Pac-12 is dead as a major athletics presence. Does it matter? Do we need football conferences?

The Pac-12 is dead as a major football conference.

There’s no way around that.

It’s the result of a disappointing and disgusting money grab that’s bad for student-athletes and fans.

The league’s demise begs questions: So what? And what’s next?

Ironically, what started with the absurdity of USC and UCLA playing in a league with schools as far as 2,700 miles away is likely to end in a mix of backlash and unintended consequences that will create an entirely new structure, putting us right back where we started with a regional system.

Football conferences, at this point, only exist because of tradition.

The precursor to the Pac-12 started in 1915 with California, Washington, Oregon and the school that would become Oregon State.

Such a regional group was necessary to make sure every team was playing by the same rules and standards.

These groups popped up around the country, evolving into what we have today: Five “Power” conferences (the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC) and a bunch of less wealthy, less prestigious groups.

Power Five football leagues all have conference championship games, requiring them to field 10 teams split across two divisions. These champions all are guaranteed a spot in the College Football Playoff, which comes with a payday worth potentially tens of millions of dollars to a given conference. That money is distributed among member schools. The better a conference is from top to bottom, the more money it stands to make.

Power Five schools generally have longstanding traditions, big fan bases and important rivalries.

By this standard, the Pac-12 is already done.

To maintain enough teams for a football championship game, Commissioner George Kliavkoff has to recruit schools like Wyoming or San Diego State. No reasonable observer could make the case that these or any other available replacement schools could match the prestige of USC or UCLA.

But we don’t need conferences for football. Power Five or otherwise.

Notre Dame proves that every year as an independent for football and a member of the ACC for other sports.

Conference membership provides high-end administrative support, creating uniformity by setting schedules, organizing championship events, keeping statistics and negotiating contracts with television networks and streaming services.

It’s a helpful system, but football programs can operate without such assistance. There aren’t as many regular-season games to be scheduled, and championships are determined by one extra contest, instead of sprawling, days-long tournaments.

The conference system was begging to be disrupted once big-time money got involved with the advent of the CFP. Also, with the proliferation of cable networks and streaming services, advertisers flocked to live sports, which continued to attract viewers when news broadcasts and prime-time TV shows didn’t.

The influx of cash and promise of more helped the Big Ten woo USC and UCLA with the promise of an annual raise worth about $25 million.

It triggered a wave of moves across the sport.

Even schools that wanted to stick with traditional alignments needed to consider alternatives to keep pace, financially.

Fans didn’t ask for this. Players didn’t ask for this. And, by and large, school administrators didn’t ask for this.

But schools that didn’t move risked being relegated to second-tier status, a downgrade that would come with a loss of revenue that would mean dropping sports that don’t turn a profit. Arizona State, for example, has 24 teams and only football and men’s basketball are likely to make money in any given year.

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The relegation also threatens an exodus of talented players who want to compete against the very best — in football.

Other sports that play more games and have smaller support staffs need the stability of conference structure.

It’s ridiculous to expect rowing, equestrian, swimming and diving, or golf teams to try to schedule competitions independently. And the budget explosions that would come from cross-country travel in these sports would likely prompt athletic departments to cut the programs entirely.

This would trigger legislative and legal backlash. The federal law known as Title IX requires parity among men’s and women’s sports. New laws would have to be written, and those would have to stand up to myriad legal challenges.

That said, while football programs could operate independently, it wouldn’t be ideal, logistically, to have dozens of teams negotiating piecemeal with opponents and TV networks.

A reasonable alternative would be to keep existing conferences in place for every sport except football, allowing the College Football Playoff or some other entity to step in as a governing body.

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That new breakaway football structure could divide the country into five sections for regular-season play: Northwest, Southwest, Midwest, Northeast and Deep South. These groups would be further divided into divisions that would determine participants in conference championship games.

It would create a system that we’re familiar with, looking a lot like the Big Ten (with East and West divisions), Big 12 (with North and South divisions), Pac-12 (with Mountain and Pacific divisions) and SEC (with Atlantic Coast and Cotton divisions).

It would restore traditional rivalries and allow fans to travel to road games, as they’ve done for years.

Regardless, of what comes, the Pac-12, as we know it, is dead as a major football conference.

It could be that the whole system comes down with it, putting us, ironically, right back where we started.

Reach Moore at gmoore@azcentral.com or 602-444-2236. Follow him on Twitter @SayingMoore.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Pac-12 is dead, but does college football need conferences anymore?