Pac-12 Returns; World Cup Booms; 250th Fizzles & Sizzles

In 2024, the 108-year old Pac-12 Conference disintegrated, losing 10 of its member schools.

Four left for the Big Ten (USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington), four headed to the Big 12 ((Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah), and two lobbied their way into the ACC (Stanford and Cal), leaving just Oregon State and Washington State behind.

The Beavers and Cougs could've closed up shop and joined the Mountain West. Instead, they kept the league alive, hoping that within the NCAA's two-year window they could somehow rebuild the conference to the minimum eight-team requirement.

In the meantime, they stayed alive by forming scheduling partnerships with the Mountain West in football and with various leagues in other sports. 

A year later, the Pac-12 announced that five Mountain West schools--Boise State, San Diego State, Fresno State, Colorado State and Utah State--would join the league in July of '26.

To reach the FBS-mandated minimum of eight members, the Pac-12 also added Texas State from the Sun Belt. Then basketball powerhouse Gonzaga joined as a member in all sports, though the Zags don’t have football.

(There's no truth to the rumor that Gonzaga had to add "State" to its name to join the league).

And so, the Pac-12 re-launched last Wednesday, July 1, with this membership:

Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Gonzaga (non-football), Oregon State, San Diego State, Texas State, Utah State, Washington State. Can't say I love the revamped logo, but we're quibbling here.

Though it is clearly a long way from the quality of the "old" Pac-12, the new iteration is a decent assemblage, surpassing the American Conference as the fifth strongest league in the country after the Big Ten, SEC, Big 12, and ACC.

Teresa Gould, who took over as commissioner after the disastrous regimes of Larry Scott and George Kliavkoff, should be credited with doing yeoman work to rebuild the conference. Likewise the administrations at OSU and WSU for staying the course. 

In addition to attracting new members, Gould secured five-year media deals with The CW, CBS, and USA Sports, guaranteeing wide exposure and solidifying the conference's finances.

She also wisely kept the Pac-12 Enterprises production facilities up and running, providing a substantial revenue source for the league.

If they gave out an award for "commissioner of the year," she'd get my vote.

As for the future, who knows? If the Big Ten and SEC pull away from the NCAA to form a super league, which is at least a 50-50 proposition at this point, several of the old Pac-12 teams may be looking for a new home.

And wouldn't it be great to see old regional rivalries resume and new regional rivalries begin with the current schools plus Stanford, Cal and a few other Pac-12 returnees?

World Cup Booms: The week before the 2026 World Cup started, there seemed to be no buzz and little interest and excitement about the games scheduled at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara.

But once the competition began, everything changed. Suddenly, thousands of soccer fans stormed into the Bay Area and near-capacity crowds turned up at Levi's, with dozens of watch parties throughout the Bay at places like Salesforce Park, Pier 39, Mission Rock, outside Chase Center, in downtown San Jose at San Pedro Square, and adjacent to the stadium at the Hilton Santa Clara's End Zone experience and the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara.

Hotels, restaurants and bars that were bemoaning their fates just a few days earlier were filled with visitors coming into town for the matches.

Thrilling games and the US Team's success drove national interest, boosted by individual heroics from soccer icons Lionel Messi (Argentina) and Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) and new stars like France's Kylian Mbappe, Norway's Erling Haaland, England's Harry Kane and America's Folarin Balogun.

U.S. soccer fans cheered teams from other countries, supported underdogs like Cape Verde and demonstrated global unity rather than petty divisiveness. All great to see in these troubled times.

The good vibes were capped off by the fortuitous scheduling of a knockout round game between the USMNT and Bosnia-Herzegovina last Wednesday in Santa Clara.

The US won 2-0. Levi's was bursting at the seams, and suddenly World Cup was the main topic of conversation everywhere.

Even this non-soccer fan was very impressed.

250: As we celebrate the 250th birthday of this great country and the endurance of our noble experiment in self-governance, a few observations:

• It was gratifying to see president Trump's plans to make himself the focus of the nation's 250th celebration backfire because of bad weather, low crowds, and the refusal of so many performing artists to participate in his self-aggrandizement.

• Instead of uplifting language to promote unity, Trump chose partisan attacks and false claims of accomplishment.

• Hard to digest the fact that he made $2.2 billion last year through his corruption and grift, at the same time many Americans can't afford gas or groceries.

• Unnerved by Social Democrat wins in recent elections, and faced with the prospect of a shellacking in the upcoming mid-terms, Trump is now channeling Joe McCarthy and invoking communism as a way to attack the Democratic Party. 

• Since he has no real accomplishments to campaign on, he resorts to the Red Scare.

• Such nonsense.

• Meanwhile, brilliant speeches about the greatness of America were delivered by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who came to the U.S. from Uganda as a seven year old, and former president Bill Clinton. 

  
  

From Mamdani: 

"Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest.

We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than anyone else. The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that work endures, and it belongs to us all. 

Those ideals upon which our nation was built — they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them.”

From Clinton:

"Today, we celebrate this milestone amid another period of deep division and serious threats to our own institutions and to our democracy itself.

The people in charge have unleashed masked agents on American communities to seize people from their homes, workplaces, and the street. They have started an unconstitutional war on a whim, with no clear objectives or exit strategy.

With the help of lifetime appointees to the Supreme Court and a compliant Congress, they have weaponized government to settle personal scores, prosecute enemies, stamp out free speech, and made the federal government a new profit center for themselves and their allies...They also want to rewrite history to ignore and outright deny our past flaws while banning books that say otherwise from our libraries.

This isn’t the first time we’ve come close to the edge...Our road from 1776 to today has been, in Abraham Lincoln’s words, “piled high with difficulty.”  But by and large, thanks to celebrated leaders and everyday Americans alike, we have stumbled in the right direction—widening the circle of opportunity, deepening the meaning of freedom, and strengthening the bonds of our community.

There is still nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what’s right with America."

Vacation note: The Inside Track is taking a short vacation and will not publish next Monday, July 13. We'll return the following week