Former UCLA Bruins head coach and now Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly commented in December about the state of college football and the Pac-12.
Starting in the 2024 season, the Pac-12 will no longer exist as we know it. There are still two teams at the conference: Washington St. and Oregon St. However, the conference as we know it is gone. Washington St. and Oregon St. will still represent the Pac-12 but will play a Mountain West schedule. And for the sake of this article, we are not just talking about football either.
The Oregon Ducks just won the final Pac-12 College Basketball Championship. Because of all the realignment, the Ducks, USC, Washington, and UCLA are going to the Big 10. The conference was gutted because it could not get a TV deal done to improve the revenue for those teams to stay.
The Pac-12 had one of its most successful seasons in years in college football, not to mention the other sports that have done well in years past, like the UCLA and Arizona softball teams. But staying on the big two sports, football and basketball, for over a minute, this all came down to money, and it is a sad state of affairs, as Chip Kelly notes.
“There’s a ton of money out there, and I think if went to the TV people, all of us together as a collective group of 64 teams as opposed to 12 in this conference and 12 in that conference, the PAC 12 dissolved because they weren’t going to get the same money as the Big 10 and the SEC,” Kelly said on the Pat McAfee Show. “If all five of those schools went together and said all five of those conferences went together to the television people, what is that worth? I think it’d be equitable for everybody.”
Before the bowl game in December, while still coaching UCLA, Kelly was asked again about the state of the Pac-12. Coach Kelly did not hold back any comments.
“It’s sad. A bunch of people couldn’t figure out how to keep this conference together, and that’s sad,” Chip Kelly noted. “This conference has been together since 1915. We’re supposed to be the smart ones. I heard Kirk Ferentz talk in front of Congress when they were talking about realignment, and he said, ‘We have to be the dumbest people in the world. This is an amazing game, and we keep trying to screw it up.
“I’m talking about the administrators and coaches; it’s on us. The fact that there is not going to be a Pac-12 next year, the fact that Washington State is not going to be in a conference next year, the fact that Oregon State is not going to be in a conference next year—we failed. Our job is to create opportunities for student-athletes to be successful, and we didn’t do it.”
Chip Kelly was not wrong then, and he is not wrong now. A proud conference like the Pac-12 should not have gone away of the dodo bird because of money. There was a way to get it done, but the Pac-12 Commissioner lived in the old age of College Football. That is why the conference had the deal it had. Thus, George Kliavkoff is no longer the Conference Commissioner.
College Football and College Sports generally have a problem with NIL and money. We will dive into that topic again, but the Pac-12 should still be around how we know it. However, everyone failed the student-athletes to keep the conference. Instead, they were looking at how they would get the most money, which has transferred over to the athletes as well.
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