It looks like the Pac-12 might be gearing up for its last March Madness tournament. With ten of its schools heading off to different conferences, the Pac-12, which has been such an iconic part of NCAA sports, is nearing its end. But how did this all happen so fast?
The seeds of this surprising turn of events were actually planted quite a few decades ago, thanks to a major court decision. Flashback to March 1984, when the NCAA was getting its basketball semifinals ready, the Supreme Court was kicking off the NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma case. This case was a game-changer for how college sports were televised in the U.S.
Before the court’s decision, there were tight limits on how college football could be shown on TV—a maximum of six nationally broadcast games every two years. But after the ruling, those restrictions vanished, turning regional conferences into money-making operations based on football broadcasts. As someone who teaches about sports and their impact, I can’t help but see how that decision led us to where the Pac-12 finds itself today.
Even in the early TV days of the 1930s, college sports drew attention. By 1939, we saw the first televised college football game, and by the 1950s, a few schools, like the University of Pennsylvania and Notre Dame, had regional TV deals for their games. But things took a turn in 1951 when the NCAA grabbed the TV rights to football and tried to nix live broadcasts to protect game attendance. Naturally, some universities weren’t too happy. Penn resisted but eventually caved when faced with penalties.
The NCAA eventually eased up that year, allowing sold-out games to be televised, leading to the first-ever live sports event broadcast coast-to-coast during a Duke vs. University of Pittsburgh game in September 1951. By 1952, they allowed a national game each week, and by 1953, NBC was offering “panorama” coverage of regional games. By 1955, the NCAA, feeling the heat from conferences like the Big Ten, allowed more regional games, with a national game hosted for eight weeks and regional matches filling the other five.
Despite these changes, bowl games—like the historic Rose Bowl which began in 1902—remained apart from the NCAA’s control. The visibility from these games convinced university heads that televised sports could be both profitable and a big draw for applications.
Fed up with limited TV time and revenue during the regular season, several universities founded the College Football Association (CFA) in 1977 to push back against the NCAA’s grip on TV rights. By 1979, the CFA was brokering a TV deal with NBC while the NCAA was hammering out agreements with CBS and ABC.
By 1981, the CFA had a contract with NBC, prompting the NCAA to warn of sanctions against any CFA members joining this contract. This prompted schools like the University of Oklahoma and the University of Georgia to sue for control of their TV rights.
After lower courts ruled the broadcasting restrictions were against free market competition, the NCAA took it to the Supreme Court. Arguments were heard in March 1984, and by June, the court sided against the NCAA, granting the CFA the right to manage its media deals. By 1996, major conferences ditched the CFA, which dissolved in 1997, and began making their own TV deals amidst growing interest from national and regional networks.
By 1987, NCAA schools permitted conferences with at least two divisions of six teams to host a championship that wouldn’t count against game limits. This pushed conferences to get a grip on their media rights and leverage these championship games for cash.
As media rights went to conferences, TV networks kept throwing cash into college football, joined eventually by streaming services. Just look at the Big Ten, which now rakes in over $1 billion in media rights, way up from $10 million in 1996.
Besides conference media contracts, both bowl games and the College Football Playoff have their own agreements—with the latter bringing in a whopping $1.3 billion a year from ESPN over six years as of February 2024. All this money is rolling in even while two-thirds of Americans question the ties among the NCAA, conferences, colleges, and student-athletes. The NCAA has allowed athletes to make money from their names and images since 2021, following state laws on the matter, and updated rules have offered more freedom for athlete transfers.
Despite these shifts, the NCAA is still facing legal challenges over the amateur status of student-athletes. Conferences that were once regional are now at the national business level, making it tougher to keep up the argument that college athletes are amateurs, given the revenue they generate for their schools.
So how does all this connect to the Pac-12’s potential end? Quite a bit, actually. In 2022, the Big Ten snagged a massive deal promising between $80 million and $100 million yearly for schools, including soon-to-be Pac-12 deserters USC and UCLA.
Without the Los Angeles market, the Pac-12 aimed for a similar payout, challenging ESPN’s $30 million proposal with a $50 million-per-school counteroffer. When ESPN bowed out and only Apple TV offered a short-term deal at $25 million each, eight more schools jumped ship for better contracts elsewhere. This is why the once-dominant Pac-12 may not have a chance to add to its collection of NCAA championships beyond 2025.
Even though many anticipated changes ahead, few foresaw this level of “madness” stemming from the 1984 Supreme Court ruling favoring the University of Oklahoma. The decades-long tug of war over TV rights isn’t done yet, and the copious revenue it generates is reshaping college sports as we know them. In the end, tradition had to step aside as the Pac-12 schools bid farewell to over a century of history, opting instead for the allure of more lucrative opportunities.