near the responsibility.

When the conference hired Larry Scott, part of his mandate was to create a TV network that heavily featured the Olympics sports.

Comcast was happy to help but demanded 850 hours of live sports per month. St the time, the Big Ten network, created three years before, was only producing 300 hours.

In order to provide 850 hours, they created a national network and six regional networks.

That effectively killed Direct TV’s interest.

From 2012 to 2017, Scott brought forth separate offers from Fox, ESPN, and AT&T (a major corporate sponsor) to take over the production costs for share of the profits.

The presidents rejected all three proposals. The last offer was from AT&T. When it was rejected, the company pulled its sponsorship.

Finally, in 2021, when the Big 12 was in danger of exploding and every remaining school had approached the PAC 12 about the possibility of admission, the PAC 12 presidents met to consider setting up an expansion committee.

The USC president persuaded her peers that that conference was fine as constituted and did not need to explore expansion. The other presidents were persuaded to retain the status quo.

Within a year, USC announced it was leaving for the Big Ten and were taking UCLA with them.

Some believe that the USC president had already been in conversation with the Big Ten when she told her PAC 12 peers to stay put.

Once USC announced it was leaving, the dominoes fell.