Now that the Pac-12 Conference is down to four schools, the conference — such as it is — is basically dead.
Maybe it will merge with the Mountain West and continue under the Pac-12 name, but that’s a very technical distinction. The longtime schools that comprised the Pac-12 have mostly left. USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington are gone. You don’t really have a Pac-12, if you don’t have any of those four schools.
Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado are all much younger schools relative to the Pacific Northwest and Los Angeles schools. They are — in a historical context — not as significant. Nevertheless, when a conference shrinks from 12 to four, and the only prospect of survival lies in merging with a lower-tier conference that includes Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado State, something has gone very wrong.
Therefore, if we are to consider the idea that the Pac-12 will retain its name (like the label on a soup can) and its Power Five/NCAA Tournament status, the man who presided over an unquestioned disaster, who failed at the task he was hired to perform (getting the media rights deal done) — should not be allowed to handle merger negotiations.
George Kliavkoff needs to resign.
People who made a mess don’t get to clean it up. Others do.
This begins our look at how a merger with the Mountain West should be handled. We continue with other recommendations below: