The Death of a Conference

As it turns out, the Pac-4 might not be on its last legs as a conference after all.  The four schools have hired Oliver Luck to "consider their options," and everything's on the table, including expansion or merging with another league.  While the chances of the conference's long-term survival are still incredibly slim, what would it say if Luck is able to secure a media deal and essentially keep the league alive in a few weeks while the Pac-4's commissioner spent the last year watching two-thirds of the conference leave and not really doing anything about it?

The Pac-4 remaining a sustainable athletic conference beyond this school year is a long shot.  Everyone understands that.  Everyone also understands that these are likely the final days for the "Conference of Champions."  While the entire idea of a Power 5 conference simply ceasing to exist was somewhat unfathomable, we really shouldn't be surprised.  Because this isn't the first time it's happened.  In fact, we've seen it before.

It wasn't too long ago that we were lamenting the demise of the Big East, which the ACC gutted for its football teams.  That led to the Big East being split in two, with the basketball-playing schools keeping the Big East name and the football schools forming the American Athletic Conference.  More recently, people thought the Big XII was done after Texas and Oklahoma announced they were leaving for the SEC.  Well, as we just saw, the Big XVI is very much not done.  In fact, that conference is stronger than ever.

Both of those conferences were left for dead, then managed to reinvent themselves.  Same thing with the WAC, which tried to be the first 16-team superconference in the late 90s before seeing half of its members break off and form the Mountain West.  The WAC ended up dropping football as a conference sport for a number of years as a result, and when it came back as a football conference in 2021, it was as an FCS league.

I'm not saying that's what will happen with the Pac-4.  In fact, I think the most likely scenario is still that there'll end up being some sort of absorption/merger with either the Mountain West or American, leaving the Pac-# as nothing but a piece of history.  Which is also something we've seen before.

Formed in 1915 primarily as a home for the schools based in Texas, the Southwest Conference was a football powerhouse.  In its heyday, it consisted of Arkansas and eight teams in Texas--Baylor, Houston, Rice, SMU, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and TCU.  SWC schools won multiple National Championships during the conference's history, and the conference champion was the "home" team in the Cotton Bowl every year.

That prestige began to wear off in the 80s, when pretty much every Southwest Conference school was on some sort of NCAA probation.  The most obvious example of that was SMU's "death penalty" in 1987.  That was the beginning of the end for the Southwest Conference, since the other conferences were starting to think about expansion right around that time.

Arkansas was the first to go, joining the SEC in 1991.  Then the Big 8 became the Big XII with the additions of Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor in 1996.  The four remaining SWC schools ended up dividing themselves between the WAC (TCU, Rice, SMU) and the newly-formed Conference USA (Houston).  Sound familiar?  (Ironically, come next season, seven of the nine will be in either the Big XVI or SEC, with Rice and SMU, both in the American, rumored to be targets of the Pac-4.)

More recently, we've seen it in college hockey, which doesn't have that many conferences to begin with!  When Penn State made its men's program varsity, that gave the Big Ten six hockey-playing members, which is the NCAA minimum for the conference to sponsor the sport.  They also pulled in Notre Dame to get seven members in Big Ten hockey.  Which meant all of the Big Ten schools left their other conferences to join the Big Ten.

Three Big Ten teams were in the CCHA and the other two were in the WCHA.  Six of the remaining schools in those two conferences seized the opportunity to create the National Collegiate Hockey Conference.  And, since there weren't enough teams left to fill both the WCHA and CCHA after the creation of the two new conferences, the two of them effectively merged under the WCHA banner.  (The men's WCHA ended up folding when seven of its members re-formed the CCHA in 2021-22.)

Granted, hockey is a completely different animal, so that's not exactly an equal comparison.  But the death of the Southwest Conference certainly is comparable.  Except there's one big difference between when that happened 30 years ago and what's happening to the Pac-4 now.  Media rights were obviously a thing then, but nowhere near what they are now.  And, let's be honest, media rights are the entire reason why this is happening.

TV networks spend tons on money on college sports, with football the biggest driver of that.  And since the networks want more inventory, specifically more football games, we really should've seen these massive super-conferences at inevitable.  In hindsight, there's no way that the eight- and 10-team leagues we saw in the 90s were gonna last.  As it turns out, even 12 teams was "too few."

Thirty years ago, the Southwest Conference became the first casualty.  The Power 6 turned into the Power 5.  Now it looks like the Pac-# will be the next conference relegated to history, and the Power 5 will become the Power 4.  Is it just a matter of time until it's the Power 3?  Will we eventually end up with just a Big Ten and SEC?

What's happening to the Pac-4 didn't need to happen.  It's a result of the conference's own mistakes and missteps, as well as other leagues being more ambitious and having more resources.  And that's the key.  There's only so much revenue to go around.  So, while it didn't "need" to happen, it also seems like it was bound to eventually.  Unless Oliver Luck manages to pull the Pac-4 out of the abyss, that is.