Commentary: With Pac-12 in apparent peril, we’re at ‘every school for itself’ stage

SEATTLE – One of the more darkly humorous aspects of the decidedly unfunny disintegration of the Pac-12 is the oft-repeated notion that the Big Ten is waiting for the Big 12 to pick through the Pac-12’s carcass before it moves in for the finishing blow.

It’s a matter of honor and fair play, you see; as one analyst with the Athletic wrote, “the Big Ten doesn’t want to be the one to cause the death of the Pac-12 Conference.”

Isn’t that rich? It was the Big Ten’s audacious poaching of USC and UCLA a year ago that sent the Pac-12 on a death spiral that commissioner George Kliavkoff has been unable to pull them out of. With various boards of regents meeting frantically all around the conference, the Pac-12 is perilously close to annihilation as it reaches the dreaded “every school for itself” stage of preservation.

Trust me, when the Pac-12 autopsy is held, the Big Ten’s fingerprints will be all over the corpse, right along with the duplicitous administrators at USC and UCLA, the opportunistic ones at Colorado, and the past two bumbling Pac-12 commissioners. This is kind of a “Murder on the Orient Express” scenario, in which multiple entities took turns in delivering the fatal blow.

But at this point, it’s not so much a “how” or “why” situation. That’s for historians to ponder in the future, and fans to lament as they try to figure out how to find the game on the latest streaming service. The only question that matters now, as a variety of flashpoints are nearing at breakneck speed, is, “What’s next?” – a query that’s particularly poignant for Washington and particularly ominous for Washington State.

In a perfect world (which, granted, started to become far more imperfect about the time Larry Scott was hired as commissioner in 2009), the Huskies should still be rooting for the Pac-12 to pull an 11th-hour miracle and hang together, at least through one more media-rights cycle. As I write this, the fate of the conference is essentially hanging on, of all schools, Arizona, which has been a member for just 45 of the Pac’s 108-year existence. Most of that has been notable for its men’s basketball excellence, at a time when football is driving the bus, train and any other mode of transportation you care to use .

If Arizona chooses to follow Colorado to the Big 12, then it seems inevitable that the Pac-12’s whole fragile ecosystem would implode. Logically, Arizona State and Utah would follow Arizona, leaving the conference in tatters. At that point, Washington presumably would maneuver with all its might to grab a lifeline from the Big Ten, which would be freed of its disingenuous moral obligation of a “hands-off” policy regarding the Pac-12’s demise. Suddenly, Washington and Oregon, the two most desirable remaining schools in the Pac-12 from a television-revenue standpoint (frankly, the only standpoint that even remotely matters any more), would toss aside decades of rivalry and enmity to lock arms in a two-for-the-price-of-one package deal.

It could be a beautiful fall-back deal for the Huskies, landing them in a secure conference (there ain’t many of them left) with the sort of robust media-rights deal that Kliavkoff can only dream of. Yeah, it’s geographically ludicrous, but at least now USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon would form a sort of Western auxiliary that would mitigate that inconvenience somewhat, with the possibility of having Stanford and Cal join that mix. And yeah, Washington and Oregon are unlikely to get a full share of the Big Ten’s $60-million-per-team TV revenue stream at the outset, but even a partial share would obliterate the meager payout that is reported to be the result of Kliavkoff’s proposed streaming deal with Apple.

That would leave a burnt-out shell of a conference, with Washington State and Oregon State likely having little choice but to join a less prestigious outfit such as the Mountain West. Cal and Stanford are the huge wild cards, just as likely to de-emphasize athletics entirely as join the elite world of the Big Ten.

The worry is that all these back-parlor machinations end with the Big Ten deciding to pass altogether on expanding beyond USC and UCLA, at least for now. And that’s when the Huskies (and also the Cougars, whose worst-case-scenarios are far worse) would need the Pac-12 to hold together. If Kliavkoff can finesse Arizona to stay – maybe the TV deal is actually better than people think, once you parse the small print that not many people have seen – then Arizona State and Utah wouldn’t bolt, either. The resulting nine-team Pac, with its Grant of Rights Agreement freshly signed, could suddenly look toward expansion with San Diego State as a more-than-adequate replacement for Colorado, and SMU possibly giving them an eastward presence. Washington State then could breathe a huge sigh of relief, having survived another media-rights cycle.

On the other hand, if the remaining Four Corner schools bolt, and the Big Ten option somehow evaporates for Washington and Oregon, that’s where the scenarios would really become unpleasant. You’d be left with Washington, Oregon, Cal, Stanford, Washington State and Oregon State as the bare-bones Pac-6, which was the bee’s knees in 1923 but not so viable in 2023. They could round out the numbers by inviting a bunch of Group of Five teams, but the Pac-12 would immediately cease to be a relevant conference.

In other words, the Huskies have some fancy footwork to navigate in the coming days (more like hours), starting with Thursday night’s hastily called board of regents meeting.

Rest assured, the rest of college football is watching avidly, ready to inflict critical damage.

Graciously, of course.