My Heartbreaking Thoughts on the Break up of the Pac 12

I've broken College sports down in so many ways over the last decade to decade and a half. Seeing the Pac 12 crumble apart was never in my wildest  dreams. If I could name a culprit for this nonsense it would be the advent of the College Football Playoff. Five Power 5 conferences and only four spots. Considering the SEC has the talent to get two teams in that leaves Power 5 conferences get left out. 

This creates a problem cause of situations like last year when USC got punished for being in a conference that had a Championship game. It never made sense to me. 

SEC is by far the most powerful conference and the Big Ten wants to be the best conference to try to get multiple teams in the playoff. With a 12 team playoff, the race to get 3 teams in will be on. 

The committee consistently didn't choose the best teams or rewarded teams playing a hard non conference schedule. They rewarded conference championships from other weaker conferences that just had power five status which consequently never got the four best teams in the CFP. 

The Pac 12 is the one falling apart because a East Coast bias that created unfair TV ratings on poorly strategized channel selections. ESPN's Pac 12 after dark was popular on the west coast but must have not got the TV ratings they needed to get high ratings for ESPN and  FOX Sports 1 to throw huge money at a new TV deal. 

I believe Larry Scott didn't think outside the box enough. There should have been other stations that wanted the TV rights like TBS and CBSSN. In fact, NBC during the 5pm window out west would have been a good window to prioritize the Pac 12. 

CBSSN has successfully put on Mountain West games for a number of years and probably or should have been in talks. 

I can't speak for other families but the way that USA prices there Cable tiers could have prevented this from happening. From my understanding. Sports channels aren't included in basic cable packages where in Canada they are. This makes it awfully tough to go with a channel that average families have to pay for.    

I need to know how the Big 10 basketball tournament format looks. What the College Football schedule looks like. The bigger the conference, the easier it will be to avoid hard road games at like the At Penn State. There will only be so many conference games. Even the basketball schedule will feel like everyone is a independent. 

I feel for the mid majors. It is getting increasingly hard for them to compete. It is almost conceivable that 12 teams from the Big 10 get into March Madness. I sure hope some domino falls to save parody. The greatest thing about College Sports was that the underdogs had a really good chance of winning.

We are easily at a tipping point. Things could get interesting over the next several years. The ACC might be the next to fall and what happens if we have two super conferences by 2037? Rules will have to be rewritten with conference tournaments and other such events. At this point, we might as well have different conferences for Football and more regionalized conferences for other sports.