Final Moments Of PAC-12’s Collapse Revealed, Rival Any Cold War Thriller

The final moments of the PAC-12 could have come straight out of a Tom Clancy novel.

The once-powerful West Coast conference disintegrated Friday when Oregon and Washington jumped to the Big Ten and ASU, Arizona and Utah joined Colorado in the Big 12.

Now, it’s just WSU, Oregon State, Cal and Stanford that remain. Details are now coming out about what happened and how it all went down, and the details rival any high intensity movie about the Cold War.

The biggest issue at hand:

PAC-12 programs had scheduled a Friday meeting to sign a new media deal, but Oregon and Washington didn’t show up.

At that point, collapse was imminent, the race for the lifeboats was on and nobody wanted to be left holding the bag.

PAC-12 collapse details revealed.

“(Friday) morning at 7 a.m. was another called meeting of the Pac-12 presidents, and some schools didn’t show up. So you might know that then, therefore the conference was no longer viable. … Once Oregon and Washington decided to go to the Big Ten, the (Pac-12) conference was no longer viable. You can’t be in a non-viable position for more than a few hours in our minds. We resolved that. You have two teams not present and no media contract, you’ve got to act,” Arizona State president Michael Crow told reporters Saturday, according to OregonLive.com. The two teams that didn’t show were identified as Oregon and Washington by OregonLive.com.

Crow further added, “There were a lot of forces at work, including the overlords of the media empires that are out there that were driving a lot of this. The Colorado departure was really an indication of the fact that there was great instability in the media market and it created an unstable moment.”

The collapse happened quickly.

His comments echo similar comments shared by Washington President Ana Mari Cauce when discussing the conference’s collapse.

“I have to say that this was heart wrenching. It was backwards and forwards, and there were moments when I thought it was going in one direction and then in another. In the end, we looked at the deal that we had — the only deal we had — and it was clear that it was not giving us what we thought. It was not the deal we had been discussing just days before, and it was not going to secure [the Pac-12 conference]. When you have a deal where people are saying one of the best aspects of it is that you can get out of it in two years, that tells you a lot. We really needed to have the stability for our players, for our coaches, for our teams,” Cauce explained following the collapse.

The PAC-12 is cooked.

The details surrounding this situation would make an incredible movie. Friday morning, there were countless reports that talks between the Big Ten and Oregon and Washington had collapsed.

It looked like the PAC-12 might survive. Twitter was on fire with the claim the PAC-12 had done the unthinkable and agreed to a media deal.

Now, it appears that Oregon and Washington were planning on cutting and running the whole time. Imagine the feeling in that PAC-12 meeting when everyone showed up waiting on Oregon and Washington to arrive……and then they just didn’t.

They knifed the PAC-12 before anyone even realized what had happened. It’s so savage Tom Clancy would blush.

A wise man once told me that everyone’s an ally right up until the moment they’re not. It’s a good life lesson in general. Unfortunately, it’s a lesson the PAC-12 learned in the worst of ways. Best of luck to the last four teams standing. They’re going to need it.