Commentary: Pac-12 appears to be on borrowed time after Colorado bolts for Big 12

SEATTLE – Nero fiddled while Rome burned. And Kliavkoff negotiated while Colorado bolted. Now the Pac-12 is in flames.

The incredible shrinking conference was reduced by one Thursday, meaning that 25% of its members have left since George Kliavkoff left his Las Vegas job at MGM and took over as Pac-12 commissioner in May 2021. That’s a disappearing act worthy of Criss Angel.

Of course, it’s not all Kliavkoff’s fault. He inherited a huge mess from his predecessor, Larry Scott, who has his fingerprints (probably manicured at conference expense) all over this ongoing crisis.

But Kliavkoff is proving that his “betray-dar” (rhymes with radar) needs some serious repair. First, he threw his weight behind an alliance of the Pac-12, Atlantic Coast Conference and Big Ten in 2021 in the wake of the Southeastern Conference’s poaching of Texas and Oklahoma from the Big 12. It was high-mindedly dubbed “The Alliance” and backed with platitudes about “trust,” “gentlemen’s agreements” and “looking each other in the eye” – but no formal, signed agreement. So the Big Ten “ungentlemanly” maneuvered, behind The Alliance’s back, to grab untrustworthy USC and UCLA, dropping that bombshell on an unsuspecting Kliavkoff while he was on vacation last summer.

And then, just last week at Pac-12 football media day, Kliavkoff expressed utter confidence that the remaining 10 schools were holding steadfast despite protracted and still-unresolved negotiations for a new media-rights package.

“Our schools are committed to each other and to the Pac-12,” Kliavkoff declared last Friday. “We’ll get our media-rights deal done, we’ll announce the deal. I think the realignment that’s going on in college athletics will come to an end for this cycle.”

So much for commitment, with Thursday’s confirmation that Colorado is leaving the Pac-12 for the Big 12 in 2024. I wrote in a column last week that Kliavkoff was either 1, a master bluffer; 2, full of bluster; or 3, on the verge of pulling off a master stroke. I’ll let you choose between 1 and 2.

One can only conclude that Kliavkoff has been outfoxed (not to mention out-Foxed and out-ESPNed) in every way, shape and form by Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark. The Big 12 has an excellent TV package, having shrewdly jumped the market before the Pac-12; it has a growing clientele, with Brigham Young, Cincinnati, Houston and Central Florida joining the conference this year ahead of Colorado, with at least one more team likely to join at some point.

Conversely, the Pac-12, er, Pac-10, er, Pac-9 elected not to pursue any Big 12 teams when the Big 12 was practically begging the Pac-12 for asylum following the Texas and Oklahoma news – a decision that is now haunting it. And it still has no TV deal, only a perpetual promise that it’s just around the corner.

Colorado clearly got tired of waiting and lost confidence that Kliavkoff can pull off the competitive media-rights package the conference desperately needs. And who knows if other Pac-12 schools are contemplating the same thing? The two schools in Arizona and another in Utah could be particularly vulnerable. But every school, including Washington, has to be examining its own position in the Pac-12 and how long it can afford to align with a rapidly sinking ship.

In other words, unless Kliavkoff turns into David Copperfield and pulls a media-rights deal out of his hat that is commensurate with the Big 12’s – a task that logically got even harder with the departure of the Denver market and the prime-time lure of Colorado coach Deion Sanders – the Pac-12 is in dire straits.

We knew that already, of course. Maybe Kliavkoff can sell the remaining teams on the fact that the payout will have to be shared only nine ways instead of 10 (pending expansion). But a good TV deal might not even be enough to save the Pac-12 in the long term, so poisonous is the atmosphere in college football. The Colorado departure just ramped up the default crisis mode even more. One gets the feeling, even more so than before, that the conference is hanging by a thread, ready to unravel.

Perception tends to be reality. Recruits can’t help but view the Pac-12 as a dead conference walking. At media day, Kliavkoff raved about its stellar recruiting year, but you have to wonder if that’s sustainable. The Pac-12 increasingly has the feel of a temporary holding station, where teams will reside until something better comes along.

Expansion now becomes not just a priority, but a necessity for the Pac-12. By dawdling on the TV deal, the Pac-12 might have lost the chance for a clean addition of San Diego State, by far the premier expansion candidate, for 2024. It’s hard to get too excited about the likes of Southern Methodist and Colorado State, but the conference might have little choice.

When the stunning announcement of USC and UCLA leaving the Pac-12 came out last summer, I wrote about the emotional wallop of the impending dissolution of the conference I spent my whole life following. But with a year to process it, and with few hopeful signs of the Pac-12 resurrecting itself in any meaningful way, sadness has given way to a kind of numbed resignation. This could be a spectacular season for UW, primed for a College Football Playoff run, but it’s hard not to view it through the prism of a conference that is on borrowed time.

Who will be the next team to toss aside alleged Pac-12 unity and bolt for perceived greener pastures? That remains a mystery. Just don’t trust Kliavkoff’s “betray-dar.”