The Pac-12 should be looking at any and every option this summer if it wants to maintain its Power Five status. Some pride may be lost, but there’s not much left anyways with USC and UCLA leaving in 2024.
In the words of our Matt Wadleigh, who also writes for Trojans Wire, a “glorified Mountain West” is a realistic and possibly grim future for the Pac-12. Both conferences share the same geographic area and I’d expect some Mountain West schools would be eager to join. However, the Pac-12 poaching from a Group of Five conference isn’t an ideal outcome for neither the conference nor the CU Buffs (that is if they don’t move elsewhere).
A Pac-12-Mountain West merger would also likely mean the departure of Oregon and Washington, both of whom have an easy ticket out of the conference. Wadleigh speculates that Boise State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Colorado State are all possible candidates to fill the void. Utah State and Air Force have also enjoyed recent success.
The Buffs are plenty familiar with the conference as Colorado State, Air Force and Wyoming are all nearby. But again, CU being apart of the so-called glorified Mountain West would be a major step back.
Don Smalley of Ducks Wire agreed that a Mountain West merger of sorts is a suboptimal solution for Colorado (h/t Trojans Wire):
“The Colorado Buffaloes might be scrambling a bit and could look into rejoining the Big 12 or plead with the Big Ten to take them,” Smalley said. “I’m sure there are still some hard feelings from when Colorado left the Big 12 for the Pac-10. Honestly, I’m not sure what Colorado is going to do. Join the Mountain West with Colorado State? That would be a huge drop off in revenue, but it might be their best bet at the moment.”
We’ll have more opinions on college football’s conference chaos as it continues.
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