Colorado and Utah: Could the Pac-10 Turn Them Away?

You hear that?

"Ten million and one...ten million and two..."

That's the sound of the University of Utah and The University of Colorado counting their chickens before they've hatched. The schools, boosters, fans, media and markets have all assumed, without a second thought, that their PAC-10 membership is done.

But could both of those schools wake up October 22 still on the outside of the West Coast's King Conference, left to mull over an uncertain future?

It's certainly possible. The PAC-10 Conference presidents and chancellors will meet October 21, and on their agenda is approval of the addition of Colorado and Utah.

Until their hands go up in agreement, Colorado and Utah are orphans.

This week's meetings are especially important as the conference's athletic directors are meeting to discuss how to handle slicing and dicing the conference into divisions. This will become the basis for scheduling and other dynamics made considerably more challenging by the addition of the two schools in the Rockies.

Going into the meetings, probability for contention is high, as all the conference's members want to play USC and UCLA and have access to the southern California market.

The addition of two teams makes pleasing everyone impossible.

In a conference with a 30-plus year history of everybody playing everybody, these conversations are likely to leave half the conference very unhappy.

And there's already trouble brewing, according to a report in the San Francisco Chronicle.

If that contention spills over into the period between the AD meetings and the President and Chancellor's meeting, bad feelings and irritation could fester and hamper the vote to expand.

Should that happen, Colorado and Utah would be orphaned, with no chickens or eggs to count at all.

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