Analysis: What’s next for Utah as conference realignment threatens to topple Pac-12?

With Oregon and Washington reportedly moving to the Big Ten, joining USC and UCLA, the Pac-12 is on the verge of collapse.

On Friday morning, after reports the previous night that the Big 12 approved Arizona’s application to the conference, several news outlets reported presidents from the nine remaining Pac-12 members gathered to discuss the league’s primarily Apple TV streaming media deal option.

It’s a deal that reportedly would include less annual revenue distribution than the Big 12’s media rights agreement.

No media deal was agreed to and no grant of rights was signed, according to reports.

After that meeting, multiple national college football journalists reported that the Big Ten will invite Oregon and Washington to join the conference, and that the Ducks and Huskies will accept that application, possibly as early as Friday.

With Oregon and Washington heading towards the Big Ten and Arizona on the doorstep of the Big 12, where does that leave Utah?

If the Pac-12’s top option for a new media deal wasn’t great before, Oregon and Washington leaving will drop that value.

It looks like Arizona to the Big 12 is all but official. Arizona State, which isn’t as far along in the process as Arizona, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, could follow suit soon.

Thamel reported on Friday that conversations between the Big 12 and Utah and Arizona State have “ramped up.” Several reports have indicated that Utah is a target for the Big 12.

The latest report coming from Action Network’s Brett McMurphy indicated that Utah is “showing interest” in joining the Big 12.

Calls and emails for comment by the University of Utah were not immediately returned.

The Big 12 is realistically the best landing spot Utah can hope for at this stage. Staying in a watered-down Pac-12, which would have to fill spots with Group of Five teams, would mean Utah would likely get much less in annual conference payouts than the Big 12 will under its new deal, not to mention the Big Ten, SEC and ACC.

Obviously, the ultimate goal would be to end up in the two most powerful conferences in the nation — the Big Ten or SEC — but that call is not going to come right now.

Utah’s best chance of survival in this realignment cycle is to join the Big 12.

Related

• Reports: Big Ten inviting Oregon, Washington to join conference. What does it mean for the Pac-12?

• Report: Big 12 approves Arizona’s application to join conference

The domino effect to this moment started in 2021, when Texas and Oklahoma announced their move from the Big 12 to the SEC. That triggered the Big 12 to add BYU, UCF, Cincinnati and Houston that same year.

Getting in on the expansion arms race, the Big Ten added USC and UCLA from the Pac-12 in 2022. Without the giant Los Angeles TV market and two marquee programs, the value of the Pac-12’s next media deal shrunk, as evidenced by Pac-12 media deal negotiations that have dragged on for over a year.

Then Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark beat Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff to the media deal punch last fall, securing a nearly $2.3 billion media deal with ESPN and Fox that reportedly will pay out $31.6 million to each of its schools when it takes effect in 2025.

Despite what Kliavkoff said at Pac-12 media day this July, the conference’s options for a media deal did not get better the longer it waited.

Colorado didn’t stick around to hear Kliavkoff’s pitch, voting last week to go back to the Big 12.

The main media deal presented to Pac-12 schools on Tuesday, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, was a primarily Apple TV streaming deal with reportedly less base pay than the Big 12’s media deal.

Working on the assumption that Apple would have rights to the best games, locking the Pac-12’s marquee games behind a subscription paywall, plus the lower base pay compared to the Big 12, made the deal tough to swallow.