SEISMIC SHIFT
USC, UCLA leaving Pac-12 behind for Big Ten's greener pastures
So the Pac-12 is about to become the Pac10 again, maybe even the Pac-8. Back to the future, indeed.
And this is Larry Scott's legacy, this defection to the Big Ten by USC and UCLA that basically decimates the Pac-12.
We've said it all along, that the L.A. schools are the flagships of the conference. Without the No. 2 media market in the country, the chances of striking it rich on the next media rights deal — the prospect of which seemed the only ray of hope for the conference — pretty well disappear.
The Power Five? Once the Trojans and Bruins change conferences, which presumably will be in 2024, you might as well call it the Power Two. The Big Ten and the Southeastern Conference will dominate the landscape. The Atlantic Coast Conference will be susceptible to poaching (and so much for that much-heralded alliance between the Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC). And the Big 12 and the rest of the Pac-whatever will be raiding lesser conferences to fill out its membership, understanding that the TV money bonanza has passed them by.
Maybe that suggestion we had of a superconference
structure under a promotion/ relegation system isn't that far off, after all.
(And it wasn't a coincidence that San Diego State's athletic director, John David Wicker, made himself available to the San Diego media Thursday afternoon, the advisory going out maybe an hour after the Bay Area News Group's Jon Wilner broke the story. Mountain West Conference programs are already polishing their applications to the Pac-12, it seems.)
Scott's legacy? A series of wrong decisions early on that doomed the Pac-12 to second-class status.
The first was failing to act in 2010 when the conference had the opportunity to add Texas and Oklahoma during the first round of conference realignment mania.
The second was launching a conference TV network and deciding to go it alone, instead of a partnership with Fox or ESPN that would guarantee distribution and a more favored status with those networks. The Pac-12 Networks have been great if you're affiliated with or a fan of the Olympic sports, but a disaster in raising the profile of the marquee sports.
The third was an obsession with luxe office space. The shift of the conference offices to pricey property in downtown San Francisco helped bleed the conference coffers at the same time that the Pac-12 was falling further financially behind its brethren in the Power Five ... and that designation already sounds quaint.
That financial disadvantage affected programs' ability to attract coaching and administrative talent and build facilities, which is crucial in college sports. And it swelled with each season that its marquee sport was left out of the College Football Playoff.
The bottom line is the bottom line. Some reports have USC and UCLA reaping $100 million or more each as their shares of Big Ten media rights revenue once the move is made.
And we should have seen it coming when USC athletic director Mike Bohn suggested a couple of years ago, shortly after arriving in L.A., that USC was willing to keep its options open. At the time we thought that meant going independent, at least in football, as one of the few schools with a large enough profile to follow Notre Dame's lead. Obviously, we weren't thinking as big as he was.
It's worth noting, as former Oregonian (and current Substack) columnist John Canzano points out, that both Bohn and UCLA athletic director Martin Jarmond are newcomers to the conference and presumably have a world view that extends well beyond the Pac-12's borders.
And could this have been an O'Malley/Stoneham moment? After all, when Walter O'Malley decided to move the Dodgers from Brooklyn to L.A. in 1958, he convinced Giants owner Horace Stoneham that his future would be brighter — and a historic rivalry saved — if he moved his team to
San Francisco, rather than Minneapolis as he'd planned.
This certainly seemed to be USC-driven, and it would not be at all surprising to find out that Bohn convinced Jarmond that changing conferences together was the best course for both. Maintaining the crosstown rivalry should make up a little bit for those upcoming trips to Rutgers, Maryland and Penn State.
What does this do to the Rose Bowl? Technically, the contract between the Big Ten and Pac-12 (in non-playoff seasons) is unchanged, and now we have the possibility of, say, a USC-Oregon Rose Bowl game. But what if Oregon and Washington, the next most desirable teams in the conference, subsequently defect, too? Maybe the Rose Bowl turns into a bestavailable-opponents matchup.
Anyway, on a day of seismic proportions in not only the Pac-12 but in all of college sports, our sympathies go out to the current conference commissioner, George Kliavkoff. He's done quite a bit to clean up his predecessor's mess, but it's turned out to be too much to overcome.
Meanwhile, the Pac-12 football media days July 29 in L.A. are going to be loads of fun, aren't they?