the PAC will be greatly weakened and vulnerable.

Imagine USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington leave for the B1G Super Conference. That leaves Arizona, ASU, Stanford, Cal, Utah, Colorado, Oregon State, Washington State In the PAC.

3 points before I tell you how I think this plays out:

1) Money > Academics when talking about conference realignment. People talk about aligning with great academic institutions. That’s great but few will be willing to do it if it means losing millions. I firmly believe that. Keep that in mind.

2) Performance-wise, the new PAC would be hands-down the weakest P5 football conference. It already is, now take their biggest teams away. The American would be stronger in performance. BIG12 would be far stronger.

2) Audience-wise, the new PAC12 would be the weakest P5 conference, in TV money and attendance. It would have the worst TV time slot with all of the major cities now watching the B1G. People underestimate how bad it is to be in the Pacific Time Zone for TV. The only PAC teams that can get earlier time slots are the huge ones and they’d be gone to the B1G. All late games. Population centers in the east in bed. TV contract will be pathetic, truly. How about game attendance? New average attendance at games would be ~35k fans (did the math). That’s G5esque numbers. Weakest P5 by far in attendance and TV. BIG12 would have far stronger TV and game attendance.

So, with all that in mind. With BIG12 in the position of strength, I see these possibilities in this order:

1) Big12 adding teams from the PAC.

2) An official merger of the two conferences to form a new conference.

3) PAC adding a few BIG12 teams.