Tiny Pac-12 (Pac-2?) has big TV deal

America’s smallest sports conference will again have a big-time TV deal.
The Pac-12 currently has, despite its name, two teams. (They’re shown here.) But a deal with the CW network will put nine football games on national TV this fall.
That will hold things for a year, until the Pac-12 adds six teams, nudging it to two-thirds of its name.
All of this is part of the shifts that threw all conference logic aside: The Big Ten now has 18 teams; the Atlantic Coast Conference has Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley — 2,900 miles from the Atlantic coast.
Hardest hit was the once-potent Pac-12, which began 110 years ago and had been known as the Pac Five, Big Six, Pacific-8 and Pacific-10. Its teams have won more national championships than any other conference; in one stretch, UCLA was the national basketball champion 10 times in 12 years.
Then came the mass exodus, leaving only Washington State and Oregon State. Not to be deterred, they:
— Won a court case, giving them control of the Pac-12 name and assets,
— Convinced six teams to join, starting in 2026. That includes five of the 11 Mountain West teams (including frequent football power San Diego State) and one from the West Coast Conference (Gonzaga, which has no football team, but is a basketball powerhouse).
— Landed CW deals for last season and now this one.
That’s confined to some of the home games of the two teams. It starts Aug. 30 with Idaho at Washington State, then has a double-header the next week, involving visits by two teams that will join the conference next year — Fresno State at Oregon State, San Diego State at Washington State.
After a month-plus pause, there will be weekly games that may not excite the football world. Oregon State hosts Wake Forest, Lafayette and Sam Houston; Washington State hosts Toledo and Louisiana Tech.
Then the TV line-up closes with the big one — Oregon State and Washington State. For now, some people call that the Pac-12 championship game.