Pac-10 Firing First Big Expansion Shot?

Because it appears the Pac-10, which has its meetings in San Francisco starting this weekend, is prepared to make a bold move and invite Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado to join its league, according to multiple sources close to the situation.

Knee-buckling, to say the least.  Now, obviously you have to keep some caution here.  This isn’t official, although it is a Yahoo Sports-owned property in Rivals.  But their track record on the whole USC investigation has been way ahead of the rest of the pack all along, so, why doubt that this is at least being discussed? 

I know that the conventional wisdom all along has been about the idea of adding Colorado and Utah, making it a 12-team conference and adding a championship game.  All well and good, but wow, this, uh, is a little different, don’t you think?  Some of the details are pretty amazing too:

The six teams from the Big 12 would be in an eight-team division with Arizona and Arizona State. The other eight-team division would consist of USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington and Washington State.

The thought is the Big 16 (or whatever they decide for the name) would start its own television network that could command premium subscriber dollars from cable providers on par with the Big Ten Network and pay out upwards of $20 million to each of the 16 schools in TV revenue.

Just on the leg of finances, it’s the white knight from a WSU perspective.  Bud Withers laid this out the other day, but right now the Pac-10 gets about $45 million – TOTAL – on their Fox/ABC/ESPN TV deal.  Break that out over 10 teams, and you are looking at 4.5 million or so, per team, in the current Pac-10 structure.  But to go from 4.5 million to “upwards of $20 million” per team???  WOW.  But even more than that, when you look around at the rest of the country, you have to notice that the SEC and the Big Ten already get $200+ million per year in their TV deals.  You are way, way, way behind the rest of the world if you are only getting 1/5th of that revenue for your BCS conference TV deal.  You have to be bold in order to survive, let alone thrive, so, here we are.

When the conference brought Larry Scott in to caption this ship, they were serious about making changes.  But this is just staggering.  This is all about being progressive, forward thinking, maximizing revenue, going against tradition if you have to, etc.  But it’s bigger in one major way – IF this all comes down shortly, they are BEATING THE BIG TEN TO THE PUNCH!  All along people have thought that the Big Ten held all the cards, and everyone else would react once they plucked the Nebraska’s and Mizzou’s of the world.  Not so fast my friend.  Welcome to the world of Larry Scott’s super-conferences!