Top 50 Cal Sports Moments – No. 12: Pac-12 Dies, 2023

Friday, August 4, 2023, was the moment the Pac-12 Conference, which had existed in some form for more than 100 years, vanished from the Earth

Former Pac-12 Commissioner George Kliavkoff / Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

As the Pac-12 Conference era comes to a close after more than a century, we count down the Top 50 moments involving Cal athletics.

THE MOMENT: On Friday, August 4, 2023, the Pac-12, a conference that had existed in some form since 1916, died.  That Friday afternoon what had been rumored for several days became fact: Oregon and Washington officially joined the Big Ten for 2024-25, and the Big 12 announced the addition of Arizona, Arizona State and Utah for the following school year. Those two announcements on that same Friday afternoon left Cal, Stanford, Washington State and Oregon State as the only remaining members of a conference that could no longer survive. Cal and Stanford, frantic to get out of a dead conference, joined the Atlantic Coast Conference on September 1, 2023, agreeing to reduced revenue payments.

THE STORY: The drama probably began in July 2021 when Big 12 members Texas and Oklahoma accepted invitations to join the Southeastern Conference, signaling major conference realignment. However, the story of the Pac-12 demise began with no warning at 10:23 a.m. on Thursday, June 30, 2022, when Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury-News posted a twitter message that read: “Source: USC and UCLA are planning to leave for the Big Ten as early as 2024. Move *has not been finalized* at the highest levels of power.”

Source: USC and UCLA are planning to leave for the Big Ten as early as 2024. Move *has not been finalized* at the highest levels of power.

— Jon Wilner (@wilnerhotline) June 30, 2022

Everyone across the country – including George Kliavkoff, who had been named the Pac-12’s commissioner 13 months earlier – was stunned by news that seemed to come out of the blue.  The move, which would greatly enhance the media-rights revenue for the two Los Angeles schools, became official in the evening of June 30, 2022. The California Board of Regents, noting that UCLA was leaving Cal, the Bruins University of California sister school, out of the money-making loop, suggested it might block UCLA’s move. But that didn’t happen.

In the fall of 2022, ESPN reportedly offered the Pac-12 a media-rights deal that would have paid its members $30 million apiece. The Pac-12 presidents passed on that deal, instead requesting $50 million per school. ESPN passed on that offer. Media-rights negotiations continued.

Throughout the fall of 2022, there were reports that the Pac-12 was seeking to add colleges to regain the 12-member format while maintaining that it could survive with 10 schools.  All the while, Kliavkoff’s media-rights negotiations continued much longer than expected.

Finally, a few days before Kliavkoff presented a TV deal to Pac-12 members, Colorado got tired of waiting and fled the Pac-12 for the Big 12 on July 26, 2023.

On Tuesday, August 1, 2023, Kliavkoff presented an innovative, albeit risky, plan to the Pac-12 members that relied heavily on streaming. Schools reportedly would be paid an estimated $23 million a year for five seasons with increases for subscriptions to a Pac-12 athletics package on the Apple TV streaming service. If 1.7 million subscriptions could be achieved, each school would receive $31.7 million a year per. The payout would increase to $50 million per year per conference school if there were 5 million new subscriptions. 

Pac-12 presidents didn’t like it, because it didn’t include mainstream network television exposure. The schools passed on the deal.

The next day reports surfaced that Oregon and Washington were considering joining the Big Ten while Arizona, Arizona State and Utah were closing in on a deal to join Colorado in the Big 12. On Friday, August 4, 2023, both became official.  On a single afternoon, five Pac-12 schools officially agreed to leave the conference, effectively ending the existence of a conference that had included Cal in some form since the 1916 football season.

Frantic, Cal and Stanford struck unfavorable deals to join the faraway ACC. Despite reluctance from a few ACC schools to include West Coast programs, the ACC members eventually voted on Friday, September 1, 2023, to add Cal, Stanford and SMU.  Cal and Stanford came at a discount, agreeing to receive just a 30% share of ACC payouts for seven years.

Washington State and Oregon State continue to operate under the Pac-12 brand, but in reality the conference does not exist. The Power Five conferences became the Power Four conferences. Kliavkoff is no longer the Pac-12 commissioner. Whether the Pac-12 can reform at some future date is an open question.

Only specific acts that occurred while the team or athlete was at Cal were considered for the Top 50 list, and accomplishments spanning a season or a career were not included. 

Leslie Mitchell of the Cal Bears History Twitter site aided in the selection of the top 50 moments.

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