If you have been following our realignment coverage and analysis here at Trojans Wire, you know we advised the Pac-12 to pursue an alliance with the ACC. You’ll recall the Pac-12 and ACC had an “alliance” with the Big Ten, but never put anything in writing. The Big Ten blew up that alliance and thereby weakened the Pac-12’s position.
Fine. The Big Ten wouldn’t play along. The Pac-12 and ACC could have entered into a joint agreement. The Pac-12 could have stabilized itself and given itself a meaningful degree of leverage in its battle to survive.
If you haven’t been reading our realignment analysis, here’s an article we produced in July … of 2022.
A key excerpt:
“If ESPN can rearrange conferences via reworking the ACC TV deal in a world forever changed by USC’s move to the Big Ten, Vanderbilt might move to the ACC as another academic powerhouse with North Carolina, Duke and Virginia. That kind of membership would mesh well with Stanford and Berkeley (Cal). The cultural and institutional fits of ACC and Pac-12 schools are far better than those between Pac-12 and Big 12 schools.”
The Pac-12 could have met the ACC halfway; now it seems the ACC is at least thinking about the possibility of raiding the Pac-12 (more precisely, the “Pac-4”) for Stanford and Cal.
The Pac-12 continues to get caught flat-footed.
See how people reacted to the reports of the ACC thinking about adding Stanford and Cal: