2019 Pac-12 Championship Game.
Time is up, the ship is taking on water, and sharks are circling, ready to swallow up bodies. Unfortunately, this isn’t the plot of a movie; it’s the current state of the Pac-12 Conference.
We could go through the timeline of how the Conference of Champions has sunk this low. But instead of throwing people under the bus, let’s look at some key indicators.
Remember, basketball is important, but football drives this bus. Hoops brings in a fifth of what football does.
The Pac-12’s contracts with ESPN and Fox expire after the next academic year. Since starting as the Pac-12 Commissioner on July 1, 2021, one of George Kliavkoff’s main priorities has been to negotiate the next conference’s television rights package.
We are at the beginning of March 2023, and the Pac-12 still has no new deal. Even worse, there doesn’t appear to be anything monumental on the horizon.
No one expected them to compete with the Southeastern and Big Ten contracts. Now they are shuffled behind the ACC and Big 12. Worse, the major linear networks, ESPN, FOX, NBC, and CBS, are committed through most of the decade.
As far as a big streaming package goes, Amazon is playing hardball; YouTube bought the rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket; and Apple + has a new deal with Major League Soccer.
The odds of finding a white night to at least compete with the Big 12’s six-year, $2.2B contract with ESPN and FOX. Going back to kindergarten musical chairs, the music stopped, and Kliavkoff doesn’t have a seat. Further, it looks like there isn’t a hero around to save the day.
One of the biggest drivers of rights fees is the number of people who watch the games. Zach Miller of Medium.com analyzed the average weekly regular season viewership of each FBS team.
It’s not pretty for the Pac-12. The top three conference teams, #12 Oregon (2.21 million viewers), #14 USC (2.07M), and #25 UCLA (1.59M) combined (5.87M), had slightly more viewers each week than #1 Ohio State (5.8M) did on their own. Worse, USC and UCLA are headed to the Big Ten.
Of the Top 45 most-watched games of the 2022 season, the Pac-12 barely made a dent:
That’s not even the embarrassing part. The Pac-12’s total average weekly viewership was 12.558M. Meanwhile, the top three SEC Teams (Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia) had 12.74M, and the top three Big 12 teams (Ohio State, Michigan, and Penn State) had 13.22M viewers, respectively.
And don’t forget the Pac-12 was close to sending a team to the College Football Playoff.
Major networks won’t spend big dollars on a product that fans ignore. Don’t put all of this on the Pac-12 Network because ESPN and FOX pick the games they want to show first, and then the Pac-12 Network gets what’s left.
One thing that can’t be faked is the results. The Pac-12 has largely been a non-factor on the national stage since the CFP went to a four-team format in 2014. Only Washington (2016-17) and Oregon (2014-15) made the cut.
No two-loss team has ever made college football’s final four, and those are the only teams that finished the regular season with fewer. Conference proponents will say the results are due to cannibalization, but that doesn’t answer for the overall lack of quality compared to the other Power 5 conferences.
Recruits notice these things. According to 24-7 in the 2023 cycle, combining transfers and incoming freshmen, the top three ranked Pac-12 Schools were 9-USC, 10-Oregon, and 21-Colorado. Last year it was 6-USC, 16-Oregon, and 25-Arizona.
It’s a vicious cycle; teams can’t win or get on tv without talent. But recruits won’t go to a school that isn’t on tv because they don’t win.
Other conferences are circling, ready to pick the Pac-12 carcass. It’s no secret the Big 12 is after the “four corner schools, Arizona, Arizona, State, Colorado, and Utah, and have been for quite a while.
This week, news broke that the Big Ten isn’t done expanding. They have their eyes on Washington and Oregon, at the least. Apparently, California and Stanford could be in play as well.
If whatever television deal Kliavkoff pieces together absolutely must come in at least near the deal the Big 12 got. If not, there will be more defections as greener pastures entice member schools.
That still might not be enough.
Brett McMurphy, The Action Network’s college football insider, was on The Solid Verbal College Football Podcast. He said the end is near:
“The future of the Pac-12 is largely dependent on how aggressive the Big Ten gets. I think they’re going to be very aggressive because I still think their plan never was just add UCLA and USC and leave them on an island. They want to bring in more Pac-12 schools.”
I think they (Pac-12 schools) would honestly say, and I would believe this, they want to stick together. But they don’t want to stick together if the amount of money that they’re going to make in media rights is five or ten million less than whatever the Big 12 and ACC schools are making.”
It may not be immediate, but the stars are aligning against the Pac-12.
From the outside, this looks like the perfect storm that wipes out the Pac-12.
For their part, Commissioner George Kliavkoff and the Pac-12 CEO Group thought they had more time before their house came crashing down around them. But there are multiple news stories every day that say the end is near.
The worst part about the Pac-12’s demise is that it was preventable. The Arrogance shown by former commissioner Larry Scott combined with a timing miscalculation from his successor