How to Save the Pac-12 in Five Steps

A common sense plan to save the conference.

With the loss of USC and UCLA to the Big 10 - the Pac-12 finds itself on shaky ground and the threat of becoming more and more irrelevant looms large over the conference.  Here's my common sense five-step process for the Pac-12 to save itself and emerge maybe even stronger than before.

Step One: Forge a partnership with SoFi Stadium the home of the NFL's Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers. The Pac-12 needs top football recruits - recruits with NFL aspirations and neither the Rose Bowl nor the LA Coliseum are NFL venues. And both of these places are associated with UCLA and USC - teams that jilted the conference for the Big 10. SoFi Stadium on the other hand is one of if not the best NFL stadium in the country. It seats 70,000 and is as modern as it gets.

A partnership with SoFi where the conference would play 2 or 3 games a year in the stadium would be beneficial to both parties. The Pac-12 would get a venue that is exciting and new while SoFi Stadium would fill the schedule with a couple of open Saturday dates every year. Building the stadium wasn't cheap and those extra dates could be the difference between operating at a profit or at a loss. 

Step Two: Once the SoFi venue is secured - create a partnership with Notre Dame. Have two games a year at SoFi - one matching Notre Dame with traditional rival Stanford and a second on a rotating basis with the Pac-12 champion. 

These games would use SoFi as a "neutral" field. This means Notre Dame's broadcast partner NBC would get one game and whoever the Pac-12 chooses as their broadcast partner would get Notre Dame on the schedule EVERY YEAR! Whether it be Stanford vs Notre Dame or Notre Dame vs say Oregon or Washington - these games would have national appeal

This would be good for Notre Dame because they wish to remain independent and USC moving to the Big 10 could make their schedule too Big 10 centric. More importantly - Notre Dame wants to get out to the West Coast to recruit those LA and California prospects. What better recruiting tool could they have than having games in LA at SoFi Stadium twice a year? Win-win.

Step Three: Along the same lines the Pac-12 should create an alliance with the ACC who finds themselves in a similar squeeze. The ACC fears being overshadowed by the SEC (with good reason). An alliance with the Pac-12 wouldn't be a cure-all but it would help. And because of the distance between the two conferences - there is little chance they'd be poaching each other's schools.

What I suggest is the Pac-12 champion host the ACC runner-up at SoFi each year while the ACC champion hosts the Pac-12 runner up either at the ACC champ's home stadium or at the Bank of America Stadium - home of the Carolina Panthers. The reason it would be 1 vs 2 in both matchups is if there's limited spots in the Playoffs you wouldn't want a 1 vs 1 matchup loss potentially knocking out one of the conferences. This Pac-12 vs ACC challenge would also help both leagues with strength of schedule issues which are bound to be big Playoff considerations.

This would be that third game at SoFi I mentioned above for the Pac-12 and would be another enticement for their broadcast partner. The same would hold true for the ACC. They'd each get a big game with national interest each year for their broadcast partners. And that's what college football is these days - what's best for the broadcast partners.

Step Four: The Pac-12 should add two teams among San Diego State, Fresno State, or Boise State. The California schools may be best simply to increase the presence in California and to increase leverage with the California Board of Regents.

No matter how it works out - add two teams since it's the Pac-12 not the Pac-10.

Step Five: The final step would be to add Gonzaga as a basketball only school. Gonzaga doesn't have football - nor should they - but their basketball program would add greatly to the basketball TV appeal. It would also help cement relationships with the other Northwest schools like Oregon and Washington.

That's the plan. What do you think?