PHOENIX -- Before we plow into all the problems facing the Pac-12, try to understand this is primarily a football discussion.
It’s not so much about an underachieving conference network and the dissatisfaction that surrounds it. This is not as much about the age-old problem of playing games while half the nation sleeps.
This is not a dig down the Pac-12’s convoluted, confounding and confusing approach to the satellite camp issue.
It’s not even a reminder of commissioner Larry Scott’s sometimes extravagant spending.
This about Pac-12 football. From this view in early May, it’s not particularly good. Oregon is down. USC is in transition with a new coach. Stanford is replacing a senior quarterback. Arizona’s junior quarterback -- a two-year starter -- is trying to keep his job.
Cal lost the No. 1 draft pick. Colorado is just not a factor.
The implications are ominous. The Big 12 got left out of the first College Football Playoff in 2014. That kicked in another round of uncertainty. The league is still trying to figure out its place in the college football world.
That’s what part of this week here is about as almost 40 percent of FBS gathered for spring meetings (Pac-12, Big 12, MAC, Mountain West).
In reaction to that 2014 CFP snub, the Big 12 continues to consider expansion, a conference championship game and/or a network.
Meanwhile, the Pac-12 contemplates its place in the sport. The league was the odd conference out in Year 2 of the CFP, the only Power Five with a two-loss conference champion.
Stanford, 12-2, was the only Pac-12 team in the top 14 of the final CFP standings. Even after a Rose Bowl win, the Cardinal were the only team in the conference in the top 18 of the final AP poll.
"It's not a fallout as much as it was, we lost two games,” Stanford coach David Shaw told me here this week. “I’ll sit and talk to anybody about strength of schedule. But the bottom line was, we lost two games. No one in the playoff lost two games.”
It’s hard to find -- at least for me -- a Pac-12 program that will start the 2016 season in the top 10.
And if there is one, it’s Stanford. No pressure, David Shaw. Your conference is in danger of becoming the first Power Five to miss out on the College Football Playoff twice. Not only that, but it would happen in consecutive years.
“We have a mathematical issue which is, you have Power Five conferences and Notre Dame and four [playoff] spots,” Shaw added. “At some point we’re going to get to the point where we say, ‘How do we rectify this?’ There is so much parity.”
The answer, of course, is expanding the playoff but that’s not going to happen for a while.
Meanwhile, the Pac-12 must get its look together. It was at least embarrassing that Scott called out powerful UCLA AD Dan Guerrero a couple of weeks ago in Dallas. Guerrero essentially went against the overwhelming mandate of his fellow ADs in voting against satellite camps.
“I think it’s clear,” Scott told reporters, “he did not vote the way he was supposed to vote.”
Yikes! UCLA scrambled releasing a Guerrero statement explaining his vote. But that was hardly the point. Clearly, Scott was upset with Guerrero, three times the national athletic director of the year and a former men’s basketball selection committee chair.
You wonder if everyone in the conference is on the same page. You wonder if Scott has the trust of his ADs after the episode. Balance that against Scott’s biggest accomplishment -- monetized the sleepy, ol’ Pac-10 into a $3 billion media rights deal.
Scott has done amazing things especially for a guy with little college experience when he was hired in 2009. The failed raid on the Big 12 to form the Pac-16 at least planted the seed of how conferences could look in the future.
But the Pac-12 Network(s) were a bold idea that has failed at this point. Folks just haven’t been able to see the product as Scott struggled to get his baby on DirecTV.
Production value is great. The shows are well thought out, written and executed. The Pac-12 in 60 -- game replays compressed into an hour -- is a must-see.
But if no one is watching a must-see, what good is it? The decision not to partner up (ESPN? Fox?) was a mistake.
The conference overall seems to be hitting some sort of wall. Those late-night Pac-12 games? That isn’t going to change because when you sell your rights, the network(s) has/have the power to start those games whenever it wants.
“I don’t think you can do much about it other than earlier games and that’s not going to happen,” Arizona coach Rich Rodriguez said. “TV is going to put you on when they get the most viewership.”
A couple of years ago, the Pac-12 was returning the lowest percentage of revenue back to its members of any Power Five league (less than 70 percent). Part of that was blamed on opening new, glitzy conference studios and offices in San Francisco.
Only three of the Pac-12 CEOs who hired Scott remain. Whether that means his power is waning within a conference that is waning is unknown.
It is known that Scott has two years left on his contract.
As Pac-12 insider Jon Wilner recently wrote, Pac-12 “frustration is real and ubiquitous on the front lines [of the conference]…”
Part of this assertion sounds ridiculous. Seventeen months ago, Oregon played for the first College Football Playoff title. Stanford’s Christian McCaffrey was arguably the best player in the country last season.
Mike Leach won nine games in his fourth season while recruiting to Pullman, Washington.
“I don’t think anybody’s going to get left out of the playoff if they truly deserve it,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t think a kid is not going to win the Heisman because he’s a West Coast kid.”
But Clay Helton’s elevation from interim to full-time head coach signaled the most upheaval at USC in more than a century. Helton is the Trojans’ third full-time coach in the last 71 months. That much turnover at Troy hasn’t occurred in 106 years.
And let’s not forget it’s going on 12 years since the Pac-12 won a national championship.
“There is a different mentality sometimes out West as far as an importance goes,” Rodriguez said. “Because of sunshine and beaches and weather. There’s a whole lot of talent out West. But there’s a lot that like football, not love it …
“You wake up in certain parts of the Southeast and Midwest and they love it. They think about it 24-7. That’s not always the case out West.”
Check the opening week schedule. The Pac-12 could be on the backburner of the national discussion before we get to Labor Day. Kansas State opens at Stanford. Arizona plays BYU in a neutral site game in Glendale, Arizona. UCLA goes to Texas A&M.
Oh wait, did we say opening week? There are still four months left before we get there. That's 120 days to contemplate the Pac-12's place in the universe before we next snap a ball.
"We're still the most competitive conference out there top to bottom," Shaw said. "We're still going to have battles every single week that are difficult. There's still going to be a champ at the end of this thing that knows there is a hard road."
