The future of the Pac-12 as a conference seems pretty bleak in the eyes of 710 ESPN LA hosts Travis Rodgers and Allen Sliwa.
With the conference not having a new TV contract in place, news this week that Colorado is going to join the Big 12 seemed like the final nail in the conference’s coffin to Rodgers.
“The Pac-12’s dead, right?” he asked on Thursday’s show. “There’s no coming back. I don’t even know if the name exists anymore. Like why have the Pac-12?”
Sliwa said there is a path forward for the conference. They could continue to pursue schools like San Diego State and SMU, but no other member schools can defect.
“I don’t think it’s dead yet,” he said. “How you save it is you make sure these other schools aren’t going anywhere. I don’t think the domino is Colorado.”
“I think the only thing you’re looking at is you’re basically asking yourself, if an Arizona walked, if a Washington walked, an Oregon, it’s over,” Sliwa added. “But I don’t think Colorado was the last straw. I just think that there’s nothing that has been done to tell you that this is a viable conference that you can see three, four years down the road.”
Rodgers said if Colorado leaving is not the final straw, the lack of a TV deal is going to fast-track the Pac-12 going away.
“It’s not the cause of death. It’s a symptom of a dying patient,” he said. “Colorado was just the first off of a sinking boat – that SC and UCLA punched a hole in the side of the boat – and it was unsavable at that point. It’s going down because it’s the biggest television market in the deal.”
“The only thing that saves it is TV, and there are no TV markets that are gonna draw numbers that can save this thing,” Rodgers added. “Once LA was out of the deal, that’s a wrap. The only other television market worth a damn in this thing is the Bay, and those two teams are terrible.”
