David Hookstead
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It sounds like the Big Ten might still come calling for more PAC-12 teams.
UCLA and USC will join the B1G in 2024, and while expansion talk has cooled, the belief has always been the Big Ten wouldn’t stop there.
It doesn’t make much sense to add just two west coast teams. The belief has always been Cal, Stanford, Oregon and Washington would likely follow. Now, a new report indicates the Big Ten will almost certainly do more raiding.
“If anyone thinks the Big Ten isn’t coming back for more, they’re not following along,” an unnamed source told Saturday Out West.
Will the Big Ten pillage the PAC-12?
There’s a basic and simple reality the college sports world needs to accept. The PAC-12 survives as long as the Big Ten allows it to.
It’s that simple. There’s no point in pretending otherwise. The PAC-12 lives at the mercy and discretion of the B1G. As soon as the Big Ten picks up the phone and extends invites to Oregon, Washington, Cal and Stanford, it’s over the PAC-12.
The remaining major schools – Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah – will likely bolt for the Big 12 and whatever is left behind will just be a shell of the conference or it will completely disappear.
The conference continues to struggle to land a new media deal.
To make matters worse for the PAC-12, the conference still has no new media deal as it enters the final football season of the current deal.
It’s a really bad situation, and it doesn’t seem to be getting better. In fact, there’s only more and more chaos associated with the conference with every passing day.
If there’s a big payday waiting elsewhere, why would programs hang around? It wouldn’t be good for self-preservation.
It should be interesting to see what happens, but it’s only logical for the Big Ten to add more west coast teams. That’s really bad news for the future of the PAC-12.
So, we’re back to the B1G expressing interest in more PACifist 12 schools again? I would’ve thought that the B1G’s interest would’ve waned now that Kevin Warren is bolting for the train wreck that is Da Bears. I have my doubts about Cal and Stanford, but Oregon and Washington might be bolting if the B1G’s interest is, in fact, mutual.
I don’t know why these articles are written from the perspective of the Conferences being the only entities involved in all this shuffling. It is ESPN and FOX who control the checkbook, not the Conferences. The B1G won’t do anything if it doesn’t meet with the approval of the Network paying the bills, and neither will the BIGXII. It’s the Networks calling the shots.