Cal Sports Report

Pac-12 Releases Statement After Colorado's Announced Departure

The Buffaloes' move to the Big 12 in 2024 puts the Pac-12's existence in jeopardy. Should Cal be looking for another conference to join?
Jake Curtis|
Pac-12 Releases Statement After Colorado's Announced Departure
Pac-12 Releases Statement After Colorado's Announced Departure

The Pac-12 is trying to fend off extinction following the announcement that Colorado will leave the Pac-12 and rejoin the Big 12 for the 2024-25 school year.

After Colorado announced its move, the Pac-12 presidents and athletic directors met remotely Thursday evening with commissioner George Kliavkoff. Presumably it was meant to calm officials of the remaining schools, restore confidence in Kliavkoff and decide the next course of action.

After that meeting the Pac-12 released this statement Thursday evening:

"The Pac-12 is comprised of world-leading universities and athletic programs who share a commitment to developing the next generation of leaders, supporting student-athletes academic and athletic excellence, and broad-based athletic success. We remain committed to our shared values and to continuing to invest in our student-athletes. Today's decision by the University of Colorado has done nothing to disrupt that commitment. 

"We are focused on concluding our media rights deal and securing our continued success and growth. Immediately following the conclusion of our media rights deal, we will embrace expansion opportunities and bring new fans, markets, excitement, and value to the Pac-12."The Pac-12 suffered another serious blow on Thursday when the Colorado board of regents unanimously approved 

 

Colorado's move to the Big 12 for the 2024-25 school year.

The statement merely confirms the obvious: The Pac-12 must sign a media-right deal soon and must add schools to survive.

The departure of Colorado in the summer of 2024 at the same time that USC and UCLA will move to the Big Ten puts the existence of the Pac-12 in jeopardy. 

Will Arizona and Arizona State be the next to leave?

Even if no other schools leave, the Pac-12 will be down to nine members at this time next year unless it brings in additional schools, such as San Diego State and SMU.  That expansion can be accomplished, and Colorado may be the school the Pac-12 could most afford to lose, given its location and lack of football impact in recent years.

But the optics of Colorado's departure are not good for the Pac-12 or for Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff, who has been implying from the start that the 10 remaining Pac-12 schools were united in their desire to stay in the conference. And this comes just when Colorado's football program was becoming a point of national interest with the hiring of Deion Sanders as its head coach.

The Buffaloes' exit increases the mounting speculation that the Pac-12 is a fragile conference that can't get a media-rights deal completed. The Pac-12's current media-right deal expires after the 2023-24 school year, so it's no coincidence that Colorado, USC and UCLA plan leave next summer.

Colorado was a member of the Big 12 before joining the Pac-10 (to become the Pac-12) in 2011, and the parting words of the Colorado president didn't sound good from a Pac-12 perspective.

"The time has come for us to change conferences," Colorado president Todd Saliman told the Board of Regents on Thursday afternoon, according to RESPN. "We see this as a way to create more opportunity for the University of Colorado, for our students and our student-athletes and create a path forward for us in the future."

The precarious state of the Pac-12 means Cal's membership in a conference a year from now is up in the air.  The Bears may be looking for another conference to join in the near future, and it may require a modification of the Golden Bears' athletic program. 

It doesn't help that Cal chancellor Carol Christ is scheduled to retire in June 2024, leaving the Bears' uncomfortable conference situation in the lap of the next chancellor, who may or may not be a big supporter of elite college sports programs.

Cal, Stanford, Oregon and Washington have been mentioned as schools the Big Ten might be interested in adding, but since Kevin Warren left as the Big Ten's commissioner, indications are that the Big Ten does not want to expand further in the near future.

ACC officials said Thursday, their conference is "absolutely" interested in expanding, but would Cal or any Pac-12 school consider joining a conference that would require cross-country road trips? The long trips USC and UCLA will experience in the Big Ten has been a point of concern.

With Colorado, USC and UCLA leaving, all the remaining nine schools may be looking around for a new conference to join. Arizona and Arizona Stat are the most likely to consider leaving soon. Utah athletic director Mark Harlan made a public statement last week indicating the Utes will remain in the Pac-12, but the situation has changed since then with Colorado's exit.

The Pac-12 has not yet announced a new media rights deal, and it's unclear whether Colorado's departure would affect those negotiations.  And will the new media-rights deal, whenever it is announced, alienate more Pac-12 members if it is not as lucrative as the Big 12's deal, which was announced last year.

Cover photo of Colorado football coach Dieon Sanders is by Ron Chenoy, USA TODAY Sports

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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