So two teams with awful football programs, that have never been to a Rose Bowl, decide to go to a conference filled with mediocre teams nobody outside of Waco Texas cares about and the world ends?
Another team that has only been to two Rose Bowls in their history, the last 26 years ago, decides to join them? Pfft. Again, who cares?
The PAC still has Oregon, Washington, Utah and Stanford, arguably all better football programs than any in the Crap 12 and could add Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State, SMU.
What the PAC obviously lacks is a leader. Give them a decent commissioner who has a heartbeat and they survive this.
All this over maybe 10 or 15 million dollars a year in tv money? For schools with multi billion dollar budgets and development offices that typically raise hundreds of millions a year? Seriously, if Cal wanted to compete with Alabama they could raise more money from wealthy alums in two days than the SEC contract would pay Alsbama in 5 years. The same with Stanford, Washington and Oregon. In the age of NIL all it takes is will and capacity and those programs would be superpowers fueled by tech money.
the Big 12 is a joke. A bunch of wannabes lacking the academic and financial capacity of bottom dwellers in the PAC. They are doomed in an era of two super conferences.
The talking heads who declare the PAC and ACC dead seem driven by the thought that TV money is never ending. They would have everyone give up all college football tradition for the promise of never ending mega contracts.
College football is going to die. It is already infested with a terminal illness. When all that is left are 50 or so programs in a semi pro super league the sport will die in places without teams, just as it has died in the Northeast . With collapsing interest you will see the TV dollars decline. Then this one way bet fails. Don’t think that will happen? Remember that crowds of 80,000 college football fans once appeared every Saturday at stadiums in Boston, New Haven, Philadelphia and New York. No more. The NFL dominates those markets now.
Conference expansion and professional athletes are killing a once great sport. Gone are traditional rivalries. Gone are connections to student athletes sharing a common allegiance with fans of the schools. Gone are regional conferences offering common links and support for recruiting, business relationships, and student attraction. Who feels a common allegiance with 19 year old kids driving BMWs and making millions in NIL? Who cares about playing the likes of Minnesota and Indiana? Who else misses games against regional rivals whose alumni you work and live next to? These are the things that made college football special in the first place. We have and are losing all that. Once it’s all gone the sport is a poor minor league form of the NFL. Who will care about supporting that when the real thing already exists?
And what of Penn State? We have administrators and BOT members spending and borrowing hundreds of millions over Lasch Building improvements and practice facilities. They want stadium improvements that will reach a billion dollars. They would risk the full faith and credit of the University over their ego driven football fetish. Meanwhile tuition continues its rise and academic quality declines.
