The Pac-12 will survive
We have all wondered over the past six weeks if the Pac-12 Conference was going to survive the departures of USC and UCLA.
Tuesday morning, it became clear that the league will indeed live on. There won’t be a death. There won’t be splintering into extinction. There won’t be a raid by the Big 12. The Pac will be back in some form or fashion.
Yes, the Pac-12 won’t be as strong as it was with USC in the fold. The conference won’t make as many dollars or win as many Heisman Trophies with the Trojans in the Big Ten. We can all acknowledge that.
However, the Pac-12 is going to survive. That’s something.
Why is the Pac-12 going to live? ESPN backed out of Big Ten media rights negotiations Tuesday morning. This is precisely what the Pac-12 was hoping for, since ESPN joining Fox in having Big Ten rights would have made the Big Ten a far more desirable landing spot for remaining Pac-12 schools. If Fox and ESPN had shared ownership of Big Ten media rights (Fox as the primary rights holder, ESPN secondary), they would both have wanted the Big Ten to increase in value, which would mean bringing in the San Francisco Bay Area schools and the Oregon-Washington combination.
Now that ESPN is completely removed from the Big Ten media rights picture, the network has every incentive to preserve those Pac-12 late-night games and gain inventory. It is in ESPN’s best interest to preserve the Pac-12, and with Fox now fully invested in the Big Ten, it would seemingly have no reason to throw money at the Pac-12 with USC and UCLA gone. Fox wanted USC and UCLA under the Big Ten umbrella.
ESPN now has more money and more TV slots freed up to give the Pac-12 a reasonable package. It won’t be spectacular, but it will be a lot more than bread crumbs, and that’s a far better outcome for Pac-12 member schools than many had a right to expect on the first weekend of July, when the USC-UCLA news had everyone in a state of panic.
The Pac-12 is going to live. It might not be 100-percent official, but now it’s virtually impossible to imagine a world in which the conference doesn’t survive.
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Massive Big Ten media rights development has numerous implications for USC
