The Athletic has live coverage of Colorado’s potential move to the Big 12
In the weeks after the shocking defection of USC and UCLA from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten, Colorado athletic director Rick George’s priority was solidarity.
“Our thing is we’ve got to keep our conference stable,” George told reporters last July.
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One truism learned from the last few rounds of realignment in college athletics: The school leaders who preach league loyalty the loudest tend to be the ones with no alternatives. It doesn’t matter how much you respect your commissioner or admire your peers. In these turbulent times, if you’re not exploring your options, you’re not doing your job. At that time, George and his fellow ADs linking arms was logical. The Pac-12’s media rights negotiations had just begun. They needed every dollar they could get.
But a lot has transpired since last summer. On the same day George made those comments last July, newly hired commissioner Brett Yormark declared the Big 12 “open for business.” The Buffaloes now have options. When asked last Friday about where Colorado stood, George didn’t slam the door shut on the possibility of his school making a move.
“We’re members of the Pac-12, we’re proud members of the Pac-12 and we’ve got to see where our media rights deal lands and where our conference goes,” George told BuffZone. “In a perfect world, we’d love to be in the Pac-12, but we also have to do what’s right for Colorado at the end of the day. We’ll evaluate things as we move forward.”
Colorado chancellor Phil DiStefano said essentially the same thing to USA Today a month ago. Nobody is making a move until they find out what kind of offer commissioner George Kliavkoff fetches for the Pac-12’s media rights. But George’s latest comments do raise a curious question: What is best for Colorado? Does returning to the Big 12 actually make sense?
As Yormark considers expansion for a 14- or 16-member league, Colorado and the Big 12 have been in talks for several months, three conference sources who were not authorized to speak publicly about the discussions told The Athletic. No Pac-12 school has been more receptive to joining the conference, those sources said, than Colorado.
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“Colorado is the one they’re having the most productive talks with,” one of the sources said.
The splashy hire of Deion Sanders to revive the Buffaloes’ football program has been a significant factor in Yormark’s interest. The Pro Football Hall of Famer has almost instantly made Colorado nationally relevant in his first six months on the job and is viewed as an ideal fit for Yormark’s stated vision of a “younger, hipper, cooler” conference. Fox Sports announced Wednesday that Colorado’s first two games under Sanders are getting the “Big Noon Kickoff” time slot this fall. The Buffaloes had a sellout crowd of more than 47,000 for its spring game in April, one year after counting 1,950 in attendance for its previous spring game.
Coach Prime isn’t the lone reason for the Big 12’s interest, and the conference was already exploring expansion last summer before he was hired. Colorado is located in the No. 16 rated TV market, enjoyed previous Big 12 success, has good facilities and would make a solid travel partner for incoming member BYU. But Sanders’ presence has impacted the perception of Colorado’s value. There’s an argument to be made, too, that moving to the Big 12 would help him and his staff establish a stronger presence in the state of Texas and recruit coast-to-coast.
Sanders’ arrival has inspired hope for a program that went 1-11 in 2022 and hasn’t found a way to win in the Pac-12. Colorado has a 48-94 record since joining the conference in 2011 and lost 76 of 103 games in conference play. The Buffaloes have achieved one Top 25 finish in that span, when they won 10 games and the Pac-12 South in 2016 under Mike MacIntyre, but have finished with a winning record only one other time: 4-2 in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. The Buffaloes lost to Texas in the Alamo Bowl that year and haven’t won a bowl game since 2004. But they did experience success in their previous Big 12 stint, with four North Division titles in a five-year span under Gary Barnett from 2001 to 2005.
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Basketball is another key factor in Yormark’s assessment of expansion candidates. Tad Boyle has led a relatively successful men’s basketball program, one that has won the Pac-12 tournament once in 2011-12 and has reached the NCAA Tournament five times, and coach JR Payne just guided the women’s basketball program to its first Sweet 16 in 20 years.
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Colorado accepted Pac-10 membership in June 2010 at a moment when former commissioner Larry Scott looked poised to raid the Big 12, forming a 16-team super conference boosted by a lucrative conference TV network. The Big 12 was on the brink of collapse and about to lose Nebraska to the Big Ten.
“We don’t like leaving people behind,” then-Colorado president Bruce Benson said at the time. “This is a better fit for us. I wish the people in the Big 12, the remaining members, a lot of luck in the future.”
Four days later, Texas turned down Scott, and the Big 12 stuck together. The Pac-12 Network did come to fruition but certainly was not a game-changer, and George hasn’t been shy about expressing his frustration with the network’s distribution issues. Thirteen years later, the Pac-12 is working toward a media rights deal and expansion plan in the hopes it can provide much-needed security. Once again, Colorado’s leadership faces a crucial decision.
A Colorado return to the Big 12 wouldn’t doom the Pac-12 or the value of its next media rights deal. Kliavkoff could easily move forward with adding San Diego State as a more than suitable replacement. But for months now, the bigger question for the Big 12 has been whether landing one gets them two. If Yormark can get a deal done with Colorado, will that be enough of a momentum shift for him to land Arizona as well? Arizona president Robert C. Robbins predicted on March 15 that the Pac-12 would make more than the Big 12 in its next media rights deal. He also anticipated the Pac-12 would finalize a deal “within the next couple of weeks.” It is now June.
As Yormark sits down with Big 12 presidents, chancellors and athletic directors this week during the league’s spring meetings in West Virginia, there’s plenty to discuss on the topic of expansion. There are several more potential targets on the league’s radar, including basketball powers like UConn and Gonzaga. But when it comes to the Buffaloes, there’s not much to debate.
The Big 12 wants them. They’d have the support of ESPN and Fox as full-share members. There’s no early exit fee. There’s little doubt they’d be competitive and valuable for their former conference. All that’s missing, at this point, is a clear deadline for the Pac-12’s media rights negotiations.
On the day Colorado officially joined the Pac-10 in 2010, now-former board member Michael Carrigan declared, “I’ve had many tough, agonizing votes in my six years on the Board of Regents. This is not one of them.” If the Pac-12 comes up short this summer, it might soon be time for a tough one.
(Photo: Dustin Bradford / Getty Images)
