Exactly, like it can’t be both ways. Eyes are on us and we have nothing left to prove. This is not doom and gloom time. We are fine and literally came off back to back conference championship games and rose bowls. If anything we are fine.
As for ratings lets be real Disney is hemorrhaging money and looking to sell including part of espn. So the “big” deals might not be as sustainable long term. The tv markets have changed. So agin no need to panic.
Football success can change pretty quickly. Let’s say Cam gets hurt and Utah goes 8-4 this year, coming in 3rd or 4th in the conference. Or maybe Whit retires next year and Utah has a couple down years as we adjust to a new coaching staff.
Utah is riding high right now from a couple conference titles and lots of showings in the CCG. But is a 5-7 Utah team still an attractive expansion candidate? Utah fans would certainly argue we are based on history, but would the other conference think that? I honestly don’t know.
Absolutely 100%. Why else would Colorado, of all programs, have even been considered as an expansion candidate?
Maybe I’m wrong in all this, but I see where the puck is moving here and it concerns me. Everything - and I do mean literally everything - is about $$. I just don’t have the same confidence that y’all do that Utah brings as much potential $$ to the table as we think they do.
No one gives a single sh*t what you’ve done in the past, only the $$ can potentially be able to bring them in the future. That’s the only thing driving any of this.
Hard to argue with that given that the BIG brought Rutgers into the conference.
The short answer is: neither school or alumni base seems all that interested in sports in general, let alone football. Both programs seem to be running on institutional inertia right now. It very well could be that my view is incorrect. I do, after all, live on the East Coast now.
True but are we really thinking Utah is going backward soon? I don’t. They always do much with mediocre recruiting. Even with Whit retiring it’s going to be a good job for whoever comes in.
I think CU has the benefit of history with the Conference. That’s why. Sure Denver market is nice but what are they really gaining? A doormat of a team with a coach who is only thinking about his next move?
As for the puck, it’s moving to a Super League. I don’t see the Big 1G or SEC even lasting. There will be a 24 team conference that is nationwide when this ends. Basically AAA of the NFL. The money isn’t in this hodge podge of conferences. Also, the way sports broadcasts are losing money I don’t see the big payouts happening. Football is also a sport that may or may not exist in 25 years.
So, just sit back and enjoy the late life of college football. The death rattle is coming.
Agreed, but with the triple-whammy of conference realignment, NIL, and transfer portal, who knows what might happen. If recruits see that Utah is likely to be left out of the P5 (or whatever equivalent shakes out of all this), that could have a very quick, very nasty domino effect on the level of talent Utah can recruit.
Again, I hope that doesn’t happen but there’s lots of unknowns right now.
We’ll just have to respectfully disagree, as I don’t think conference history played any factor whatsoever in the B12’s decision. The B12 wanted the potential $$ that comes with a large Denver market, and now they have it.
Fair enough. I don’t think it’s not a factor but if we’re real SEC is making bank off of markets 65 and higher.
Time to add CU to our “parting gifts” of a beat down list along side U$C and fUCLA.
This just feels like the beginning of the end for the PAC. The B1G could probably swoop in and take UW and Oregon at a lessor share for a couple of years.
Is it bad to hope for a massive stadium fire with blocked exits when CU plays BYU at Lavelle Edwards Stadium?
You are a sick, sick man. But immediately forgiven, and unconditionally accepted. (No treatment required)
OXOXO
The public agenda for Colorado’s Thursday meeting: “athletics operations.” The expectation is that the Pac-12 member school will formally move to request admission to the Big 12, where it was a member from 1996-2010. That request would be accepted, sources told SI, and then the Big 12 hunt would be on for at least one more member to bring aboard.
“If Colorado brings the four corners (fellow Pac-12 members Utah, Arizona and Arizona State), that’s the ideal scenario,” one source told SI. “I don’t think that’s going to happen. Our schools love the four corners, going from 12 to 16. Can Colorado bring in Arizona or Utah? Arizona more likely than Utah.”
This is a good way to put it. The lack of any sort of urgency whatsoever from the P12 still continues to amaze me.
For the Pac-12, this is a bitter blow as the league as meandered toward a media-rights deal.
The PAC12 powers that be continue to amaze me in a bad sort of way. As you said the lack of urgency from the conference seems odd, to put it mildly. It has become troubling in many ways that we keep hearing about a supposed media deal, but nothing happens. It is possible to play your cards too close to the vest.
I have thought all along that there is no way this is not a very bad thing for Utah or the PAC-12. We did a great job while we were in the full conference. That’s just part of our record now. This is kind of like the Republican Party. The GOP as it was known doesn’t really exist anymore,* and the Pac 12 is now also going to be a shadow of itself–at best. Still potentially a decent conference, but nothing like what it once was. I just hope it doesn’t cease to exist.
*Not a political comment, and please don’t make it one. Just a statement of historical fact.
The metal erector set won’t burn. The giant earthquake that swallows the stadium whole, then closes back up…that would be something. 
We get the public narrative, which could easily be true - the PAC has kind of dawdled along at their own pace, with some president turnover and… whatever.
At the same time, we’re learning ESPN and other “linear” programming providers have been in a serious money crisis, and streaming does appear to be a much bigger thing going forward.
Which makes me seriously wonder about this $31.5M open-ended invitation program the Big-12 is wielding as a sword to slay the PAC.
Is Yormark really spending ESPN and Fox’s contract money this easily? If so, they deserve to be pummelled.
I don’t like this, I don’t like this at all.
Outside of BYU leaving Independance. . . All of the conference realignment and NIL stuff is making NCAA Football more and more like NFL football.
I still think USC/UCLA to the Big10 was dumb, I jsut don’t like any of this realignment. Personally, I thought the Pac12 was a perfectly balanced conference and should have stayed just as they were.
Your players are 45 with three kids to feed. They need that NIL $.
Sad. I knew it was taking too long to get a deal. Colorado panicked because a bird in the hand….
What an unmitigated disaster Larry Scott’s tenure was. This is on him, not Kliavkoff.
FTFO!