Kliavkoff would have to engage Big Ten Commissioner Kevin Warren about a scheduling alliance that with USC, Oregon, Washington, Stanford, etc., matching up with Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Wisconsin, etc., would create a bidding frenzy from the TV networks and infuse each league with riches. You hit the nail on the head, though, about the Big Ten. I will take up for the Big 12 a bit and counter that as far as fertile recruiting ground, Texas far trumps the schools in the Big Ten footprint. McCollough: Ryan, prepare for your Inbox to fill with the same Oklahoma State fans who have been writing me the last few weeks after my initial column on this matter. The selections and snubs may surprise you. With the SEC poised to add Texas and Oklahoma, four Los Angeles Times writers gathered to draft four, 16-team super conferences. Sports Superconference Mock Draft: Forget Texas and Oklahoma, we redraw the college football map But if you’re Kliavkoff, wouldn’t you rather strike that agreement with a more desirable conference that spreads across two time zones, sits on fertile recruiting ground and has a much better reputation for football? A scheduling partnership only helps both sides beef up their nonconference schedule and makes future media rights negotiations more attractive. Now, are there other ways for the Pac-12 and Big 12 to work together? Sure. It seems that most of the conference’s decision makers understand that. But I don’t see any options in the Big 12 footprint. If that means adding schools that actually carry their weight in that regard, great. Which of the eight left-behind Big 12 schools is even the most desirable for the Pac-12? Texas Tech? Oklahoma State? Neither of those programs would bring much new to the equation, and this conference desperately needs to find a way to close the revenue gap first. Adding middling programs indiscriminately, without heavily scrutinizing the kind of revenue they bring, is exactly the type of panic move the Pac-12 should try to avoid. What he shouldn’t do is raid the Big 12 for a collection of schools that add nothing to the Pac-12 outside of a new time zone. But for the Pac-12, my instinct is that a move like this with a league that’s on its deathbed would be a last resort after all other options to improve the league’s stature heading into 2024 media rights negotiations have been exhausted. That all sounds dreamy to the Big 12, which is facing an existential threat. The Big 12 would obviously jump at anything the Pac-12 is willing to entertain: a scheduling alliance setting up annual matchups in nonconference play or an actual merger. The quote he tweeted later - “One of the most sincere forms of respect is actually listening to what another has to say” - appears pointed. Kliavkoff is going to be taking lots of meetings in the coming weeks as the landscape shifts in the Texas-and-Oklahoma-to-SEC aftermath. My sources tell me they met for six hours, but from the Pac-12 end of things, I would not overreact. When I saw his report, it made perfect sense that the leak revealing the meeting between Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby and Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff was from the Big 12, which desperately needs to show the remaining eight schools that there could be some hope of salvaging the league.

Max Olson, a national college football reporter with the Athletic, has his reporting roots in Big 12 country. McCollough: The first thing we should do before going down the rabbit hole of analyzing what a Pac-12/Big 12 collaboration could look like is understand where this news came from.

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