Santoro: Can Mountain West scoop up the Pac-12’s leftovers?

Sports Fodder:

The Mountain West might turn out to be a big winner when all of the dust settles in the Big 12, SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Pac-12, the conferences formally known as the Power Five. Imagine a 16-team Mountain West football conference that includes Stanford, Cal, Washington State and Oregon State. Two eight-team divisions with interesting and competitive matchups every week of the season. Nobody saw this coming, right? Well, relax. It’s likely not coming. Cal and Stanford, after all, are being considered by the ACC right now. But we can dream. Simply adding Washington State and Oregon State would be a huge victory for the Mountain West. It was just a few weeks ago that the Mountain West was faced with a future that wouldn’t include San Diego State and maybe even not Boise State, UNLV, Fresno State and others. It was a conference about to slip into oblivion. But things have changed drastically. San Diego State stayed. Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Washington State were abandoned like Kevin McCallister in Home Alone. Doing nothing might finally pay off for the Mountain West. Who knew? Now all the Mountain West has to do is sit back, open their doors and let Oregon State, Washington State, Cal and Stanford walk in. The Mountain West has a once-in-a-lifetime chance to grow in positive way. This chance will likely never come again.

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Yes, of course, the chances of Cal, Stanford, Oregon State and Washington State simply walking in the Mountain West door are remote. And even if they do walk in that door, they would see a couch with cigarette burns in the arms and cushions, a 27-inch 1990s behemoth television in the living room and a dial-up internet modem. And they would run back out the door screaming. Think the Kardashians somehow wandering into a Motel 6. Stanford, for example, would be better off simply becoming an independent. The ACC also could obliterate the Mountain West dreams by swooping in and stealing all four of Pac-12’s abandoned Kevin McCallisters by this coming weekend. But why would the ACC even want Oregon State and Washington State? Those two schools would add nothing to the ACC except travel headaches. Cal isn’t much better, though it does have an elite, rich fan base to tap into. The Mountain West, unfortunately, only knows how to steal from a Western Athletic Conference on life support. It’s the old “steal from the poor and watch the rich get richer” theory of expansion. So yes, of course, they don’t know how to woo a Pac-12 school. But Oregon State, Washington State, Cal and Stanford aren’t Pac-12 schools anymore because the Pac-12 has been obliterated. Once those four schools wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night and realize they are all alone in a big house with nobody around to help pay the mortgage, they might walk in that Mountain West door and stay for a while.

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Washington State and Oregon State have been Mountain West schools masquerading as Pac-12 schools for many years. They would slip into the Mountain West, at least competitively, very easily and feel right at home. The Mountain West, now that the Pac-12 has been eliminated from future NCAA globes, is where Washington State and Oregon State belong. Cal, too, belongs in the Mountain West, but their Bay Area boosters will likely never accept that fate. They would take Uber, after all, before they ever buy a Ford Escape or Chevy Spark. Same, of course, for Stanford. So, the only realistic targets for the Mountain West are Oregon State and Washington State. Do those schools have brave enough presidents and athletic directors who aren’t afraid to tell their boosters they are headed to the Chevy Spark Mountain West? Doubtful. But the Mountain West, if those schools put away their egos, is where they belong. Landing in the Mountain West would give those two schools an athletic meaning. They could compete every year for conference titles. But winning games means nothing to athletic directors and presidents. They just want to win the bottom line.

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College sports fans don’t really care about the name of the conference. All college fans care about is their team winning and playing in meaningful, important games. Fans just want to feel important, especially if some of them now have to fund million-dollar athletes to fill their rosters. The Pac-12 has had very few meaningful games in recent years as far as television was concerned. Even their rivalry games (USC-UCLA, Arizona-Arizona State, Washington-Washington State, Stanford-Cal, Oregon-Oregon State) were reduced to neighborhood affairs only the fans of the schools involved cared about. Television barely cared. The national TV audience couldn’t have cared less. Think Nevada-UNLV. Oregon, USC, UCLA and Washington now get to play Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Penn State, Nebraska, Iowa and Michigan State. Fans all over the country and not just in the Bay Area and Southern California will watch those games.

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Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado heading to the Big 12 makes sense. Sort of. All four of them, it seemed, just wanted to go to a conference that wanted them. And, yes, the TV money was bigger in the Big 12. Utah and Colorado never really belonged in the Pac-12. Arizona and Arizona State seemed to be in the Pac-12 only to serve as a short trip for USC and UCLA. All four will now join a Big 12, though, that doesn’t look at all like the Big 12 of the past. It will not include Texas, Texas A&M, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. The new Big 12 that the two Arizonas, Utah and Colorado will join will include BYU, Oklahoma State, Central Florida, Cincinnati, Houston, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Houston, TCU, Texas Tech and West Virginia. It is a random collection of schools the Big 10 and SEC didn’t want. The Big 12 didn’t become more attractive to national television audiences with all of its changes in recent years and weeks. But it did what it had to do to survive. It didn’t die on the vine like the Pac-12.

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The Mountain West, if it doesn’t add at least one former Pac-12 school, will be totally meaningless moving forward. Yes, the Mountain West will continue to help fill out television schedules late at night. But that’s about it. The rich have gotten richer and they ignored the Mountain West. The Mountain West was once a gathering of a dozen schools who once had big dreams. But those dreams were crushed by reality. The Mountain West is further away from being meaningful and competing on a national scale than it has ever been. Remember the Nevada Wolf Pack’s days in Division I-AA (FCS)? That’s what this feels like. The Pack now will never catch up to the big boys. Nevada is now competing on a lower level once again, just like it did in its I-AA days. Enjoy all those New Mexico and Hawaii Bowl trips.

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The Pac-12 is all but dead, but USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington football will still exist. Same with Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Arizona State. There will still be big-time college football out West with big-time matchups, now bigger than ever. So don’t be too concerned about the death of the Pac-12. It’s just a name. College football in the West is still alive and well. We’re just going to call it something different now. So, no, the Mountain West is not going to dominate college sports west of Denver. All of the big-time recruits in the West are not going to go to Mountain West schools simply because those players want to play in the West. Those elite athletes will still go to USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington because that’s where the big NIL dollars will continue to exist, now bigger than ever. Yes, the Pac-12 is gone. But the Mountain West, we’re afraid, will still simply be an ignored conference playing its games in the middle of the night.