Pac-10 Expansion: A Cautionary Tale Of What Could Have Been

The drive for conference expansion has come to a merciful halt, leaving the Pac-10 left to dream about what could have been.

Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe has become a household name in recent days.  After pulling off a last-second save thanks to the wonder of television, he will no longer be considered as the village idiot of College Football.

For the time being at least, that title can now be bestowed upon intrepid Pac-10 Commissioner Larry Scott.

Scott’s aggressive pursuit of six Big 12 schools was a bold move motivated largely by the Pac-10’s quest to land a new television deal.  The Pac-10’s modest earnings stood to skyrocket with the broadening of their conference's appeal across the national market.

In the end, the push for expansion barely made it across the Rockies.

Colorado provides the Pac-10 with more cons than pros.  The only football program from a BCS school to lose scholarships because of poor APR numbers in 2009, the Buffaloes have a coach on the hot seat and a program heading in the wrong direction. 

It’s not just the football program that has struggled. 

The Men’s Basketball team finished the season 15-16 and will lose a single scholarship thanks to poor APR performance.

The Pac-10 is expected to launch its own network in 2012, the same year that the conference’s current television contract is set to expire.  Scott should be able to leverage substantially more than the $8-10 million dollars (including money from bowl revenue) for each member institution. 

The Denver market would provide a slight increase exposure and television territory for the Pac-10, but the Mile High City is a pro sports town with little time or interest in an athletic program that has suffered through a decade of relative mediocrity.

There is no question Scott needed Oklahoma and Texas schools to put the Pac-10 in the conversation with the Big Ten and SEC in terms of revenue.

It seems very likely that the new television deal will likely pale in comparison to the bigger conferences, opening up the possibility that the Big 12 could even look to add Pac-10 schools down the road.

It sounds crazy, but it could happen. 

Despite the curtailed expansion craze at the moment, College Football is still headed in a direction of four power conferences.  Would the addition of Utah and Colorado make the Pac-10 stronger than the current Big 12? 

The revenue and markets of those two programs combined with brutal penalties facing USC athletics makes the answer to that very important question a resounding “no.” 

Making matters worse, Colorado will likely join Utah in the Pac-10 South, a move that could frustrate coaches from the Pac-10 North that are hungry to maintain recruiting avenues by playing multiple games in California and Arizona every year.

We’ve all seen what can happen when institutions are unhappy.

Scott deserves credit for going out on what appeared to be a fairly strong limb and making a bold move. 

The harsh reality of college athletics suggests that he will instead be remembered as the guy who almost pulled off a miracle but fell painfully short.

Don’t sleep on the Big 12 quite yet.