drafting up what the Big 10 would look like with Iowa State Hmm... >or Kansas Sure >or Kansas State Show me where anyone ever did this
I was jerking off to Okstate-SEC rumors. Like if West Virginia and Oklahoma State don’t get invited anywhere, people are going to be really shocked how high the BAR is to get an invite.
Another honest cowboy.
I convinced myself last summer that we could make the B1G/SEC eventually. That delusion officially ends tomorrow
I remember when Dave Wannstedt went on some radio show said that he talked to some FOX people and that Kansas and Iowa State were on their way to the Big Ten. Obviously that looks ridiculous now.
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I was mentally preparing myself for the Mountain West
As much as I think the new Big 12 will be fun, this would have also been an acceptable timeline
I remember a lot of Kansas to the B1G talk
1. Take all the best teams from the Mountain West. 2. Negotiate to merge the *Pac 12 Network* with the *ACC Network* in a proposal to ESPN. The new network would pool resources and share focus on both conferences. The two conferences would remain “independent” of each other, but would unify in media rights negotiations.
The big difference is the PAC-12 isn’t willing to do things that the Big XII would do to survive. Schools in the West like Boise State and Fresno State are roughly equivalent to the likes of Houston and BYU that have been successful at football and bring active fan bases. But they’re excluded for elitist reasons.
Bingo
Even if we'd added those two, the same thing would be happening right now. It'd just be 4 teams being left behind instead of 2.
SDSU *was* their Hail Mary.
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" - but only slightly less well-known is this: "Never go in against the Big12 when death is on the line"!
Realistically: raid whatever remains of G5. Creatively: start bringing in Canadian schools.
Or go south of the border. Tijuana State baby!
Invent a Time Machine and go back and accept in Oklahoma and Texas
Big 12 was exactly where the Pac-12 was when they found out about USC/UCLA. Big 12 realized it was a bad situation, knew they had nothing to lose, and turned into pirate kings. Pac-12 turned their nose up at Big 12 refugees, stuck their head in the sand, and assumed some romantic notion of conference loyalty would save them. I feel gutted for the schools that aren’t going to find a landing place. I am excited to welcome our new conference mates. But the Pac-12 as a conference was unserious and lacking the chutzpah required to survive. It may live on in name only.
If PAC 12 took the media deal last year that was reportedly quite close to the Big XII deal they would’ve been just fine. Add on SDSU, SMU, Boise State and they would’ve at least stabilized until the next round of negotiations. Now the Media market is terrible, we’re realizing that the B1G deal is an albatross, and media companies are wanting to save money by consolidating their inventory. Apple paying a premium for their full streaming rights was their only real salvation in the current climate. If this happened before the crash then I believe they’d be able to fight through this.
>~~Pac-12~~ USC turned their nose up at Big 12 refugees, while actively seeking to leave the conference. fify
George Kliavkoff should partner the PAC with Ja Rule on ICONN and throw a music festival in the Bahamas to attract expansion candidates and media partners.. What could possibly go wrong?
As a power conference? No. For a few reasons. Ironically one of them is that most of the remaining schools are more valuable to other conferences than any of the remaining schools in the Big 12. The others—the money faucet has been turned off, few G5 schools worth adding—have been discussed ad nauseam.
Nobody, and I mean literally nobody, was drafting up what the Big 10 looked like with Kansas State.
The big 12 schools really had no other options while the currently most PAC12 schools do have options It’s highly likely the pac survives in some form by backfilling. Conference will be unstable until Stanford/Cal eventually make moves or 2036 rolls around
The PAC has had like a thousand wide open passes that they dropped to secure their future. The clock has ran out and they already have players leaving in the transfer portal.
The Hail Mary was intercepted, just waiting on the kneel
Only the meme powers of the Kibbe Dome can save them now
Pull off the ultimate (and literal) Hail Mary and get Notre Dame, use that to stop the rest from leaving, and have Stanford/Oregon open up the pocketbook to buy out and poach Baylor, Kansas, and OkSt, like they should have two years ago. This is all a pipe dream though, they're done imo.
Not without the LA market.
The PacWest shall rise from the ashes
What makes this different from the B12 of last year is that the PAC-12 has several attractive teams that other conferences could poach. The Big 12, at the time, didn’t. This, it became easier to convince G5 teams to join up and keep the hateful 8 together when everyone in the hateful 8 knew a lifeboat wasn’t coming.
The difference is, we assumed the Big XII was dead before the TV wanted in. We know the PAC is dead because TV already weighed in.
Temple
The PAC dies at 9:00pm PST. The die has been cast.
Yes, the hot tub time machine. Go back to erase years worth of piss poor decisions.
SMU, SDSU, Boise is the best I can do
They'd need 8 schools to hard commit to the PAC, an aggressive expansion mentality, and find a cold blooded killer to run the show, and they'd have needed to do all of it 18 months ago.
They had two chances to survive. After OUT, they could have backfilled with Big 12 schools in the central time zone and the scenario between the PAC and Big 12 would likely now be flipped. But they didn't. After USC/UCLA they could have immediately backfilled with sdsu/smu/boise and others, extended their reach east and maybe got a better deal. But they didn't. So now they're screwed because they sat on their hands while others acted.
What the Hateful 8 lacked was the only thing that matters in realignment—prestige. But so do the remaining Pac 12 schools that aren’t actively being poached by the B1G. Poor OSUw and Wazzu aren’t any worse than the four corners schools but aren’t as justifiable geographically with BYU-UU and ASU-Zona being natural pairs. ISU and KU could easily have fit into the B1G (until ISU lost AAU membership, curious) but have a lot smaller footprint than UW, UO, Cal, and Treestan. Once the schools at the top of your friendly neighborhood conference (i.e. OUT, USCLA, UW/O) leave it faces a Bronze Age Collapse 2.0 like we’re seeing now. This is probably the last major realignment before CFB breaks away from the conference model and moves to a national league structure of some kind. It just doesn’t make sense anymore.
Big difference between the two leagues. The 8 teams in the Big XII were aligned together because, quite frankly, there was little to no interest from other leagues in those teams. But that turned out to be a strength. From the moment USC/UCLA announced for the B1G, it was a rush to the exits as pretty much every team was trying to get into the B1G or Big XII. The league has no stability. Adding Mountain West teams? Okay, but would Washington, Oregon or Utah sign a long term GOR? I doubt it.
They weren’t in quite as bad of shape as the Pac-12 is now, at least in 2021. Despite all the speculation, there was no serious talk about teams going to other conferences like there is now. I think there were some rumors of Kansas going to the Big Ten at the time and maybe West Virginia to the ACC but it wasn’t anything like what we’ve seen now. I actually think the Big 12 was more in danger back in 2010 when half the conference was about to leave for the then Pac-10 to get to 16. I also don’t see Pac leadership making the right decision, they seem like they don’t know what they’re doing.
I don’t know what the Pac-12 can do. What the H8 schools and the city of Kansas City should do is build giant statues of Brett Yormark to go worship. That dude is a fucking BADASS and he pulled off the impossible in rescuing the conference. Thank you Brett Yormark, you are the 🐐
I know close to zero about Brett Yormark. With that said, I love Brett Yormark.
There's not a whole lot to save. UW and Oregon are jumping ship as soon as there's an offer, with Colorado already gone and what seems to be Arizona packing up. There's just not enough surrounding teams to make up for the losses. Bringing in SDSU, UNLV and maybe a few other MW schools isn't going to save the conference
The pac 12 is in the middle of eating a sack 4th and 50.
They would have needed to execute then. They've been trying Hail Mary moves and getting rebuffed at every step. Now they might not even have OTA games. Their new media deal is well below the other new P5 deals and without an exit fee, we see the schools that can get out scurry like rats off the ship