Heather Dinich details what's next for the Big 12, Pac-12 following Colorado's defection
The latest realignment domino dropped yesterday with Colorado announced its move from the Pac-12 back to the Big 12 in 2024. It was a major win for the Big 12 and also a staggering uppercut to the already teetering Pac-12 conference.
ESPN insider Heather Dinich was on Get Up on Friday morning talking college football and host Mike Greenberg asked Dinich if this was another step towards the super conference era.
“I’m not gonna go there quite yet, Greeny, because if you listen to SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, he will talk about how first of all, the SEC, in his opinion, is already a super conference,” Dinich said. “But when you get bigger than 16, there are a whole lot of other factors that go into it that he says haven’t even really been played out publicly, except for in his mind, really.”
Instead of talking about super conferences, Dinich looked at the move from a different perspective. This decision was about trying to move up not to the level of the Big Ten or SEC but instead be right behind them.
“When you think about this right now, the ACC is in third place,” Dinich said. “This is what this is all about: the fight for third place behind the Big Ten and the SEC. Before we talk about super conferences, I think we have to figure out what the Big 12/Pac-12 situation is going to look like. And the bottom line here is that the Pac-12 is in the most precarious position that a conference has been in in a while. What happens next to them? They had a meeting last night, nothing much came out of it, but I would expect that whatever happens next is going to happen fairly quickly in the next week or so.”
Colorado was originally in the Big 12 from 1996-2010 before joining the Pac-12 — then called the Pac-10 — in 2011 as it expanded to 12 teams.
There are a lot of rumors on both sides of the coin about potential moves. The Big 12 likely wants at least one more program so it doesn’t have to an odd number of teams and the rumors surrounding Pac-12 teams leaving are rising like they did after USC and UCLA announced their decision to leave for the Big Ten last year.
“Is Arizona gonna leave?” Dinich said. “Arizona State? What do Oregon and Washington want to do? My sense is the Big 12’s ideal number is 14 right now for a football schedule. At the end of the day, when the dust settles with OU and Texas leaving, the four school that they added and then Colorado coming, they’ll have 13. So who else can they add that truly adds value and are there more schools than one more who want to escape the Pac-12. But I think the super conference thing, Greeny, is ways off and just a little bit more of a talking point than reality at least right now.”