Report: Remaining Pac-12 teams hire Oliver Luck to consult next steps

As eight teams prepare to leave them behind, the four remaining Pac-12 teams — Cal, Oregon State, Stanford and Washington State — continue look at what’s next. The latest round of conference realignment shook up the college athletics Etch-a-Sketch in a historic way, and those programs are still trying to figure out where they fit into the picture.

They apparently took a big step toward an answer, according to John Canzano of the Bald Faced Truth.

The so-called “Pac-4” have brought in former West Virginia athletic director and XFL commissioner Oliver Luck as a consultant, Canzano reported Friday. He was seen as a potential candidate for the Pac-12 commissioner job which ultimately went to George Kliavkoff, but he has also made an impact in of previous realignment changes.

Luck served as a consultant for the Big 12 in 2021 shortly after the announced departures of Oklahoma and Texas under former commissioner Bob Bowlsby. At the time, the Big 12 looked like it was in deep trouble as it lost two high-profile members. In fact, a possible merger with the Pac-12 was floated.

Ultimately, though, the Big 12 opted to add BYU along with three schools from the American Athletic Conference — Cincinnati, Houston and UCF — the Sooners and Longhorns’ decisions to leave for the SEC.

Luck served as West Virginia’s athletic director from 2010-14 before becoming the NCAA’s executive vice president for regulatory affairs from 2014-18. He then took over as XFL commissioner from 2018 until its suspension in 2020.

The Pac-12’s future came into serious doubt in the last couple weeks when five teams announced their plans to leave the league. Oregon and Washington are joining USC and UCLA in the Big Ten in 2024, while the Four Corner schools — Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah — are bound for the Big 12 at the same time.

One possible solution is a merger with the Mountain West, On3’s Eric Prisbell has reported. However, ESPN’s Pete Thamel recently detailed the financial implications of such a move given the amount of debt the Pac-12 built up under former commissioner Larry Scott. The American Athletic Conference has also expressed interest in adding as many as all four of the remaining schools, according to Prisbell.

If the Pac-4 want to stay together and rebuild the conference, though, there’s a route they could take. NCAA rules say recognizes a conference as part of the FBS if it has eight teams, according to Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger. However, there is a two-year grace period if a league falls below that mark. An NCAA bylaw states a conference will still be considered part of the FBS for two years after it drops below the eight-team threshold.