A Grip on Sports: As Pac-12 spins its wheels, the Big 12 swoops in and derails the conference’s chances at a future

A GRIP ON SPORTS • We first heard of the demise of the Pac-12 back when we were in college some 50 years ago. Well, not the conference exactly, but for everything. Impermanent is permanent, as one of our professors said while we discussed John Donne’s poetry. Thursday, it seems, the bell tolled for the conference.
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• Or did it? The consensus sure seems to be the next step in the conference’s future is the rest home. Or cemetery. Death by a thousand cuts, it seems, many of them self-inflicted. Yep, there is no going back.
Well, if you want to, we can. Let the past inform the present. Look at the Big 12 in, say, 2010. For about a month, it seemed then-new Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott was about to ingest most of the conference. Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Texas A&M and Oklahoma State were on the verge of joining an already departed Colorado to form a Pac-16 superconference.
The Pac-10 conference leaders balked. Huffed and puffed. It didn’t happen.
Done in by money, certainly, but also by an antiquated notion among the conference of champions’ CEOs that an athletic conference also needed academic standards. The Big 12 survived – though it lost Texas A&M and Missouri soon after.
Jump forward to 2021. Summer. COVID-19 is receding and so is the Big 12. Texas and Oklahoma, the conference’s favored children, tell everyone goodbye. Gone to the SEC. Sometimes even bending over backwards isn’t enough. Money, and power, trumps all.
Does the Big 12 fall apart? Nope. The rest of the conference, lacking anywhere to go as the Pac-12 once again sits on its hands, stays together.
The turning point comes in June of 2022. Big 12 leaders think like businessmen, not academics, and make an outside-the-ivory-tower hire for the vacant commissioner position. Brett Yormack, COO of Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, comes aboard. And rocks college athletics.
The conference goes on the offensive. Expands quickly, taking in the best of the non-Power Five football schools.
It is handed a gift from the Big Ten about 24 hours after Yormack’s hiring is announced. USC and UCLA are bailing on the Pac-12. Suddenly the world of college sports is ripe for someone with an aggressive mindset. Someone not worried about tradition or upsetting others. Someone that has never existed in the Pac-12. And still doesn’t.
Scott’s replacement, George Kliavkoff, also arrived from outside the college tent but his bosses have never seemed to see how radically the landscape has changed. Most of them look to be direct descendants of the college presidents and chancellors who sat in their offices in, say, 1969, as their campuses collapsed around them. Sometimes literally.
It’s happening again in a different way. The world has changed. Athletics, more than any other time, are the prism through which most of the public perceives schools. Either/or is now the norm. There is no both. Either a school is all in with football or it isn’t. Trying to straddle the fence is just going to rip your pants.
A conference whose membership criteria includes a certain academic level is fine – for the Ivy League. If you want to say you are an athletic power conference, then such considerations are outmoded. Useless. A detriment to survival. Agility is lost – just when it is needed the most. Even the Big Ten, possibly the most hidebound of the conferences, took in New York (Rutgers) and D.C. (Maryland), two areas nowhere-near connected to its Midwest base. Then it allowed Kevin Warren to sneak around in the night and add two West Coast schools. It is thriving.
The Pac-12 CEOs huffed and puffed and did nothing.
The Big 12, facing extinction, turned the tide quickly. Added schools. Locked in a below-maximum media contract and begin selling certainty.
The Pac-12 CEOs huffed and puffed and did nothing.
And now they are about to go their separate ways. Maybe not today or tomorrow – they don’t do anything that quickly – but soon in college athletics time. A measure of time that has changed everywhere but in the soon-to-be-former Pac-12.
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WSU: Greg Woods asked but the Cougar leaders yesterday weren’t saying anything about Colorado’s move. They referred to the Pac-12’s statement, one filled with platitudes and, again, outmoded thinking. … Elsewhere in the Pac-12 and the nation, as one would surmise, the big news from Boulder has reverberations throughout the conference. At Colorado, yesterday was seen as the day the school ensured its future. Uh, no. There is still no guarantee. But for now, the Buffs have a home to ride out the next wave of realignment. It was a day to celebrate. … Everyone else is contemplating the future. At Washington. At Oregon. Most especially in Arizona, where Arizona State and Arizona are seen as the next dominoes the Big 12 will try to grab off the board. … In Utah, the Utes, who joined concurrently with Colorado, have been the loyal soldiers. Will they stay that way? … The overarching picture? Everyone has an opinion. We have a trio of stories from Jon Wilner to pass along and thoughts from up and down the West Coast. Heck, even into the mountains and to the East Coast. We link as many as we could find. … There is sports news too, thankfully. Oregon State is looking for a few impactful freshmen. The Beavers lost an offensive line starter for the season to injury, however. … Oregon coach Dan Lanning’s contract extension was approved. … The fourth quarter wasn’t kind to USC last season. … Arizona State is counting on a transfer shoring up the inside of the defensive line. … We can pass along more good news concerning Bronny James’ health. … Utah’s basketball team has been through an eventful summer. … A former WSU infielder is expected to vie for the starting shortstop spot at Oregon State. … Among the women’s programs, Oregon’s basketball roster is still undergoing change.
EWU and Idaho: Around the Big Sky, Idaho State’s next quarterback may just be the son of a different former Boise State football coach. … UC Davis is looking forward to the football season.
NIC: The Cardinals will join the Scenic West Conference for its basketball schedule next season but a long-term solution will have to wait.
Preps: Central Valley High alum Ryan Rehkow represented BYU at the Big 12’s media day.
Indians: Spokane lost for the third time in as many games at Eugene this week. Dave Nichols has the coverage of Thursday night’s 5-2 defeat.
Chiefs: Returnees Ty Cheveldayoff and Saige Weinstein participated in NHL development camps during the offseason. They hope that experience will carryover in a positive way during the WHL season. Liam Bradford has this story.
Seahawks: Ben Burr-Kirven has missed most of the past two years after a horrendous knee injury. The Washington grad returned to the practice field this week and, as one would expect, he’s grateful for the new opportunity. … First pick Devon Witherspoon has yet to take advantage of his opportunity with the Hawks. … Other rookies have been showing what they have, however.
Mariners: As the deadline nears, rumblings the M’s are going to be big players are starting to surface. A young arm for a young hitter and more seems to be the consensus. We’ll see. For now, they have stayed in a holding pattern. … Imagine this. The A’s ownership misled folks about something. The renderings of their new Las Vegas stadium they showed Nevada lawmakers to encourage them to pony up big bucks? They were just a figment of someone’s overactivity imagination. The ball park will look nothing like that. What a shock.
Storm: Seattle will take the burden of a 10-game losing streak into its next game.
Golf: Once again the summer’s biggest charity event will be held at the Coeur d’Alene Resort’s golf course. Garrett Cabeza has today’s story on the Community Cancer Fund’s eighth annual The Showcase, which is Saturday.
UFC: After a stuttering re-start, Michael Chiesa is headed back to the battle. Charlotte McKinley has this preview of his upcoming fight Saturday, his first in a couple years.
Auto racing: Doug Pace has a preview of a big weekend at Stateline Speedway.
World Cup: The U.S. women won’t play again until early Tuesday morning (our time). Will they show more dominance against Portugal?
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• Sorry to alter the schedule today. Fridays are usually about checking out what’s ahead on the weekend, especially in the TV realm. We’ll delve into that a bit tomorrow but the news from Boulder was too important to ignore. Unless the Conference of Champions does something radical, and when have we ever seen it do that, its future is dim. The West Coast has always been a bellwether of the future in college athletics. Sadly, that’s not true anymore. Until later …