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LOS ANGELES — This week's Pac-12 football media day promises to be the most awkward event in the expanded conference's 12-year history.
Commissioner George Kliavkoff will have to play nice with all 12 head coaches, knowing full well a huge division exists since conference staples USC and UCLA announced intentions to leave for the Big Ten in 2024. Barely a year into the job, Kliavkoff faces a crisis that could doom the West Coast's premiere football conference.
Those darned Trojans and Bruins had to go ruin it for everyone, placing a dark cloud over the annual summer celebration of Pac-12 football in the City of Angels and championship dreams. This is the one time when each coach and 24 players insist good times are only weeks away, and this year's individual teams are coming off tremendous offseasons in which the respective groups bonded like no other.
Most of the conference teams are supposed to expound on Rose Bowl fantasies, understanding that, at best, only a handful are legitimate contenders to qualify for the Granddaddy of Them All up the road in Pasadena. The perennial downtrodden, namely Colorado and Arizona, would have touted the significant improvement from a year ago and talk up their excellent chances of reaching a bowl game in December.
Unfortunately, the unofficial agenda will look radically different from the prior decade. This time the conference's future will take stranglehold of the national discussion.
Rather than handicapping the conference race, the greater interest will be on a potential merger of some sort with the Big 12 or ACC. The other major storyline involves the possibility of additional Pac-12 teams hitting the lottery by joining the Big Ten, a transaction that could net the defectors an increase of upwards in the vicinity of $70 million annually in television cash.
During remarks at his Big Ten press conference Tuesday, commissioner Kevin Warren practically hijacked the discussion points for the Pac-12 gathering on Friday. Several Pac-12 schools, including Utah, remain hopeful to follow the two Southern California schools.
"I get asked every single day, what's next," said Warren, a Phoenix native who earned an MBA at Arizona State. "It may include future expansion, but it will be done for the right reasons, at the right time, with our students' academic and athletic empowerment at the center.
"We will not expand just to expand. It will be strategic. It will add additional value to our conference, and it will provide a platform to have our student athletes to be on a larger platform so they can build their careers."
In other words, if the Bay Area schools along with Washington and Oregon can sweeten the financial pot of gold, they are in. Note to the reader here: If you thought the purpose of college football was anything more than making money, wake up.
But all will not be lost, thankfully.
As the day progresses, the assembled writers and broadcasters will exhaust all questions on the fate of the conference even as the commissioner and coaches provide no definite answers. Eventually the spin will give way to real football talk, replacing all the focus on expansion and television contracts.
Finally, it will be Utah's time to shine. What should have been bantered about all day will be reduced to a few mentions.
Amid all the uncertainly there is one form of consistency — the Utes will be picked to win the conference. Again.
For the third time in four seasons, which includes the shortened COVID year of 2020 that barely counted, Utah will start out as the hunted. As the heavy favorite in 2019, the Utes rolled to a 8-1 conference record on the way to winning the South Division before losing to Oregon in the championship game.
Excluding the five-game 2020 season, the Utes have owned the South Division since 2019. With no divisions for the upcoming season, Utah only needs to finish in the top two of winning percentage to earn another berth in the Pac-12 championship game.
