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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/EarthTraveler413 on 2023-07-29 17:08:19.
It’s the summer of 2010.
It’s been 5 seasons since a PAC-10 team (USC) last appeared in the BCS title game (mostly because Dennis Dixon tore his ACL in 2007) and 6 since a PAC team won it all (USC again). However, the PAC-10 still has plenty of reasons to be optimistic: USC and UCLA are strong teams and brands, Oregon has been a national contender for most of the decade, Washington is still a strong brand despite being just two years removed from 0-12, and teams like Cal and Oregon State are, if not powerhouses, still respectable teams.
All that being said, the PAC-10 is a bit of a low man on the P5 totem pole, ahead of only the beleaguered ACC and behind the SEC (winners of 50% of the BCS titles at that time), Big Ten (who were still loaded with national brands), and Big 12 (who still had Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, and Colorado, all huge national brands especially at that time).
Luckily, the PAC-10 has aggression and initiative on its side, and they aren’t going to take this weak position lying down. Boy, that’s not something I expected to write about this conference.
In June 2010, the PAC-10 becomes determined to take out the Big 12. They invite Colorado, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas, Texas Tech, and Texas A&M, with Larry Scott going around to each campus like he’s a presidential candidate on the trail. Colorado bit right away, jumping to the PAC-10 on June 10.
At Colorado’s departure, the Big Ten flipped the fuck out and started to go for their share, luring away Nebraska two days later.
Now, it looks like the Big 12 is doomed. Texas, Oklahoma, and Texas Tech are all itching to join their conference mate Colorado out west. A contemporary Bleacher Report article explicitly states Oklahoma and Texas Tech were ready to jump to the PAC-10 if Texas did. It’s not easy to find info on what Ok State and A&M were thinking about the PAC, but TMZ of all places claims a source told it was a “done deal” that OK State was going to join up. Going back to that Bleacher Report article, it specifically says this about Oklahoma going to the PAC-10:
Barring a drastic turn of events, which given the past week is still quite the possibility, the Oklahoma Sooners will be announcing that they are joining the Pac-10 conference this week.
Multiple sources confirmed late last week that Oklahoma has decided to move conferences, but will wait until at least Tuesday (ed. - June 15) to make the announcement.
(…) Both Texas Tech and Oklahoma have said that they will be tied to Texas’ decision on where to go.
“Barring a drastic turn of events”, huh? So all we have to do is convince Texas to join up and we grab 3-5 new schools, including the last 2 national runner-ups and tremendous brands? Surely only a pack of complete idiots could mess this up!
That article was written on June 13. One day later:
That article is from the LA Times. It goes on to say that the deal fell through because Texas was able to convince the rest of the potential fliers that the Big 12 could get as big of a media deal as the newly-minted PAC-12 could. Unlike what would happen 12 years later, this turned out to be a bunch of bullshit, as the 10-team Big 12’s media deal was slightly lower than the PAC-12’s.
The article goes on to note that, under PAC-10 rules at the time, Texas could not have retained the Longhorn Network, which would’ve forced them to share revenue equally with the rest of the PAC-X. Many of you were already aware of that, and can probably guess that this is the main reason Texas didn’t jump - certainly it wasn’t altruism toward the rest of the Big 12. And as the Bleacher Report article indicated, if Texas wasn’t going, nobody else was going. The PAC ended up grabbing Utah a few days later on the 17th as a consolation prize, ending that phase of realignment.
But… wait, what? The PAC-10 wasn’t willing to make an exception for one of the biggest brands in CFB, which would’ve netted them ANOTHER huge brand had they bent their own rules a little? Are they stupid or something? (hint: the answer is “yes”) Why would the PAC-10 take such a stand in such a pivotal moment?
Oh yeah… because we were busy making Larry Scott’s pet project of the PAC-12 Network happen. And obviously, that was going to be the future of the conference’s broadcasting and would give us spectacular leverage in future media deals… had it been in more competent hands, anyway, and not turned into the disaster we all know it as today.
This inflection point set the stage for the traits the PAC-12 would become defined by for the next decade-plus:
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Myopia: they failed to see the extreme benefits that would come from adding top-tier brands to the conference. More critically, perhaps, they utterly failed to realize that just because they didn’t put together the first superconference didn’t mean someone else wouldn’t do it, and possibly raid the PAC-12 to do so.
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Ego: yeah, the PAC is totally the best. The PAC-12 Network will be a smashing success because we’ve got the shit everyone wants to see, plus some of the best academics. We don’t need Texas or Oklahoma or any of those other truck stop schools.
And at the time, that ego seemed justified. The PAC-12 did get a better deal than the raided Big 12, and we did get moved up the conference totem pole. We leapfrogged the Big 12 and were nearly on equal footing with the Big Ten. As far as the PAC was concerned their mission to raid the Big 12 was a resounding success, and left them in an enviable position, and that was that.
Ultimately, that attitude was what killed the conference. The belief that we had already succeeded in establishing our position led to us to simply sit around and ignore the moves made by the rest of CFB, ignoring the SEC grabbing A&M and Missouri a year later, or the Big Ten gaining 2 huge markets with Rutgers and Maryland a year after that. We thought we were special because we were the realignment pioneers and we didn’t have to do anything else because people would always be buying what we were selling because it was just that good. Oops.
TL;DR:
The actions that held us back from killing the Big 12 in 2010 and creating the first superconference and the attitudes that motivated them paved the way for our eventual demise.
Rejecting Texas’ desire to use the Longhorn Network because it would conflict with the PAC-12 Network was merely questionable at the time, but it was informed by our egos, our belief that our PACness was somehow better than what others had, which held us back from making further expansion over the next decade. Anyone else ought to come crawling up to us, and we won’t bend for nobody.
Our shortsightedness killed us as well. Few could’ve predicted the PAC-12 Network being the disaster it became, but A) rejecting a team that would bring further teams just because you can’t stand to lose a few million because of that one team is quite shortsighted and B) failing to realize that just because WE were done expanding didn’t mean ANYONE ELSE was done, even when further expansion took place was a feat of ego and myopia equaled by few.
Postscript
My research turned up this Bleacher Report article titled “Texas To The Pac-10? The Good, Bad, and Ugly Of Pac-10 Expansion”. The stuff written under “The Bad” section might be of particular interest to some users.