Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — Few wanted the Pac-12 to survive more than Mark Harlan.
A majority of Harlan's life has centered around, in one way or another, the Pac-12. He attended Arizona, worked for UCLA's athletic department and currently sits as the athletic director of Utah. Even as the conference worked to secure a media rights deal, Harlan was patiently loyal to the process in hopes a long-term deal could be reached.
That loyalty and patience came down to the wire, even as late as Friday morning's back-and-forth push for Pac-12 viability.
But when push came to shove, Harlan and university president Taylor Randall had to do what they felt was best for the future of the university, and that was to abandon ship and find stability in a new conference. It wasn't their desire to break up a 108-year old conference steeped in history, but a viable deal never materialized.
"There was always a very real effort to try to assist the commissioner and his team to get the very best deals that would lock us in going forward, and I want to echo that," Harlan said. "It was a collective effort by many presidents, the board, coaches and athletic directors and senior women's administrators, and everybody trying to work collaboratively to make sure things got got going forward."
That deal, which is said to have been a mostly streaming based approach on Apple TV+ and valued at approximately $25 million per team, wasn't enough for the 10 remaining school presidents and their administrations to get behind and stick together.
Randall said the media rights deal was a "new way of viewing college sports," which was both "intriguing and made us all kind of pause." But as the 10 teams looked at options and did their own math on how sustainable it could be, it didn't work as a collective entity.
"We took a lot of time, just kind of diving through it," Randall said. "At times, you felt like you were more a venture capitalist analyzing something than you were just looking at a traditional media deal. But it was fun, right? It was energizing; it was exciting. The way I described it is all of us had to make a decision about that and get to a certain comfort level, and we just couldn't get the whole group there.
"It was an innovative construct. It certainly, on its upside, had the promise to do something very different to the way we view television. I think everybody in the room caught that view. At the end of the day, each university was plugging in the numbers and kind of making their own decision. And, obviously, the outcome is where we are today."
So even with their loyalty to the Pac-12, a conference that Harlan said had a "profound" impact on the university's growth athletically and academically, it was time for a move to the Big 12.
"Of course there's bittersweet (feelings)," Harlan said. "It'd be disingenuous for me not to say that, and there may be a time to reflect weeks and months from now, but there's the sweet part too, and there is excitement of what's ahead and the cities that our student-athletes will be able to compete in and those opportunities that will be new."
It's opportunities that Randall and Harlan feel like Utah is well served in to compete academically and athletically as it continues to try to raise the profile of the university. It's a move to an "innovative" conference with a commissioner that is "looking towards the future," Randall said.
"I'm very, very optimistic about the future, and certainly enthusiastic about the opportunity we have to associate within the Big 12," Randall said. "Being part of the Pac-12 raised the profile of this university, not just — I'm speaking more at a university level — not just in our athletics programs, but also in our academic programs. I know many, many of the presidents in the Big 12, and I'm telling you those are also outstanding institutions.
"Our goal has always been to become one of the top public universities with unsurpassed societal impact. That means that when we make a decision like this, we think holistically about the university, we think about the standards it sets for us, and this Big 12 Conference sets high standards. We're very, very excited about that."
There's still more questions than answers for Utah — How does Utah replace the nonconference football games against already-scheduled Big 12 teams? Will there be divisions? What does travel look like each season? — but Harlan said "unequivocally" that the university will not take "one little inch back on what we provide (student-athletes), how we take care of them, their health and wellness; and all of that remains our singular focus."
"So whatever happens next, they'll be taken care of in a great way."
