Joel Klatt ponders if the Pac-12 could have kept Colorado with a resolution with media rights deal

The deal is done, and the Colorado Buffaloes are on their way to the Big 12 next season. After much speculation shortly following the Big 12’s media rights deal they signed back in October of 2022, the Buffaloes proved the rumors true after recently announcing they were switching conferences.

Still, Fox college football expert Joel Klatt wonders whether or not this departure could have been avoided. On an impromptu episode of the Joel Klatt Show, following Colorado’s move, he dissected the possibilities of whether or not this move could have been prevented.

“Now let’s take a look at the Pac-12 issues. I talked a little bit about the way that they viewed what was going on in the marketplace and how that was a problem,” said Klatt. “Well, that was a problem because immediately, once the Big 12 solidified their television deal, all that mattered for the remaining schools in the Pac-12 conference was okay; what does our deal look like? What’s the number? That’s the question.

“If you talked with anybody around the league, if you talked with anybody in leadership, that’s what they asked: what’s the number? And if you go back to October of last year, there was some communication about that number being fairly large and somewhere much north of what the Big 12 had just negotiated, and something just under what the Big Ten had just negotiated. But that number was never real because the deals never came to fruition. And because of that, it just kept getting pushed out to a later date; pushed out further and further and further.”

What it all boils down to in the end, according to the college football expert, was the lack of stability coming from out of the Pac-12 conference offices. Had their commissioner or anybody else come out and provided a comprehensive plan, or deal with figures to make sense of what is going on, things might have looked different. Maybe then, they wouldn’t lose Colorado to the Big 12.

“All the schools were asking for was some stability: what is our deal? Who is it with? What’s the number? What’s a general idea of what’s going to be happening? And it never materialized. It got pushed out so long that I believe last week was the straw that broke the camel’s back, at least from the Colorado perspective.

“When at Pac-12 Media Days, George Kliavkoff says, ‘The longer we wait on a deal, the more options we have.’ That’s just not the case. If there were that many options, they would have been solidified, there would be concrete offers, and there would be actual figures that these schools could work off of. And it’s just not what has happened.”

But the question still remains: could all of this been avoided? According to Klatt, sure, if the Pac-12 hadn’t allowed the Big 12 to catapult over them to sign their deal with ESPN and Fox Sports.

“So could have this been avoided possibly? Possibly, if they were to get a deal. But really, the deal to be had was the one with the traditional exposure, which is what the Big 12 jumped the Pac-12 for all the way back last year when they were able to sign the deal with ESPN and Fox.”