Pac-12’s Imminent Death Marks the Point of No Return for College Sports

Evolution turns everything into crabs. For whatever reason, a handful of unrelated crustacean species all wound up looking exactly the same, because flat and pinchy is apparently the optimal body structure for survival. The same has happened with North American pro sports—even though every league was founded under entirely different circumstances, in different regions of the country, across different eras with different business models. The NFL was founded in midsize Rust Belt cities with hopes of leeching off the massive popularity of college football; the American and National Leagues used to be competitors, with their own commissioners and rules; the Stanley Cup was originally given out to amateur Canadian clubs who had to challenge one another for the title. Now these leagues are essentially all the same—with 30 to 32 teams, spread across the continent, playing in most of the same cities. Same with the NBA, and MLS, all having evolved into the same pro sports crab.

Next up is college football, a sport built on the strength of regional rivalries which is now rapidly evolving into a national sport with just a few massive coast-to-coast conferences. Unfortunately, the Pac-12 will not be one of the lucky crustaceans. The 108-year-old regional league is doomed to die after losing most of its marquee members to the formerly Midwestern Big Ten—now up to 18 teams, spread coast-to-coast.

Here’s the current state of affairs: Last year, the Pac-12’s two biggest programs, USC and UCLA, announced they were headed for the Big Ten in 2024. Last week, Colorado announced it will leave for its former home in the Big 12. This week, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff pitched the remaining members on a contract with Apple TV which would pay schools roughly $20 million per school per year—roughly $60 million less than the Big Ten pays its schools, a gap which will only further increase as the latter league adds schools.

Kliavkoff might as well have told everybody to find a lifeboat. Oregon and Washington apparently considered staying in the Pac-12 until they saw how bad the Apple deal was. They’re now headed to the Big Ten. It’s unclear which is less accurate these days: Leagues with numerical names like “the Big Ten” which no longer reflect their number of teams, or leagues with geographic names like “the Southeastern Conference” which no longer accurately reflect the footprints of their conferences.

The Pac-12 is now wrong when it comes to both math and maps: It’s no longer 12 and has lost the Pacific to the Big Ten. It’s down to seven teams and that number will certainly drop by the time you wake up tomorrow. Arizona and Arizona State seem likely to go to the Big 12 as a package deal, and Utah will likely join as well. That will leave behind four orphans: Cal, Stanford, Oregon State, and Washington State. Those four remaining schools essentially have to form…