What’s happening right now in college sports is absolutely nutballs. 10 years ago, even just three years ago, no one in their right mind would have expected the Pac-12 to disintegrate right before our very eyes. But here we are. The Pac-12 is now the Pac-4.

But this scribe isn’t here to lament the loss of a beloved, 100-year old conference, lash out at the insanity of college sports or spin the tragic yarn of the Pac-12’s demise as a football power conference.

Independence in Football, PAC in Everything Else

From fans to university presidents, many followers of the sport have observed college football has very little in common with OIympic college sports — even that it’s ruining college athletics more broadly. The calls have come loudly and from all corners to divorce football from Olympic sports. College football can grow its own behemoth entity, unshackled from the other sports, while the rest return to the tidy, regional conferences and local rivalries of the past.

Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Washington State have been given the opportunity to do exactly that. And now that the ACC appears to have passed on these Pacific institutions, independent football + Olympic sports in a reconstituted PAC looks like the only viable option.

NCAA Tourney $$: The Case to Stick with the PAC

But the PAC-12 is dead! Perhaps in football, it is. But the PAC is still the biggest non-P4 conference brand out there (P4! cringe), possibly with the exception of the Big East.

The PAC is also due $10-$15 million per year in NCAA tourney money for the next 6 years.

The NCAA pays out money to conferences for each tourney game a conference team plays. That time UCLA made the Final 4 and played an epic game vs. Gonzaga? Worth millions of dollars to the PAC schools, paid out in installments over the course of 6 years.

Add all the units up, and right now, 4 schools own the brand that will collect up to $15M/year. That’s some serious cheddar. And as long as football isn’t going to get a big payout in the B1G, ACC or Big 12, it’s one of the big remaining payouts the PAC schools have.

It’s also a dang good bargaining chip to get strong basketball programs to join the conference.

Basketball PAC: Hitch Your Trailer to Gonzaga

A basketball-focused PAC, with member schools playing their football independently or elsewhere, would have some familiar names from football-focused expansion explorations. But it would include basketball powers and a certain nouveau blue blood… that hasn’t won a title just yet.

• Stanford
• Cal
• Oregon State
• Washington State
• San Diego State
• UNLV
• Gonzaga
• St. Mary’s
• Boise State
• Colorado State
• Memphis
• Wichita State

That list may not look all that impressive from a football standpoint, but it would combine several of the absolute best basketball powers in the country to form a basketball-centric power conference as well as stalwart up-and-comers. You could consider adding an SMU if you like. But the idea is simple: build an elite, basketball-centric league unburdened by the dictates of football.

Keeping Ties with the Traitor-8

The eight schools that left the 4 remainders behind are also in a bit of a bind. The B1G, and especially the Big 12, simply don’t field teams for many of the sports the PAC-12 offers. Stanford and Cal in particular still make perfect partners in sports like rowing, sand volleyball and men’s soccer. By keeping the PAC together, Stanford and company can keep ties with the Traitor-8. If and when football does break away from the rest of the sports, they’ll come back home to a western superconference. And in the meantime, Stanford and Cal’s exceptional Olympic sports programs — feeder schools for Team USA — can continue doing their thing.

What About Football? Hitch Your Wagon to Notre Dame

Ah, yes, the $37million questions: who will Stanford & co play in football and can they make anything close to the 37 million bucks they made last year in the Pac-12?

The Pac-4 can certainly still do well for themselves in football as independents. Notre Dame is the classic example, and BYU found success as an independent before earning an invitation to the Big 12. The key here for these four schools would be to hitch along with Notre Dame as they negotiate their new deal with NBC. There’s no reason the PAC schools couldn’t land an independent TV deal in the neighborhood of their Apple deal, or slightly below it and bring home something on the order of $15M - $20M per season in media rights. NBC could air their games on Thursday and Friday nights or even after the late night Big 10/Notre Dame games.

For the Pac-4 leftovers, the value would be tremendous, in that they’d get to place their football games on over-the-air networks. You could also see a world where ESPN joins in the bidding and takes some of the PAC-After-Dark inventory. Both NBC’s Peacock and Apple + could fill streaming content with any games not aired in prime-time, and 10 of their games, including every early-season matchup, are prime games — when many non-con games are buy-games for the P4 and ratings busters.

Football Scheduling

Speaking of scheduling, the PAC schools have a leg up over other independents, especially if they can maintain their biggest rivalry games. They all have at least four power-4 games on their schedules for October or November, in the heart of conference play. Add games against accommodating PAC non-football members San Diego State and Boise State, who could also benefit from going independent, and that’s 5-6 attractive games on their schedules. Aside from a couple FCS and G5 buy games, that leaves 3-4 games to fill during the early portion of the season vs. schools from the power conferences, when they’re all looking for non-con matchups

Here’s what a sample schedule could look like for these schools:

The first couple seasons would require some creativity to fill games, maybe some 2-for-1s with the P4 schools to get them to move dates, and 1:1s with Boise St. and San Diego State, but it’s workable. It’s also far preferable to playing Rice, Tulane and Air Force as conference games.

The iDeal

For Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Wazzu, the totality of their media rights and NCAA tournament units adds up to something in the neighborhood of $25m-$30m per year. That’s good enough to make these football programs in the power conference game, and it’s enough to keep their overall athletic departments competitive in basketball and Olympic sports.

• $10m-$15m for football — NBC
• $10m for basketball + all Olympic sports — ESPN/Apple +
• College Football Playoff A5 distribution — $5.5M
• $1m+ per school for NCAA Tourney units

With the 12-team College Football Playoff, all of these teams have some level of access to the playoff as well, and it’s likely they can retain higher payments than non-A5 conference members. In fact, if the rest of college athletics attempts to exclude them, the lawyers for each of these schools should come out and bring an antitrust suit together.

The last piece of the puzzle is to sell a majority stake in the flailing PAC-12 Network to ESPN and/or Apple + and have them take on the challenge of bringing the network fully onto cable to collect some media rights fees.

Add it all up, and it’s not inconceivable the remaining members of the PAC do quite well in this brave new world.

And even sweeter, if college football does break away from the rest of college sports or the megaconferences come crashing down, the PAC will still exist to welcome back the Traitor-8 of USC, UCLA, Oregon, Washington, the Arizona schools, Utah and Colorado.

It’s a new beginning, make the most of it, PAC.