Well, here we go: USC is entering the Big Ten with the Pac-12 essentially dead. It’s sad, but the move was entirely necessary. As the move becomes a more real part of our lives, some people might be having final pangs of regret, an understandable emotional response to the end of what has been a special era for millions of Western Americans, in Southern California and elsewhere along the coast.
A simple reminder: No one at USC should feel somehow guilty or responsible for blowing up the Pac-12. Nope. The Pac-12 did this to itself. Let’s remember what we said last summer:
The Pac-12 presidents obviously believed that with USC gone, the conference was still worth a lot more than ESPN or the market indicated. The presidents didn’t seem to factor the absence of USC into their calculations. They disregarded the importance of the USC football brand and how much that meant to the conference.
Keep in mind: This was not the first time Pac-12 presidents fatally underappreciated USC’s value to the conference.
During Larry Scott’s tenure — when the seeds of the Pac-12’s destruction were planted — the conference refused to give the Trojans an extra revenue share that would have kept them happy as a conference member. This was a known issue. The conference refused to do anything about it. When George Kliavkoff took over from Larry Scott in 2021, he did not have enough time to mend this fractured situation. USC left one year after Kliavkoff took over.
Now we can see Pac-12 presidents continued to dismiss USC’s real value to the conference. Here we are, with the Pac-12 lying in ruins. USC fans and other national observers were quick to notice how losing the Los Angeles TV market seemed to have no effect on the Pac-12’s calculations, leading to the disastrous decision to reject ESPN’s 2022 media deal.
The only regrets about the death of the Pac-12 should come from Larry Scott, George Kliavkoff, and the Pac-12 CEO Group, not anyone else, especially at USC.
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