1-Man’s Opinion on Sports-Friday “Pac 10-Future Begins”
“Pac 10-Future Begins”
The future of the Pac 12 starts this morning in Los Angeles.
Ravaged, stunned, furious as the defection of USC-UCLA sets in, there is a great unknown, going forward and the conference moves forward today.
New commissioner George Kliavkoff, who has been silent since the earth shattering moves of the Trojans and Bruins, will meet with the national media on Friday morning.
It’s not just a question of surviving the loss of the Trojans football and the Bruins nationally ranked basketball team, but it is now dealing with what might happen next.
The Big 10 is saying ‘it is not done’ and that more teams might be coming to the Midwest. The waiting game on Notre Dame is underway, and the Fighting Irish are playing their own waiting game too. Notre Dame does not want to be left out in the street when the mega conferences begin signing new TV contracts.
The Irish-NBC contract with worth 22M a year, and coming up for renewal. Notre Dame wants 75M a year but probably won’t get it. So a pending offer from the Big 10 to join them, makes a lot of sense.
The Big 10-might not be done. Rumors persist they might make a run at Oregon and Washington and take their version of a mega conference then to 17-teams.
The Pac 10, what’s left of it, could conduct their own raid, taking Oklahoma State out of the Big 12. Possibly San Diego State and Boise State come in too.
There remain the rumors too of a Pac 10-ACC alliance, the merging of the league’s two TV networks, under the ESPN umbrella, giving that network college football day and night. It might even involving inter-conference scheduling. Clemson-Oregon…Miami-Washington and others might be must-watch TV, and that’s what all this is about.
But if Oregon-Washington jump ship and go to the Big 10, and say Colorado defects back to its roots, the Big 12, then what is left behind has very little big time future.
Granted the Trojans-Bruins exit does not start till 2024, so there is time to configure the future, but as we have seen, raids in the middle of the night have happened before, and might happen again.
Interesting to see what Kliavkoff has to say at 8am in Los Angeles.
The Pac 10-fighting for its life, needs to be on the edge to survive. Being passive means more defections.
The Pac 10-future begins Friday morning.
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