(OutKick) The final moments of the PAC-12 could have come straight out of a Tom Clancy novel.
The once-powerful West Coast conference disintegrated Friday when Oregon and Washington jumped to the Big Ten and ASU, Arizona and Utah joined Colorado in the Big 12.
Now, it’s just WSU, Oregon State, Cal and Stanford that remain. Details are now coming out about what happened and how it all went down, and the details rival any high intensity movie about the Cold War.
The biggest issue at hand:
PAC-12 programs had scheduled a Friday meeting to sign a new media deal, but Oregon and Washington didn’t show up.
At that point, collapse was imminent, the race for the lifeboats was on and nobody wanted to be left holding the bag.
PAC-12 collapse details revealed.
“(Friday) morning at 7 a.m. was another called meeting of the Pac-12 presidents, and some schools didn’t show up. So you might know that then, therefore the conference was no longer viable. … Once Oregon and Washington decided to go to the Big Ten, the (Pac-12) conference was no longer viable. You can’t be in a non-viable position for more than a few hours in our minds. We resolved that. You have two teams not present and no media contract, you’ve got to act,” Arizona State president Michael Crow told reporters Saturday, according to OregonLive.com. The two teams that didn’t show were identified as Oregon and Washington by OregonLive.com.
Crow further added, “There were a lot of forces at work, including the overlords of the media empires that are out there that were driving a lot of this. The Colorado departure was really an indication of the fact that there was great instability in the media market and it created an unstable moment.”
Arizona State is heading to the PAC-12. (Photo by Kevin Abele/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
The collapse happened quickly.
His comments echo similar comments shared by Washington President Ana Mari Cauce when discussing the conference’s collapse.
