If you follow the Pac-12 on a regular basis, and if you have come here to Trojans Wire for realignment content, you probably know how the conference collapsed. The Pac-12 had a media rights offer from ESPN in 2022 which would have paid out $30 million per school to the 10 schools left after USC and UCLA bolted for the Big Ten.
We have collected various other details from reportage by John Canzano and Jon Wilner, plus statements from former television executives, which explain how the Pac-12 died.
One of the juicy details involved was that one Pac-12 president reportedly pushed for a higher dollar figure for the media rights deal. Given how much Arizona State truly didn’t want to leave the Pac-12, we speculated that the “unknown president” might have been in Tempe.
That did not turn out to be the case.
What is also emerging, however, is that one school president didn’t torpedo the ESPN deal last year. It was a collective effort in which the Pac-12 CEO Group couldn’t reach agreement and put up a united front.
Fresh reporting has unearthed the fuller picture of how the Pac-12 couldn’t get its act together in a moment of crisis:
(h/t John Canzano — subscription required)
We went behind the paywall for Canzano’s article and will share some of his important findings below: