The Pac-12 began courting SMU in February. George Kliavkoff went to an SMU basketball game and was seen talking in a suite or luxury box to SMU power brokers.
One of the especially exasperating aspects of the Pac-12’s failure is it played out over a full year, 12 months between USC and UCLA leaving for the Big Ten in the early summer of 2022 and — at the other end — the mass exodus that destroyed the conference in early August 2023.
The Pac-12 had a great deal of time to land the plane, but it couldn’t. One decision at the center of all this was the conference’s refusal to bring new schools in, out of the misguided belief that it had to do the media deal first and then deal with expansion.
The Big 12 didn’t do that. The Big 12 added schools first and then finalized its media deal.
We can see which conference made out better in the long run.
On Tuesday, new reports emerged that the ACC is considering inviting SMU in addition to Stanford and Cal. The ACC might just invite the Bay Area schools, but SMU could also be included.
Seeing SMU become the focus of another Power Five conference only reinforces the magnitude of the Pac-12’s failure to bring in the Mustangs — alongside San Diego State — in late June, when Colorado was still in the conference and the addition of new schools would have boosted a media rights price point.
Here’s reaction on social media to the new reports connecting SMU and the ACC: