Rooney: Pac-12 demise nothing to celebrate, despite soft landing for CU Buffs

PUBLISHED August 5, 2023 at 2:30 p.m. | UPDATED: August 5, 2023 at 5:07 p.m.
Revisiting the old turf in the Big 12 Conference will prove more familiar than initially believed for Colorado.
As it turns out, Colorado’s first-aboard-the-life raft move last week to jump to the Big 12 not only provided the Buffaloes stability. It gave CU and its fans a chance to kick back, grab some popcorn, and watch the chaos unfold.
What everyone watched on Friday was the likely end of the Pac-12.
In the week after the Buffs’ return to their former home in the Big 12, the fate of the Pac-12 teetered precariously. Once Arizona opted to become Big 12 member No. 14 beginning in 2024-25, the writing essentially was on the wall. Washington and Oregon followed the money (and USC and UCLA) to the Big Ten. There was more reluctance by Arizona State and Utah to play a part in the Pac-12’s demise, but it became a matter of adapt-or-die. They, too, bolted for the Big 12, a 16-team league that will provide a home to a third of the now-former Pac-12 institutions.
The end is always sudden, jarring and abrupt, but the Pac-12’s failure was more than a decade in the making, arguably dating back to when former commissioner Larry Scott was widely lauded for the $3 billion television contract that essentially coincided with the league’s addition of Colorado and Utah in 2011.
Instead of investing that windfall in the product, Scott and his yes-men sat on their gold like curmudgeonly old misers. Scott eschewed partnering with ESPN for delivery of the Pac-12 Network, and an operation with grand and commendable plans proved to be an unshakable financial anchor. And for all his well-deserved criticism, Scott wasn’t alone in steering the Pac-12’s ship astray. Every time there was an opportunity to embrace expansion, including when Oklahoma and Texas left the Big 12 reeling two years ago after opting to move to the SEC, the Pac-12 passed. A potential deal with DirecTV was nixed by the league presidents in 2015, leaving Scott to grasp at straws by pushing the Pac-12 Network’s availability on Sling, then a new, faux cable streaming alternative to traditional suppliers.
None of those obstacles were helped by the high-profile products. Since the start of the College Football Playoff, the Pac-12 has landed only two bids, with Oregon losing the 2014 title game and Washington losing in the 2016 semifinals. In the Pac-12 era, the league earned only two Final Four berths in men’s basketball, Oregon in 2016 and UCLA in 2021. Neither team reached the title game.
Ironically, the Pac-12 could have been at the forefront of the streaming surge, but again complacency overruled foresight. Instead of pairing with Sling, the Pac-12 could have launched its own subscription-based streaming service, but instead gave fans Pac-12 Now — an app available for subscribers of Xfinity or Dish, which carries the Pac-12 Network, but not Sling subscribers. By the time current commissioner George Kliavkoff pitched his streaming-heavy potential media rights deal with Apple, patience with relying on the what-ifs of subscription-based revenue had worn thin.
“A lot has been made about linear partners in today’s day in age,” CU athletic director Rick George said tellingly while announcing the Big 12 move on July 27, “and partnering with the two largest providers in the linear media space, FOX and ESPN, is who we want to be aligned with.”
With the latest ruptures of realignment seemingly in place, Buffs can look forward to one more year in the Pac-12 while embracing what will be an entirely new set of rivalries.
In football, CU hasn’t played Houston, one of the Big 12’s newcomers this season, since a historic win in the Bluebonnet Bowl on Dec. 31, 1971. The following September the Buffs hosted Cincinnati in what remains the teams’ only matchup. Despite the regional proximity, CU has played BYU just twice since 1947, and not since the Freedom Bowl on Dec. 29, 1988.
It’s more of the same in men’s basketball. CU has never played West Virginia and has met Cincinnati just once, nearly 45 years ago. The Buffs played a home-and-home set with BYU in 2015-16 and 2016-17, but that marked the teams’ first matchup in 60 years. It’s more of the same in women’s basketball, as the Buffs have never played West Virginia or Cincinnati. The women’s team has faced Central Florida just once (Nov. 16, 2008) and Houston twice (not since Nov. 24, 2001). Like the other sports, the rivalry with BYU has been largely dormant, with just one meeting since the turn of the century (in the 2003 NCAA Tournament.)
Colorado never truly developed a rival in the Pac-12. With the Arizona schools and Utah joining CU in the Big 12, perhaps that will change.
In the meantime, be sure to absorb all the sights and sounds during Colorado’s final revolution through the Pac-12. Change can be healthy, and in this case perhaps inevitable, yet the demise of the premier athletics league on the West Coast, the home of tradition and Heisman winners and John Wooden, is a huge loss for college athletics.
Kudos to Colorado for doing what it needed to for self-preservation, but the wreckage left behind in the Pac-12 exodus and the limbo status thrust upon California, Stanford, Washington State and Oregon State — all with rich traditions in Pac-12 lore — are nothing to celebrate.