With the Big Ten and the SEC looking like the two most stable conferences, the Big 12 and Pac-12 have been left to figure out their respective futures.
According to ESPN’s Pete Thamel, you can forget about any partnership between the two leagues. Officials from the Big 12 reportedly told their Pac-12 counterparts on Monday that they do not wish to merge.
Thamel wrote that the Pac-12 provided the Big 12 three options for a partnership: pooling rights, a scheduling concept or fully combining the leagues. The last option was the only one that could conceivably created enough value for both parties.
However, the Big 12 elected not to pursue a merger, and Thamel says the Pac-12 was skeptical of such an agreement due to the leagues’ media rights deals being staggered, even though the Big 12 claims there were ways this issue could have been mitigated.
“Because the Big 12 media rights can’t be negotiated until 2024, Pac-12 schools have no motivation to join the Big 12,” Thamel wrote, citing a Pac-12 source. “The Pac-12 has announced that they’re staying together and are in the middle of media rights negotiations.”
Now, we’ll see which direction these two leagues go in. The Pac-12 is presenting a unified front, but CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd says there is still a chance that the Big 12 could attempt to poach certain Pac-12 schools.
Dodd previously reported earlier this month that the Big 12 was interested in adding Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah.