What a Difference a Year Makes for the Big 12, Pac-12
One of the things I have learned as I get older is that time goes by faster. Years feel like months and months feel like days. I mean half of 2023 is already over and before you know it, Christmas will be here.
When you look back at the last year of your life, what have you done? Did you finish that project you have been pushing off for months or did you finally take that dream vacation you have always wanted to go on? The real question you should be asking yourself is if your life has gotten better or worse over the last year?
Not only can you apply this question to yourself, but you can also apply it to conferences in today’s world of college football. Conference realignment has been a hot topic for a couple of years now and by the time it ends, you won’t even know which teams are in what conference. The landscape of the sport we love is changing and it’s changing quickly.
But let’s get back to my question from earlier and apply it to the power five conferences. Did the SEC get better over the last 12 months? As much as I hate saying it but yes, they did. Texas and Oklahoma are leaving earlier than we originally thought, which is good for them. And don’t even get me started on the Big Ten. They went out and took the two biggest powers on the west coast: USC and UCLA.
One could argue that the ACC has been stagnant, but my focus today is on the two conferences that have been compared to one another time and time again. Of course, I am talking about the Big 12 and the Pac-12.
Let’s take a look at the conference out west, shall we? On July 5th, 2022, this statement was made by the conference by the Pac-12.
It’s been a full year and guess what? THERE IS STILL NO MEDIA RIGHTS DEAL! What we have witnessed in the Pac-12 is nothing short of a cluster you-know-what. Remember this statement made by Commissioner George Kliavkoff last year at Pac-12 media days?
Do you think he will say something like this again? While he may be stupid enough, I highly doubt it because he’s got 100 problems and a media deal is one of them. Last fall, there was already talk of a new deal getting done. And before we knew it, months kept passing by, and still nothing.
When we heard nothing, then we got deadlines and of course, none of them were ever met. We even got to the point where every time a deadline came up, they would just keep pushing it back even further. Many people thought that we were going to hear about a deal around the first of July. Well, it’s now July 6th, and guess what? We are all still waiting. And as you are reading this, the deadline probably just got pushed back once again.
Keep in mind that a year from now, their current media deal will be over. One thing I will give George Kliavkoff credit for is procrastinating. Nobody and I mean NOBODY procrastinates like George Kliavkoff. The man should be in politics because he can lie with the best of them. He has kicked the can so far down the road that eventually the road will end soon. What comes after the road ends? Who knows but what I do know is that he has done nothing. There’s not a single thing that he has done right in the last year and the Pac-12 media has done a great job of sweeping that under the rug.
The other day, Pac-12 fanboy John Canzano asked a great question.
To me, there was only one correct answer.
Time and time again, the Pac-12 has failed. By now I would have thought that they would have added SMU or San Diego State but instead, nothing has been done. In fact, San Diego State isn’t sure what is going on right now with their whole mess with the Mountain West. If the Pac-12 doesn’t have a deal by media days, then the media in attendance should forget about asking Commissioner George Kilavkoff questions. They should all be handed a box of tomatoes so they could throw them at George for an entire hour.
Despite the disaster out west, the Big 12 is in a much better place. Oklahoma and Texas paid up to leave early and the four new schools are already in the conference.
A media deal was set in place and was signed at the end of June. All this time we thought that a media deal was going to be done around that time but who knew it would be the Big 12?
From the leadership (looking at you Brett Yormark) to the schools, the Big 12 Conference is far superior to the Pac-12. The Big 12 has a plan in place and is finding new creative ways to draw attention to themselves. When we look back at the last year for the Big 12 Conference, I think it’s safe to say that they are in a much better place than they were a year ago. I know that the conference we all love is in good hands and that the future is bright no matter how fast the time goes by.
