Everything about conference realignment and the total annihilation of the history and tradition of college athletics is coming into focus with the new football season fast approaching. For the Pac-12, that means what once was the Conference of Champions has now become a ghost town.
As Pac-12 Network has shut down operations, some staff and on-air talent have moved over to the Big Ten Network to provide coverage of the four west coast teams that have joined their traditional Rose Bowl counterparts (Oregon, Washington, USC, UCLA).
The so-called “Four Corners” schools are now a part of the Big XII including the returning Colorado as well as Utah, Arizona, and Arizona State.
And somewhat incomprehensibly, California and Stanford are now part of the Atlantic Coast Conference (with SMU) in perhaps the most bizarre realignment of them all.
That’s left the Pac-12 with just two unwanted castoffs, Oregon State and Washington State. And with many of these realignment deals now becoming official ahead of the 2024-2025 academic calendar, the fallout is becoming very real.
The most stark realization is a trip to the Pac-12 website, which is now dedicated to the remaining Pac-2… and not much else.
The banner headline is the CW-Fox home football schedule that was struck earlier this year to gain distribution nationally for the former Power 5 schools. That story is dated all the way back to May 14th.
The news archives are stories that are only dedicated to the two remaining with the last story referencing any of the departed schools being the Pac-12 rowing championships won by Stanford (women) and Washington (men) respectively.
The only functioning schedule on the site is the current football schedules for Oregon State and Washington State with pretty much everything else unknown at this point.
Finally, here’s what the bottom banner of the website looks like with links to OSU and WSU athletics.
It’s a sad reminder of what’s been lost through conference realignment and also a jarring reality of the future that faces the Pac-2. If they can’t strike a deal with the Mountain West or another conference to keep the brand in tact, it might not be too long before it’s totally gone for good.