Good news, bad news for Pac-12 football

With the opening of college football training camps just a couple weeks away, the Pac-12 has good news and bad news. The good news: The league appears to have a collection of strong quarterbacks and teams, including contenders for the national playoffs; the bad news: maybe no one will be watching.

About that good news: The NCAA’s way-too-early preseason rankings includes five — FIVE — Pac-12 teams: No. 8 USC, No. 9 Washington, No. 11 Utah, No. 15 Oregon and No. 16 Oregon State.

The league enjoyed a revival last season on the football field after a lengthy slump, and it will likely carry over into the new season. From 2017 through 2021, a total of only two Pac-12 teams finished in the final top 10 of the polls — that’s just two out of a potential 50 slots — and only 10 total anywhere in the final top 25. Last season they put two in the top 10 and six in the top 25.

Mitch Kaiser of Pro Football Focus believes there are four Pac-12 schools that are contenders for the College Football Playoff in January — USC, Oregon, Utah and Washington. The league hasn’t put a team in the playoff for seven years.

So much for the good news. The league has serious problems on the business side of things, and that’s everything in today’s game. Teams live and die with TV money. If universities were once in the business of education with a side interest in football, they are now big football franchises with a side interest in education, and the Pac-12 has fallen behind the competition on both fronts.

The Southeastern Conference will make $3 billion from a 10-year TV deal starting in 2024. The Atlantic Coast Conference has a 12-year, $1 billion deal, averaging $83.3 million per year. The Big Ten signed a new seven-year deal, effective next year, that will pull in about $7 billion. The Big 12, which lost flagship schools Oklahoma and Texas to the enticings of SEC TV money (starting next year), signed a new TV deal that will pay $2.3 billion through the 2030-31 season.

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Which brings us to the Pac-12, whose current 12-year deal will expire next summer, making it the only Power Five conference without a long-term deal. It is a huge source of concern for a league that already has lost its own flagship schools, USC and UCLA (headed for the Big Ten next year), and is trying to keep other schools from doing the same. There are a lot of suitors out there, ready to pick over the bones of the Pac-12.

“I’m hopeful that the deal is going to be good enough to keep us together,” said University of Arizona president Bobby Robbins.

Back to football. If anyone is still paying attention, the Pac-12 has good prospects for the upcoming season, and it boasts the best collection of quarterbacks in the country. In ESPN’s ranking of the nation’s top 10 quarterbacks, three of the first six are Pac-12 players — USC’s Caleb Williams No. 1, Washington’s Michael Penix No. 2 and Utah’s Cam Rising No. 6.

Williams won the Heisman Trophy last season after passing for 42 touchdowns and running for 10 more. Penix ranked second in the nation in passing yards last season, one place ahead of Williams. Rising is not a flashy quarterback, but he wins games. He has taken the Utes to consecutive Rose Bowls and earned first-team All-Pac-12 honors in 2021. Oregon’s Bo Nix improved dramatically last season, throwing for 3,593 yards, 29 touchdowns, seven interceptions and rushing for 14 TDs.

Not since the 2016-17 season has a Pac-12 team qualified for the playoff. Among the Power Five leagues, SEC teams have made 11 appearances in the playoff, the ACC eight, the Big Ten eight, the Big 12 five and the Pac-12 just two. The drought could end this year.

No team has benefited more from the transfer portal than USC, which improved its record from 4-8 in 2021 to 11-3 last season following the hiring of coach Lincoln Riley. His move from Oklahoma to USC last year brought at least 26 transfers, including Williams, the Heisman winner, and Addison Jordan, the first-round pick of the Minnesota Vikings. Suddenly, the Trojans are in business again. That’s good news for the Pac-12, sort of; this is USC’s last season in the league.

USC lost to only one team during the 2022 regular season — Utah, twice, including a mid-season 43-42 thriller and a Pac-12 championship game rout. Utah’s preseason ranking is indicative of the respect the team has gained in recent years. Prior to 2019, the Utes had appeared in preseason rankings only twice and never higher than 19th. They have been included in the last five preseason rankings. They finished 12th and 10th in the final polls of the last two seasons, respectively.

The prospects are bright for the Pac-12 on the field — and not so bright in the boardroom.