The Pac-12 — which as of a week ago was just the Pac-2 of Oregon State and Washington State — went for the power move.
The goal was to surgically add the best of the rest of the football programs in the country. That would set itself up as the most competitive conference outside of the Power Four — the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC. It would thus be in prime position to scoop up whatever media revenue is left and have an inside track on securing a bid to the College Football Playoff most years, if not all.
Only it missed the kill shot.
Late Wednesday, UNLV announced it was rebuffing a Pac-12 bid to remain in the Mountain West. It was the lynchpin move that assured the Mountain West’s viability and leaves the Pac-12 scrambling for Plan B or C or whatever it can now cobble together.
It is a major setback to the Pac-12 and its grand visions, but it’s a good thing for the overall health of college athletics, which didn’t need further conference consolidation.
To recap — and there is a lot to recap here — Oregon State and Washington State needed to rebuild the Pac-12 after they were left high and dry when 10 other league schools bailed for greener pastures, or pastures with more green.
USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington went to the Big Ten. Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah headed to the Big 12. Cal and Stanford took their acts all the way to the ACC.
The Pac-12 started last week by adding four Mountain West teams: Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State. It then attempted to go east and lure Memphis, Tulane and South Florida out of the American Athletic Conference (AAC) … only to be turned down.
Now scrambling, the Pac-12 turned back to Mountain West members Utah State and UNLV. Utah State took the invite. UNLV decided to stay put. So did the Air Force Academy, which will remain in the Mountain West rather than join fellow military academies Army and Navy in the AAC.
Got that? It isn’t easy.
The result is that the AAC is unchanged. The Mountain West is down to seven members, but it is still alive, legitimate and functional, albeit in need of an eighth team to hit the NCAA-mandated minimum for a conference.
The Pac-12 is stuck at seven also, and scrambling to find its eighth team as well.
If you want to know how absurd this all has gotten … UTEP, which has averaged 3.2 victories over the last nine seasons and is currently 0-4, might now be fielding multiple offers to leave Conference USA.
This isn’t how the Pac-12 envisioned it, but it got a bit greedy and then got boxed out by the Mountain West, which is using the exit fees paid by the departing four teams to sweeten the pot and keep UNLV and the others. Sources say the Rebels will get $25 million, among other concessions, to stay.
If you are a general college football fan, the conference affiliation of Utah State or San Jose State or New Mexico probably doesn’t matter too much. The fact that they are able to play at the FBS level should, however.
The highest levels — the championship levels — of the sport are going to be played by the familiar brands. Everyone wants to watch Georgia at Alabama on Saturday night, for example. Nothing the Mountain West is doing changes that, or anything Ohio State and LSU and Michigan and Clemson and Texas and the others are doing.
The sport has 134 teams in its highest division, though, and that absurdity is part of the appeal. Each Saturday is a cacophony of chaos, games going off everywhere at all times. You don’t have to have national title aspirations to have traditions and history and quirky fun.
It’s college football. It’s designed to be ridiculous, with a rich and deep pool of teams creating excitement and entertainment far from the ruthless pursuit of championships.
It’s two sports in one. It’s fantastic.
Having the Pac-12 get stronger at the expense of what would have been a gutted AAC and Mountain West does not serve anyone’s purpose other than bean counters and television executives. And even then, it’s minimal.
Instead, it is better to have six relatively healthy non-power conferences (add the Sun Belt, Conference USA and Mid-American to the list) than further separation. That’s especially true with the new, expanded playoff system offering an automatic bid to the best of the rest.
It’s also much better to assure that a place such as Wyoming, despite its lack of media markets or proximity to major cities, can still maximize what it has and put an often very competitive team on the field. Not everything should be determined by a marketing exec’s spreadsheet.
This season’s most thrilling game so far was Baylor at Colorado, complete with a final second Hail Mary of sorts, that left fans everywhere cheering — and the CU students storming the field (twice) — even if neither team has a realistic shot at winning it all.
That’s how it should be.
So the Pac-12 couldn’t pull off its big move. Instead the Mountain West basically got halved, but both sides will somehow survive. The AAC, meanwhile, held off a potential raid.
College football will carry on, strange and clunky and confused, just how we like it.
