With 108 “official” seasons in the books now, from its initial origins through to 2023, the Pacific-12 Conference football legacy is secure in many ways. What now remains is a so-called “Pac 2” with Oregon State and Washington State, winners of only 9 combined conference titles since 1916. The two schools will play a football schedule in 2024 made up mostly of Mountain West Conference opponents, which is key.

We outlined previously what we think should happen going forward; it’s just matter of whether or not the OSU and WSU administrations can work together to make it happen. But aggressiveness is the elixir for surviving the current college football landscape, as well as the ability to land a big enough television contract, of course, that is lucrative enough for the schools involved. To recap, this is a projected Pac-18:

  • Air Force
  • Boise State
  • Colorado State
  • Fresno State
  • Hawaii
  • Navy
  • Nevada
  • New Mexico
  • New Mexico State
  • Oregon State
  • San Diego State
  • San José State
  • UNLV
  • Utah State
  • UTEP
  • UTSA
  • Washington State
  • Wyoming

Think of the TV footprint here: a majority of some states’ viewers (Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming), a good portion of multiple states’ viewers (California, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington), plus a smaller slice of the viewers in other states (Maryland, Texas, and Utah). Plus, throw in the global reach of the two service academies, and that is quite a TV footprint, in truth. Do the math!

It’s just a matter of if the Pac-2 can pull it off over the next 2 years of NCAA grace. After that, the traditional conference either will have to put up or shut up for good. We reiterate that dissolving the MWC makes sense, as it can merge easily with the Beavers and the Cougars. The aggressiveness comes from adding the 4 extra schools for rivalries and viewers across the nation. It makes such sense; we want to see it.

The “new” Power 4 conferences have all expanded, of course: the ACC (17 schools), the B1G (18), the Big XII (16), and the SEC (16) are going to swallow up so much unless the Pac-2 can create this “Pac-18” Conference soon. We still expect these numbers to change as the power leagues cut the worthless schools from their ranks: Vanderbilt, for example, just doesn’t seem to belong, nor does Rutgers. Eventually, we see chaos.

All these conferences will merge into one “Akufo League” before it all collapses magnificently from the weight of its greed: it’s inevitable, really. The golden age of college sports ended a long time ago, and considering it’s been 40 years since the landmark Supreme Court case that started all of this, maybe we were lucky it lasted so long before coming to this predictable end. That doesn’t change the facts, though:

The Pac-2 needs to move aggressively and quickly to stay alive for as long as it possibly can: there is no other option.