Unified School districts has continued to increase each year, however since 2015 the participation in football has dropped significantly. From 103K to 89K. The culture in California is shifting rapidly and the younger families are adopting these cultural shifts. Football is becoming anathema because it is violent and it promotes according to many toxic masculine stereotypes which should be eliminated for the safety of the community. Parents don't want to raise their kids to be football players.

However in Texas and Oklahoma you have a continued increase in participation and culturally there is pushback against the same forces that have become established in California. It is a big deal. You may be looking at this from a branding perspective, but this is grassroots level shifting that is only going to get worse.

Finally when it comes to "Prestige" in academic branding that is to about ready to fall off the cliff. I have been expressing this opinion for several years. I have noticed this change as we move forward. Many of the power brokers of today (Tech sector giants) are now tossing academics aside. They may be the last generation of rainmakers who actually attended these prestigious Universities.

What is hot now and will continue to be is the ability to use one's intelligence and think outside the box. There are a growing number of incubators for high school genius types to jump into and begin developing projects in the commercial world from the start. More of these are foregoing college all together because it is more financially sound and they don't have to delay this process because they are stuck in a litany of useless courses that don't have anything to do with what they are passionate about.

Many of those the rainmakers like Bezo's, Musk, Dorsey and Zuckerberg are hiring based on ability and not on resume. As education becomes more about the personal effort of someone using the existing infrastructure (online learning) to not only learn and master subjects, but to take those same subjects to the next level many of the future elite are not going to have actual degrees from Ivy League schools, but awards and recognition for their roles in creating future dynamics that grease the worlds economic engines. Even Warren Buffet doesn't hire based on degrees and which school people went to.

In the end many of these physical campuses are going to struggle to maintain their relevance. Those with Medical and Law schools should continue to adjust and maybe even thrive for a while. Engineering is a toss up depending on area of focus. IT? Forget about it.

All this leads up to what will the value of an on campus university experience actually be, and who will be the future customer for such an experience? Finally if the patina of Ivy League has worn thin revealing the same brick and mortar that exists on all other campuses, and Wall Street continues to drive towards technical analysis hiring Quants who never even graduated from an American High School, or buying a technical solutions created from a garage tech of state college drop outs who would rather surf and smoke weed when they are not lighting up the financial markets with their latest and greatest, then the question begs will that value continue to actually be there? If not, say goodbye to the distinction.

Before even all of this happens, politically and economically it makes no sense for Big XII schools to jump into bed with Pac 12 leftovers once (if) USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon fly the nest. Stanford and Cal are not enough to entice the Big XII leftovers to bail on the current course. However it may just be enough to shake the resolve of Colorado and the Zona schools who have been the red headed step children of the Pac 8 from the beginning (at least until Utah and Colorado showed up on the doorstep)

The Pac 12 is hoisting themselves on their own Petard. I could see Stanford actually joining the Ivy League conference and maybe dragging Berkeley with them before Oklahoma State, Texas Tech or any of the Kansas Schools wanting to sail west so they can play Oregon and Washington State.