PAC-12’s Autopsy Report: How Hubris, Texas, and the Big Ten’s Growth Destroyed A Conference (Twice)

Euology for the Pac-12

—The impending death of the Pac-12 conference is one of the greatest ironic tragedies in college football history. The league is set to play its final game ever tonight (Friday) with the Pac-12 Championship Game, after assembling arguably its most compelling product in years - one overflowing with ranked contenders, sky-high ratings, Heisman finalists, and postseason promise. Yet the conference fell victim to forces beyond the field, as a changing media landscape, multiple conference realignments, and administrative mismanagement conspired to collapse a once-proud western football institution.

This year, the Pac-12 boasts elite quarterback talent in Heisman hopefuls Bo Nix and Michael Penix Jr, not to forget last year’s Heisman winner Caleb Williams as well. The QB play has given the conference a TV ratings boost of 27% compared to last year with four school ranked in the top 25 from the latest CFB Playoff Rankings. Leading the conference are No. 3 Washington and No. 4 Oregon both playing in Las Vegas for the Pac-12 Championship and a likely playoff spot on the line.

But the absurdity remains - at the very moment when the Pac-12 finally fulfilled its competitive and financial promise, it lost the support structure to survive. Out of the Top 5 most watched college football games from the 2023 regular season, Pac-12 schools were featured in 2 of the 5 matchups. But when that last whistle blows Friday night, no amount of parity, profits, or eyeballs can save the conference ruined by a costly mistake made back in 2012. The Pac-12 will ride off into the sunset, just as it may have finally started to reach new heights. Let’s backup to the first domino back in 2007 that set off the collapse of two different college athletic conferences..

The Big East Gambles and Loses

In 2007 Fox and the Big Ten reached a groundbreaking new venture - the Big Ten Network where Fox would own 51% of the conference specific TV network and the Big Ten would own the remaining 49%. Leadership of the red-hot Big East conference eyed the Big Ten Network's launch in 2007 and wondered - can we build our own independent network and reap greater profits? The Big East had enjoyed tremendous growth expanding with new schools rivaling the ACC for basketball supremacy and teams home to some of the biggest TV networks in the country featuring New York, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., to name a few. Despite a long partnership and brand affiliation with ESPN, why not own all of the profits ourselves was the common sentiment amongst conference executives.

It was shortsighted and unrealistic, but desperation for new revenue and the promise of even greater television exposure fueled their ambitions. Plans for an entirely Big East-owned-and-operated network were drawn up. ESPN was left out of negotiations and strategy sessions, straining relationships with the network that took a chance in helping the Big East transform into a powerhouse in the first place. Eventually, without ESPN's existing infrastructure, experience and leverage, the Big East Network never gained traction. Schools eagerly anticipating a new revenue stream were disappointed. Afterwards, the window for the conference to plot an alternate path forward with ESPN was closed.

When Miami and Virginia Tech left for the ACC and evidence mounted that other football powers were losing faith in the conference's future, the Big East's house of cards collapsed almost instantly. Their football league fractured entirely. Prominent basketball programs defected. And a panicked attempt to reinvent themselves by adding Boise State and San Diego State made the once esteemed Big East a shell of its former self. The Big East gambled independence and greed against financial security and stability with ESPN - and lost everything….somewhere out west the Pac-10 should have been taking notes on the situation.

Expanding into the Pac-12

The Pac-10 had just enjoyed unprecedented success in the early 2000s similar to the Big East, highlighted by the USC Trojans at the center of the college football with multiple national championships and Heisman winners from 2003-2005. In 2009, the Pac-10 hired Larry Scott as its new commissioner. Scott, previously CEO of the Women’s Tennis Association, was aggressive and started his tenure with an audacious attempt to add Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, Colorado, and Nebraska! In hindsight those attempts would end up biting the conference back. Ultimately, Scott was able to lure away Colorado from the Big 12 and a rising Utah football program from the Mountain West in 2011 expanding into the present day Pac-12.

Texas was flattered by the interest however, AD DeLoss Dodds got to thinking that Texas is bigger than the Big 12 and formed a bold new idea. He met with Texas A&M Athletic Director Bill Byrne to propose a joint University of Texas-Texas A&M television network, inevitably setting the first domino for the Pac-12. Dodds, seemed to think Texas had outgrown the Big 12 and even ESPN/ABC and Fox's interest, so the only logical step was to build something new, something bold - THE Longhorn Network.

But Byrne and Texas A&M didn't share that vision. So the University of Texas charged ahead alone into uncharted territory in partnering with ESPN on what would become the first ever 24/7 sports network dedicated to a single college brand - the Longhorn Network (LHN). The public outrage was swift, painting LHN as another Texas power grab for recruits, money and influence that would further divide the haves and have nots in the Big 12. But the most offended party was Texas A&M, who saw it as the last insult after feeling overshadowed by Texas for decades in their own state. Resentment boiled over so much that when the SEC's invitation arrived in 2011, Texas A&M left the Big 12 without hesitation.

Texas President Bill Powers and DeLoss Dodds struggled to grasp how the budding network had changed college athletics forever. Nebraska was fed up as well deciding to leave the Big 12 for the brighter pastures of the Big Ten. Colorado was soon lured by the excitement of new commissioner Larry Scott and Pac10. The Big 12 was teetering with the losses of two of its biggest brands reacted with moves to add G5 TCU and Big East survivor West Virginia, stabilizing membership...for the moment.

Meanwhile in May 2011, with 2 new TV markets secured Scott had delivered a massive 12-year, $3 billion deal with ESPN and Fox for the conference’s Tier 1 rights. The newly rebranded Pac-12 went from a fifth among power conferences in TV revenue of $60 million a year all the way to to first with $250 million per year.

Fools Gold: The Pac-12 Network

Larry Scott was a visionary, was obsessed with the view about Facebook and Apple eventually taking over media, and he was largely correct but a bit too early with his predictions. Enitced by the success of the Big Ten Network after four years told sports TV consultant Chris Bevilacqua, he wanted a conference network of his own. The Pac-12 took a valuable lesson from the Longhorn Network playbook in one respect - 100% ownership over content rights and operations. ESPN and FOX both offered many times to be partners on the Pac-12 Network but leadership ultimately didn’t sign a media partner, convinced in part digital distribution would soon be all the rage and when the next TV media cycle comes they’ll be able to cash in with 100% ownership of the Pac-12 network.

The Pac-12 announced the Pac-12 Network in 2011, they touted it as the first-ever media company owned and controlled entirely by a conference. On the surface, autonomy was a victory. But their decision to fully control the Pac-12 Network rather than partner with established media forces proved to be the very thing that doomed the conference. In practice, it quickly resulted in insular decision-making, decreasing revenues, and an inability to adapt with the changing broadcast landscape.

Without ESPN or Fox, the Pac-12 Network lacked leverage with cable distributors in negotiations. The network struggled for reasonable subscription fees or broad distribution. The ACC and SEC Networks are owned by ESPN, while the Big Ten Network is majority owned by Fox Corp. Having a media partner allowed the new conference channels to be bundled with other channels and sold collectively to cable and satellite distributors. Conference leadership rejected chances to sign equitable, forward-looking media rights extensions that may have secured stability. Revenue and exposure suffered mightily. While the Pac-12 Networks have about 15 million subscribers currently, the Big Ten Network has about 50 million, and the SEC Network more than that. That means substantially more revenue to the media-aligned networks and conferences. Ten years later, DirecTV one of the largest cable companies and exclusive partner for sports bars still doesn’t carry the networks.

The Final Act

3 years ago Texas and Oklahoma set off this latest domino of realignment with the announcement they would be leaving the Big 12 for the SEC. The conference was in a panic, multiple schools and ADs were thinking of jumping ship and leaving for the Pac-12 but new Pac-12 commissioner, George Kliavkoff, decided to stay put feeling good about the current Pac-12 structure.

Meanwhile, the Big 12 commissioner Bowlsby strategically targeted new schools that could appeal to additional TV markets and an emphasis on basketball leading to invites for UCF, Houston, Cincinnati, and BYU. Afterwards, newly hired Big 12 commissioner, former Roc Nation executive Brett Yormack, quickly got to work to start negotiating and getting a new long-term TV deal in place for the conference in limbo.

Questions arose whether the Pac-12's Los Angeles crown jewels - USC and UCLA - were essentially subsidizing the conference's lesser brands and frustrations from no traction on a new TV deal by Kliavkoff caused tension. USC eventually reached out to Fox who regularly aired USC games in primetime about making a move and Fox who had just been boxed out of the SEC with ESPN now poaching the 2 biggest brands in the Big 12 was open making their own countermove. With less resources and no signs of a new TV deal on the way, the L.A. schools eventually decided to join the Big Ten in 2024 with both schools set to earn $60M+ per year as part of a record breaking college football TV deal. Again commissioner Kliavkoff decided to stay put instead looking to bolster the conference with additions of new schools to replace the LA powerhouses.

Brett Yormack was hard at work to get a new TV deal in place ahead of the Pac-12 and landed a strong $30M per school payout for the Big 12 even without Texas and Oklahoma. The Pac-12 had previously rejected an ESPN deal for a similar payout holding out hopes that a new age streaming deal could be more lucrative. However, as many media companies struggle with cord-cutting a shrinking profits the Pac-12 only ended up with one deal in August 2023: a streaming exclusive deal from Apple for around $23M per school with incentives based on new subscriptions.

Even without USC/UCLA the Pac-12 shouldn’t be getting less money than the Big-12 so while some schools liked the futuristic deal…Colorado ushering in the Deion Sanders era immediately announced they would be leaving to rejoin the Big-12. An exodus soon occurred Oregon and Washington joining the lucrative Big Ten. Arizona, Arizona State, and Utah soon got a life boat from the Big 12 to join and bolster the conferences basketball reputation. Four schools remained in a fractured conference with no other life boat until prominent Stanford alumni Condoleeza Rice and former President George W. Bush convinced the ACC to add in Stanford, Cal, and SMU with a reduced TV payout structure for the rest of the decade. The remaining two schools Oregon State and Washington State are still figuring out their future, with a possible plan to conduct a reverse merge with the Mountain West in 2 years but still the financial windfalls will be severe.

Like the Big East, cultural stagnation and an obsession with self-reliance ultimately doomed the Pac-12 when confronted with external forces. Their network ambitions bled finances and hampered long-term positioning. A short-sighted insistence on absolute ownership undermined adaptability - and eventually the entire league paid the price. The loss of names like Texas A&M-Texas, Pittsburgh-West Virginia and UCLA-USC ripped out chapters of what made college football special. A whole generation of new fans will never experience those collective memories. And it all traces back to conference leaders placing financial ambitions, power dynamics and ownership over the good of the game itself. In that context, the butterfly effect stemming from largely failed conference television network experiments may still be taking its most drastic tolls on the sport in the road ahead.

The sport continues to feel more transactional, less authentic as realignment musical chairs continues. Perhaps we are entering the final stage in an arc of overcorrection where consolidation of the top properties is inevitable. Talk of a 30-60 school superconference sharing billions in revenue may become reality. But it will be a bumpy road for whatever schools can survive until then.