A lot of blame gets tossed at various schools

It seems to have been an effort to trim the P5 fat. They got rid of the 4 historically weakest and least popular teams from the Pac-12 in this round. Look for further fat trimming of the worst teams in the ACC in the next round.

I put the most blame on the TV networks. Combination of not making any reasonable media deals to the PAC12 and far too many late night starts where football games often end at 2AM and basketball games end at 1AM on the east coast.

They envision a future with just a couple enormous conferences making far more TV money than any other of the lower leagues and sadly that is where things are headed.

Almost like the divisions in soccer in England and most other countries but at least there teams in the lower divisions can finish a season near the top of the table and earn promotion into the higher levels.

It just all sucks….

It is about money unfortunately. It was a trim the fat type scenario. I still believe 100% it is a bad long term solution for SC and fUCLA.

It wasn’t the TV network execs that killed the PAC. That honor belongs exclusively to FOX. The info I’ve read said that Apple’s final offer was $25M guaranteed and the rest coming from subscriptions to the PAC streaming package. If Apple sold 1.7M subscriptions, then that would match whatever any school would get from the Big 12 ($31.7M). If Apple was successful and sold 5M subscriptions, then each PAC school would get over $50M per year. That was a decent deal with plenty of potential to bet on yourself, especially once Apple’s marketing machinery started getting into gear. That was also the deal that the university presidents were supposed to approve on Friday morning. That is, until FOX saw the opportunity to put a spoke in Apple’s wheel, completely shut out ESPN from the West Coast, acquire the best remaining PAC brands at a ludicrous discount for the next eight years, and further buttress their investment in the Big 12 by acquiring the PAC best of the rest. Besides blaming FOX, I also blame Oregon and UW for stabbing their league partners in the back and, in a sense, showing cowardice in the face of fire. They could have bet on themselves (hell, Phil Knight could buy 5M Apple subscriptions without breaking a sweat) and been seen as the saviors of the PAC and also visionaries. Instead, they took a deal that pays them less than what Utah will be getting in the Big 12 for the remaining of the B1G deal with the hope that they can strike it big in 2031. Yes, 2031…personally, I don’t even know if college football will exist in anything like the present form in eight years.

This whole thing conference realignment thing started when Texas created the Longhorn Network. Blame Texas.

I agree. The problem is college football is controlled by a few media companies that themselves do not work together. Each media company has a very short term self interest that is overwhelming. College football will continue to struggle mightily until there is a single entity on the athletic side that calls the shots for at least an entire division of college athletics AND has an interest in fairness throughout that division. Until then, media companies will serve only their on short term interest and college football nationally will suffer. College football, in general, will not be maximized and that will be more apparent over time. The question remains, can college basketball remain a single organized somewhat organization for D1 and avoid letting these football gods mess with it?