Colorado Appears on Verge of Abandoning Pac-12

A Buffaloes exit would decrease the conference members to nine.
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Colorado appears on the verge of rejoining the Big 12, according to multiple reports, which, if true, would decrease the Pac-12 to just nine teams and send the conference into added disarray.

For 12 months now, the league has been dealing with the pending loss of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten, beginning next year.

All of these past and present developments, of course, would leave the University of Washington athletic teams twisting aimlessly in a carcass of a conference that still hasn't negotiated a media rights deal.

This could create yet another alignment free-for-all for remaining Pac-12 teams, including the UW, to consider invitations from other conferences.

Just last Friday at Pac-12 football media day in Las Vegas, Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff tried to downplay any claims that more of his members would be pilfered..

"It's not a concern," Kliavkoff said. "Our schools are committed to each other and to the Pac-12."

However, the commissioner surely knows by now that college athletics, particularly football, is the last place you will find any outward loyalty to anyone else.

A Colorado exit would leave the Pac-12 with the following nine teams: UW, Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, California, Stanford, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah.

The conference potentially hasn't had so few teams since 1977, when it was the Pac-8 and about to invite Arizona and ASU to join the following year.

Even with Kliavkoff trying to maintain a business-as-usual posture last week, he had to know things were greatly unstable across the league as he stood before media members.

Reporters that day tried to no avail to speak with Colorado athletic director Rick George, who rushed out of the Las Vegas hotel, refusing to answer questions and claiming he had a plane to catch. 


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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.