The Pac-12 is now on the brink of total collapse.
The uncertainty created by the impending departures of UCLA and USC to the Big Ten has been exacerbated by the league failing to secure an adequate media rights deal within the last year. That instability has led to Colorado deciding to head back to the Big 12 and Friday’s news of both Oregon and Washington jumping ship to the Big Ten. And the league could take on even more critical damage with the rest of the “four corner” schools in Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah all potentially following Colorado to the Big 12.
Pac-12 membership could potentially be dwindled down to four schools in the coming weeks with Cal, Oregon State, Stanford, and Washington State all left without a life raft. If that were to happen, what would be the league’s options for survival moving forward? We’ll go over some below.
Expand with Group of Five programs
The Pac-12’s membership has now been whittled down to under eight schools and that is not enough institutions to run a functioning league. For its own survival, the league will have no choice but expand.
The simplest option would be to raid the Mountain West Conference, which overlaps the Pac-12’s territory on the west coast. Even before Colorado, Oregon, and Washington’s exits, San Diego State was identified as a top expansion candidate as it would allow for the league to keep a presence in southern California with UCLA and USC leaving. With the MWC placing a hard deadline on them to make a decision, SDSU fully intended on making the jump to the Power Five league this summer. But the Pac-12 dragging its feet with its media rights negotiations forced the Aztecs to stay in its current conference past the deadline. SDSU will now have to pay $34 million in exit fees if it still wants to bolt the MWC and while they are still a top candidate for a potential move, the Pac-12 would need to help pay the exit fee as a make good.
SDSU wouldn’t be the only MWC school making the move as the invitations to the likes of Boise State, Colorado State, UNLV, and others would get the call for a potential move up. For decades, the Pac-12 has boasted how its membership has been comprised of the most elite and well funded academic institutions on the west coast, which is why a highly successful football entity like Boise State has never been considered for membership. Now facing a struggle for survival, the league may have to drop that pretense and let some of these schools in.
Outside of the MWC, SMU has been a potential expansion candidate for several months now and commissioner George Kliavkoff even attended an SMU men’s basketball game back in February. Even with its bonafides as a west coast conference, the league has always flirted with expanding east and famously came close to adding both Oklahoma and Texas to its ranks just over a decade ago. While SMU doesn’t have a large following even within the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, the school is investing more money into football than most G5 institutions and would offer the league a small foothold in the state of Texas.
Form an Alliance with the ACC
While the Pac-12 is imploding in front of our eyes, the ACC is dealing with its own internal strife that could boil over. Powers like Clemson, Florida State, and Miami are not satisfied with the league’s grant of rights agreement that runs through 2036, estimating that there will be a major financial gap between themselves and peer institutions in both the Big Ten and SEC. FSU in particular has engaged in major saber-rattling and school officials have spent the entire week publicly stating that they will pursue ways to leave the league if the situation isn’t resolved.
If the Seminoles are able to find a way out, Clemson, Miami, North Carolina, and other league heavyweights will most likely follow suit. That would put the ACC on a perilous trajectory similar to what the Pac-12 is experience right now. So why not have the two leagues align with each other?
Whether it’s a scheduling alliance or a full-blown merger, they could package themselves together and see if they can find a broadcast partner willing to carry their games. A coast-to-coast league with a bunch of schools that were left behind in this scenario isn’t ideal, but again, it’s about survival at this point.
Go the way of the Southwest Conference and pack it up
A dark, bleak option for the conference is to simply admit failure and formerly dissolve. We saw this happen in the mid-1990’s with the Southwest Conference, where league dissolved after Baylor, Texas, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech bolted for the Big 8 to form the Big 12.
After failing to getting its media rights situation settled, all remaining members decide to dissolve the league and fend for themselves. Oregon State and Washington State would be immediate locks to join the Mountain West, Stanford could go independent, and Cal could decide to de-emphasize football altogether given their debt. Again, this is the bleakest of all options, but it is in the realm of possibility.