RIP Pac-12?

[Vegas]

As somebody who earned their undergraduate History degree at Washington State (before I then went on to graduate school and earned my Masters in History at UNLV,) I am very sorry to see the apparent demise of the Pac-12

When I lived on the Washington State campus as an undergraduate, I went to college football or college basketball home games on a regular basis against teams such as UCLA (including 1995 when UCLA won the NCAA Championship in basketball with the O'Bannons and Tyus Edney- UCLA was #2 in the nation at the time I saw them play at Washington State that year,) USC, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona (including 1997 when Arizona won the NCAA Championship in basketball with guys like Mike Bibby, Jason Terry, and Michael Dickerson.) Now all those other schools have left the Pac-12 who currently only has Washington State, Oregon State, Stanford, and California remaining for sure.

I guess right now the only question is whether the Pac-12 will seek to add new schools such as San Diego State (who will leave the Mountain West for the Pac-12 if they can get the fee- I think $34 million?- arranged on time next year) or if the 2023-24 school year is indeed the final year of the Pac-12.

Either way I think this sucks

[~KB~]

It's ALL about $$$$ nothing more.

[tystates]

It's the nature of the beast. The Pac-12 never got any respect before teams started leaving, at least not since the rise of the SEC that the media loves so much. I don't know if the league will be gone next year but I think it will be soon. The other teams should be working on a new league to join.

[on_the_edge]

As a Big Ten fan I agree. Just sad. Of course, I still think of them as Pac 10, but you know. Big Ten is slowly becoming the Big Ten by Ten. Lucky for me I really stopped caring about college sports in general and football in particular a couple decades ago. I still follow some and watch games now and then, but I do not have the passion I had last century. Not even close. The BcS was the start of the death of tradition in the name of massive profit.

[averagereddituser]

I grew up in Baton Rouge which is crazy for college sports and I feel really bad for fans of the teams who aren’t going to have a seat at the table. At this point I think the 60 or 70 programs in the last 3 conferences are going to break off and conferences themselves won’t be a thing much longer and it will basically be NFL junior.

[paul]

I absolutely hate what College Football has turned into the past few years and for me this is the final nail in the coffin for my love of the game.

This constant realignment has killed so many of the traditional rivalries, the transfer portal makes it impossible to keep track of who's playing where and for me the expansion of the playoff is going to water down the product further by allowing teams with 3 losses the opportunity to play for a National Championship.

With Oregon and Washington jumping to the Big Ten I fear we're going to lose two more great rivalry games: The Civil War and The Apple Cup. With the death of so many rivalry games it seriously makes me wonder if Army and Navy are going to eventually discontinue their series.

I fear that this is the death of the Pac-12. My guess would be that the Mountain West will likely absorb the remaining schools that don't land with the other Power Conferences.

In hindsight I wonder if the Pac-12 regrets not bringing in Texas and Oklahoma a few years ago. My understanding was that the only thing preventing Texas from joining was the fact that they would have to surrender all media rights to the conference and wouldn't have been able to launch The Longhorn Network. Looking back on it now they might have been better off letting Texas start their own network, which turned out to be a flop. Oklahoma, Texas Tech and Oklahoma State all would have likely made the jump with the Longhorns and the Pac-12 might have been able to avoid all this mess.

Big money has killed my love of College Football. When I need my fix at least I still have the NCAA video games to play, which I can customize to my liking.

[averagereddituser]

Yes that was definitely the PAC-10’s downfall.

My interest hasn’t changed really as it’s been a golden era for my school and my conference the last 25 years or so. But it is sad to see the professionalization of it to this degree. It’s not stopping here either.

[Vegas]

Aug 4, 2023 22:58:38 GMT -5 paul said:

I absolutely hate what College Football has turned into the past few years and for me this is the final nail in the coffin for my love of the game.

Yeah, it is sad to see the apparent death of the Pac-12, a conference that has been around for over 100 years and has produced the greatest number of national champions. All for the quest to form these super conferences and the huge payouts associated with it.

Although I went to college football games at Washington State (I literally lived like 5 minutes walking from the stadium next to the campus library,) these days I just do not have a passion for college football. Maybe I will change my mind after some time passes, but not right now. However, I still really do like college basketball.

[Vegas]

Aug 4, 2023 22:58:38 GMT -5 paul said:

I fear that this is the death of the Pac-12. My guess would be that the Mountain West will likely absorb the remaining schools that don't land with the other Power Conferences.

It is the death of the Pac-12.

Here in Las Vegas, I am seeing lots of speculation that if the Pac-12 does officially shut down then Washington State and Oregon State would likely join the Mountain West which would put both of the schools (Washington State and UNLV) that I have degrees from (and thus both of my schools in college sports) in the same conference.

[Vegas]

Aug 4, 2023 18:33:13 GMT -5 tystates said:

I don't know if the league will be gone next year but I think it will be soon.

The more I look into this situation, I just don't see any way the Pac-12 survives past this year as after the 2023 football season the conference will only have 4 schools and no TV contract (the PAC-12's current TV contract also expires after the 2023 football season.)

The PAC-12 also can't add schools from the Mountain West because the Mountain West has a $32 million exit fee which San Diego State could not afford to pay in its efforts to leave earlier this year. Plus the PAC-12 is reportedly 10s of millions of dollars in debt with Comcast that was accrued during the bad reign of former PAC-12 Commissioner Larry Scott.