The Pac-10 will no longer look east, which means Arizona will get to keep looking west.
While Texas all but blew up the superconference plan of Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott, opting Monday to remain in the Big 12, Arizona will remain closely aligned with its critical recruiting and alumni base in California.
The Wildcats and ASU could even become divisional partners with the Pac-10's four California schools while the Pacific Northwest schools join Colorado and Utah, expected as a 12th addition, in a Northern Division.
Texas was expected to be the lynchpin of a 16-team Western conference that would have brought along Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech and probably Texas A&M or Kansas. In that scenario, it was expected Arizona and ASU would join the new acquisitions in an Eastern Division.
But without the Longhorns, who were assured of their own television network and potentially at least as much money as the Pac-10 offered, the deal fell apart as the rest of the Big 12 stayed put.
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In the end, the Big 12 lost only Colorado to the Pac-10 and Nebraska to the Big Ten.
"University of Texas president Bill Powers has informed us that the 10 remaining schools in the Big12 Conference intend to stay together," Scott said in a statement. "We are excited about the future of the Pac-10 Conference, and we will continue to evaluate future expansion opportunities under the guidelines previously set forth by our presidents and chancellors."
The Pac-10's most likely course of action now is to add a 12th team and split into two divisions with the purpose of holding a football championship game between division winners.
"Obviously, it's been a very interesting time, and we're very pleased to have Colorado as our newest member," UA athletic director Greg Byrne said. "At the same time, too, I think the Pac-10 has shown that it has the ability to be a leader within intercollegiate athletics."
Scott lept out in front of the expansion push earlier this month, when word spread that the Pac-10 was interested in adding six Big 12 members just as both conferences held league meetings. The Big Ten had begun the expansion frenzy last winter by saying it would look into expansion, but the Pac-10 became a focal point once Scott made public his authority to offer invitations.
The Pac-10 had even hired the influential Creative Arts Agency to run financial models of what scenarios might work best in a conference of up to 16 teams.
Scott said after the Pac-10's meetings on June 6 that he was authorized to go ahead with several different expansion plans. He announced the addition of Colorado just four days later, saying later that the Buffaloes would fit into any scenario the Pac-10 wanted.
At Colorado's introductory news conference Friday, Scott said further expansion "really depends on what happens elsewhere in the country and decisions other schools might make about whether they're open to invitations from our conference."
Scott also said "if it stops here, we're thrilled," but the Pac-10 is not expected to stop there, since a 12th member would allow a football championship game as well as schedule and travel symmetry.
It is not clear whether a Pac-10 would split into divisions for sports other than football, and Byrne said it was too early to tell.
"We haven't had a lot of discussion about that," Byrne said. "But a (football) championship game could be a positive for us as a league."
The Pac-10 expansion will take effect in 2012-13, unless Colorado is forced to leave the Big 12 earlier. Scott has said he wanted to set the league's expansion plans up firmly before new television contract negotiations begin next year; the Pac-10's current television deal with Fox Sports Net expires after the 2011-12 season.
Whereas the Pac-10 was expected to be able to dish out up to $20 million per team in television and bowl revenue under a 16-team format that included Texas, it isn't likely to generate as much under a 12-team format. It is also unclear if the Pac-10 will be able to create its own TV network or partner with the Big 12 for one, especially if relationships are now strained between the two conferences.
