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“PAC 12 FALLOUT….EVERYWHERE”
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It’s been over a year since we learned of the middle of the night moves of UCLA and USC to the Big 10.  It’s been months since the other marquee schools vacated, Oregon and Washington to the Big 10 and the ASU-Arizona-Utah  defection to the Big 12…And as a finishing touch, Cal and Stanford went to the ACC, leaving behind the death notices for the Pac 12.

The fallout is starting to hit home everywhere, from Corvallis to Pullman and the spillover has now spread to the upcoming College Football Playoffs.

Oregon State and Washington State, left behind, are trying to stay afloat with a lawsuit against the Conference to claim the 55M in conference assets left behind at the Pac 12-offices, saying that the defecting schools have no rights to remaining money and no rights to vote on conference business decisions, since they are leaving.

Oregon State confirmed once they hit 2025 and there is no Pac 12 as we know, they will lose 44% of its Athletic Department revenue.  Washington State is fearful they may take a 50% hit.

And now the other shoe drops, with the College Football Playoff Committee meeting in Chicago, preparing to change the structure of the big money playoffs effective in 2024.

The CFB system was guaranteed slots  for the champions of the 5-major conferences and 1-Group of 5-champ, plus 6-at large teams based on rankings.

But with the demise of the Pac 12, the CFB is looking at 4-guaranteed slots for conferences and possibly giving 2-guaranteed slots to the champs of Group of 5-Conferences and the 6-at large spots

That is still be negotiated and voted on.  It means a playoff system that may well be overloaded by the biggest conferences who added so many teams, they will takeover all the slots.  They get the big payoffs to the teams chosen, with virtually nothing left  for the rest of the teams in Group of 5-conferences.

The split between haves and have nots is growing worse and there seems to be solution now.  How do you stay alive when you cannot get access to playoff revenues, because your conference has been downgraded or down right destroyed.

College football is going thru a rebirth in popularity.  The Pac 12’s final season is the Year of the QB.  Deion Sanders’ Coach Prime sales pitch has excited the nation.  TV ratings are rocketing and the paydays for the next contracts will be massive.

But West Coast football seems on its death bed.  Left behind will be the likes of the Mountain West, Mid American, AAC and the lower echelon of Division 1-leagues, who already were ‘just hanging on for life’.

This is like an atomic bomb went off and the nuclear fallout is starting to drop now onto the sport.  What’s good for one team, or one conference, does not seem good for anyone else.  And there seems to be no solution in sight to fix the disparity or the finances in college football..

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