Getty Image / Bob Kupbens
Around a year has gone by since the PAC 12 conference found out they would be losing UCLA and USC to the Big Ten, significantly threatening the financial future of the conference. And, things haven’t gotten much better since.
The conference is looking to sign a new media deal, but that process has been an abject disaster. It seems like none of the big names want to make any significant commitment towards the conference, and the process still isn’t complete months after it was supposed to be.
A big part of the struggles of the PAC 12 now is not only have they lost the two biggest TV draws in USC and UCLA, but some of the members of the conference simply don’t care about football all that much. We don’t do politics at BroBible, but, the type of people who attend and work at places like Stanford and Cal aren’t exactly college football’s target demographic. And, that’s exactly the point that former NFL quarterback, analyst, and radio host Brock Huard made last Friday.
Here’s more, according to Heartland College Sports.
The college football world is awaiting the next move for the Pac-12 Conference, as the entire sport is waiting to see what kind of TV contract offer the league may ultimately land. That will determine the future of the conference, and ultimately the sport.
On Friday during his radio show in Seattle, FOX Sports analyst Brock Huard spoke about this on Brock and Salk and called the situation “very dire” for the Pac-12 Conference.
He went on to say, “These universities, these campuses broke the trust of these networks by not showing up, by not caring. And frankly in some of the places like Palo Alto and Berkley, they’d rather not have football. Upper campus and some of their leadership don’t even need football… and once you’ve broken that trust, and these networks, who pay all the money, and they do all the work, and they’ve got all of their advertisers, they need numbers. We’ve got to have eye balls. And they tune in to watch Cal Berkeley, and there is Marshawn Lynch on the sidelines going, ‘Where the *** is everybody?’”
That Jim Harbaugh can be at Stanford with Andrew Luck and not fill your stadium up?” He goes on to mention UCLA as an example of another University and fan base that has not held up its end of the bargain, even with Chip Kelly.
It’s hard to disagree with him regarding the state of the PAC 12.