"Big 12 beat the Pac-12 to that deal": CFB analyst breaks down Pac-12’s missed opportunities and how it failed to keep up with rest of the CFB world

With only four teams remaining in the Pac-12, the 'Conference of Champions' is staring at an impending dissolution after 2024.

Fox Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt has broken down how the Pac-12 failed to keep up with the rest of CFB.

This summer witnessed plenty of college football realignment, and the Pac-12 has seen eight of its 12 member schools leave over the past year or so. The conference also had its media rights deal up, and getting a deal took longer than expected.

Pac-12 eventually ended up securing an agreement with Apple, but some schools weren't pleased with it as it was mostly streaming.

Klatt spoke on his "CFB on Fox" show about why the Pac-12 fell apart. According to Klatt, Big 12 getting the media deal with Fox and ESPN was one of the final dominoes for the Pac-12.

"All the linear networks basically had enough money for one college conference to get a new television deal. The Big 12 beat the Pac-12 to that deal. They secured their rights on linear television with a deal between Fox and ESPN. When that happened, the Pac-12 was unfortunately out of luck. They tried to cobble together a streaming deal.

"But that streaming deal was way too similar to that deal that I talked about in terms of their own network where they were relying on subscribers and interest to drive value, and they had learned our lesson from a decade ago. That didn't work. They declined it, and at that point, it became trying to find a lifeboat off of the Titanic.

"So why did we get here a long string of dominoes? It wasn't one decision. It was a series of decisions that led to this moment in which the Pac-12 is on life support, and we've got mega conferences now throughout college football."

With the Pac-12 not getting a good media rights deal, it has become the beginning of the end for the conference.

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What is the future of the Pac-12?

The Pac-12 still has four schools left after Stanford and Cal didn't get enough support to join the ACC.

With the schools remaining in the Pac-12, the conference hopes to add teams from the Mountain West or American Athletic.

However, merging with one of the conferences is still possible for the Pac-12 to remain a conference. Should the conference survive, the Apple streaming deal may come to fruition.