Pac-12 After Dark is no more, as Cal begins its journey into the unknown

Farewell, Conference of Champions. Until we meet again.

Bears saying goodbye to the Pacific

Cal was not very good in the Pac-12 After Dark era.

The Bears had 13 seasons in this version of the conference. They had zero winning seasons.

Cal was ranked in the top 25 twice during that stretch. Neither ranking lasted through November.

Cal had Jared Goff. They managed to win seven Pac-12 games in three years with him.

There were the hectic days of #drop50. There was an upset of a Pac-12 champion and a top-10 thrashing the year before that. There were ending streaks of futility to USC and Oregon. There have been the final flurry of Big Game wins.

There were weird memories. There were bizarre goal-line stands in the Sonny Dykes era of all things. There was 60-59. There was winning at 2 am Pacific. There was the Cheez-it Bowl, our beautiful sweet prince.

And then there was the bad stuff. Let’s not talk about the bad stuff right now.

Joy could be found in the corners of the late night, when a strange play materialized out of nowhere, like Ross Bowers helicoptering into the smoke or Chase Garbers giving the Fight Down signal. There was Keenan Allen at the start and Jaydn Ott at the end and the Takers in the middle and the Bear Raid somewhere in between.

It wasn’t easy. It was rarely fruitful.

It should never have ended.

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The Pac-12 died because of rank arrogance and gross incompetence.

Everything was in its favor to survive the long haul. It had the LA market and a tentpole blueblood in USC. It had the new cool kid in Oregon. It had a steady competitor in Washington, an up-and-comer in Utah, and a deep bench of rotating players and star talent and great coaches and huge media markets.

The leadership botched it all.

Pac-12 presidents and executives all bought into a vision of a conference network that would allow them to recoup all the revenue at the cost of exposure and critical partnerships. They refused to budge no carriage prices that would have allotted them maximum exposure, prioritizing short-term revenue gains to pay for better coaches, facilities and admin.

The Pac-12 locked themselves into a long-drawn conference deal that made it near impossible for them to maneuver. They won the headline, but they were quickly outpaced by the other conferences within a few years.

The Pac-12 aimed big for Texas, but could not compromise on a larger revenue share. Future attempts to expand, mostly with other Big 12 schools, were all stymied by conference leaders. With major conferences now sitting at 16+ members, the decision to stand pat proved costly. The Pac-12 refused to make their schedules easier, opting for the nine-game gauntlet that would cost them many chances at the College Football Playoff.

The Pac-12 offices sat on their laurels. The Networks moved to SF and took on ~$8 annual million in rent. The conference championship game was moved from home sites to the bustling collegiate environment of Santa Clara. Putting football and basketball games on national TV took second priority to streaming as many non-revenue sports as possible.

The Pac-12 Network did not provide the revenue that was promised, but never once did the conference or its presidents seek help from ESPN or Fox to tradeoff revenue for conference. Long-touted efforts to move into the cutting-edge world of streaming floundered because of low ROI, and were not realistically presented until the eleventh hour.

The Pac-12 did not hold Larry Scott and executive leadership accountable when all the warning signs were there, instead handing him a massive contract extension that ensured nothing of consequence would be done until it was too late. But I’m sure the administrators and university presidents who backed him up enjoyed their bonuses while the cash was still flowing.

(I cannot speak to how involved Cal or UC Berkeley leadership was in any of this, but given how things have gone on that side and how things unfolded, I wouldn’t be surprised if our main sin was absence or indifference.)

Soon, outside of the occasional flurry from a power team, the Pac-12 was forgotten and obscured from most national college football discourse. ESPN openly derided top programs in favor of their primary conference TV partners. The conference cannibalized itself, leading to a mere three playoff appearances in a decade. As much fun as Pac-12 After Dark was, it was mostly for the diehards, further taking the conference out of the limelight.

Simply put it, the rest of college football adapted. The Pac-12 languished, faded, and eventually imploded in one press release from UCLA and USC.

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The irony is not lost to me that in a state with the biggest housing crisis in the nation, Cal is now refugees in college football.

Yes, we have a conference, but the situation is very Cal, with minimal revenue payouts for the rest of the decade, a conference in a war with its most prominent member, and a host of uncomfortable questions coming on how many non-revenue sports we can sustain. Of all the strange situations awaiting the Pac-12 refugees, Cal’s is by far the least ideal.

And there are tons of philosophical questions Cal as an institution needs to ask itself. Will they support football in the way other major, successful academic public institutions like Washington and Michigan have done? Will they acknowledge that there are many ways the best public university on the planet can be successful, by trying in every space imaginable? Will they find the right leaders to get them to that place in the ACC?

Or will it cling to the old ways, wither and fade?

NIL can only do so much. Cal needs to win, and then needs to find ways to get its alumni committed to winning, and then keep winning. The status quo cannot stand.

That commitment didn’t happen in the Pac-12 enough, and it’s the reason why Cal is adrift. It needs to be made soon, or we risk oblivion.

For now, here’s one final toast. To a conference that should have never died.

To the only home Cal has really ever known.