This really is the saddest quote.
One high-ranking conference official told me: “No media company wanted to partner with the Pac-12. ESPN declined. FOX, CBS, even the Discovery Channel declined. Nobody knows this.
“We weren’t wanted.”
Whether that’s truth or hyperbole, “even the Discovery Channel declined” rocks.
I didn’t realize until I read that piece that Larry Scott runs both the conference and the network and draws a salary from each. Whatever pictures he’s got on people, they must be doozies.
Get The Picture 
Firstly, their plan for multiple networks as opposed to one single network was likely the biggest killer to partnering with anyone. That was also part of genius Larry Scott’s master plan. A network for Washington. A network for Oregon. A network for Northern California AND Southern California and so on and so forth.
Secondly, perception is reality when it comes to Pac-12 football and its fans: It just means less.
When the Pac-12 foolishly followed the lead of the B1G and shut down all fall sports including football, literally no one out there except for maybe some Utah fans cared. Not even Oregon fans, who have a true CFB Playoff contender, offered a contentious argument.
If they don’t care themselves, why would anyone else?
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It’s sad to watch. USC is one of the blue bloods of the sport. Washington has certainly been nationally relevant over the years. Oregon has played for a couple of national titles in the last 10 years. Stanford is Vanderbilt with actual real achievements on the field. UCLA should be a powerhouse along with USC given its local recruiting base. Utah is a tough out for anyone. Hell, Mickey’s home base sits in the middle of the Pac 12 footprint
Larry Scott should be run out of there on a rail.
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USC, UCLA, Stanford, and Oregon are going to leave and be part of a new conference.
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Where are they going to go? The Big 12? I can’t imagine what the trip from Eugene, Oregon to Morgantown, West Virginia for a basketball game would be like.
Who would they form a conference with? BYU who won’t play on Sundays? Boise State?
They’re stuck, and the only way out is to blow Larry Scott out and get someone in there who knows what they’re doing.
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To add on to that, no way the Oregon or California state governments allow Oregon and UCLA to leave without taking Oregon State and Cal with them.
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I know the politics have always been there, but it will be the end of the football teams if the state legislatures don’t let the best programs leave.
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Same for Washington and Washington State. The Pac 12 is what it is … a league 2-3 time zones away from the college football viewing audience. The population centers in their footprint are generally professional sports fans.
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Plus: bigger states, less population density, the most naturally beautiful geography in the country. It’s just different out there. People have other interests, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
Scott really, really sucks at his job.
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Money talks in CFB and the PAC isn’t keeping up, so USC, UCLA, Stanford, and Oregon either have to leave the conference or stay and accept the long decline of their teams.
My guess is Texas and Oklahoma would leave the Big12, take a few teams with them, and they would all form a new conference. Maybe they’re just a football conference.
How about…
From the PAC: USC, UCLA, Stanford, Oregon, Washington, Arizona State, and Arizona
From the Big 12: Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and WVU
Maybe Utah as the 12.
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There’s no way the schools on the West Coast will agree to include West Virginia. Substitute Utah for WVU, and you probably have something.
The issue then becomes the contractual buyouts for those teams to leave their respective conferences. It isn’t going to happen.
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Truth.
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I’d like to offer them ATM & Mizzou!
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Even after today’s final scores?
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🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
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I agree, ee. It is sad. I love to mock them as much as anyone but they do have a history in CFB and Larry Scott has made sure it’s been killed.
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It’s easy to make fun of the pac 12, but it’s a bad omen. It’s not healthy for the sport as a whole. A massive market of the sport is basically collapsing, and it will have ripple effects down to the high school level where recruits are born.
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The Libs love it..
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Expect Larry Scott to some how get another raise for allowing the presidents to become free agents.
Really how does this guy keep his job? Whatever videos/pictures he must be holding cover the voting majority of his paymasters. Or on that coast incompetence is to be rewarded if so he is earning his pay.
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That’s life on the left coast, the more a good thing gets dismantled, the more the dismantler is rewarded….it’s 4:20 somewhere…
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Larry Scott is represented by someone slicker than J Sexton.
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Who’da thunk it would be on THIS post that I would read some of the dumbest takes I’ve ever seen on this blog?
Wow. USC, UCLA, Stanford, and Oregon are going to leave the Pac-12? You want to give TAMU away?
Lunacy.
Firstly, if anyone is leaving the Pac-12, it’s the Arizona schools or Utah. The one team who would NEVER leave the Pac-12 is Stanford. If everyone else left, Stanford would play in the Pac-2 with Cal.
Secondly, the SEC is never, ever giving up TAMU. And it’s not just because of the increased access to Texas recruits. It’s because Texas A&M and the SEC’s shared interests and mores. TAMU was always an SEC school. It just took 80 years for them to join.
Some of y’all need your morning cup of coffee. Jeez.
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A&M sucks, College Station sucks, and they’re alumni is a legit cult.
No one would miss them.
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Senator, I am surprised you didn’t realize that he runs both. Yeah, that’s always been the Presidents’ justification for his bloated salary above the other P5 commissioners (cost of living / office rent in San Fran only goes so far). He has literally said in past interviews, he’s the only contemporary who network executive that runs a network AND a commissioner that runs a league. Unreal. He’s literally milked a “visionary” failed attempt a decade ago to create a 16 team mega league into somehow fooling the PAC12 Presidents and ADs into thinking he’s a Hollywood icon AND a Silicon Valley magnate all rolled into one that can run a network. The PAC12’s demise will be traced back to the blind support. As networks go, the PAC12 is the “New Coke” of college football. A failed & flawed experiment.
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Oregon undefeated would have likely been in. And they seem to care.
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