The sprawling Front Range market attached to Boulder and the University of Colorado made CU the addition of choice for the PAC
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::UPDATE::
Texas has opted to become the “Yankees of the Midwest” by staying in the Big 12 (which will have 10 teams starting in 2012 while the Big 10 moves forward with 12.) Texas followed the money on this one, as Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe offered to shower the University of Texas with a new, richer TV contract that includes Texas’ own network. Beebe’s offer got close enough to the PAC-10′s offer financially to keep Texas in the conference and keep the Big 12 together for now.
Texas A&M, Missouri, Oklahoma & Kansas have each announced that they will stick with their current conference as well. The PAC-10 (which will have 11 teams with the addition of CU) may look to the WAC for a 12th conference member as a result, but could still end up drawing the interest of a university like Baylor from the Big 12.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
When the University of Colorado Buffaloes announced their thunderous exit from the Big 12 college athletic conference last week, the aftershocks were felt from Florida to California, Oregon to Texas. The once mighty Big 12 is now disintegrating before our eyes, and the Pacific Athletic Conference (PAC) has grown from 10 teams to 11, with 16 college programs under the PAC umbrella a serious possibility.
The University of Texas is rumored to be announcing its exit from the Big 12 on Tuesday, with Texas Tech, Baylor, Oklahoma & Oklahoma State all expected to follow suit.
That would expand the PAC from 10 to 16, and the Big 12 would shrink to 6 mostly small-market colleges as a result of Nebraska’s planned move to the Big 10.  The Cornhuskers jumped the Big 12 late last week in favor of the other “Big†conference representing lands to the east and north.
The Big 10 has now expanded its roll call to 12 teams (Penn State was already the 11th) by adding Nebraska, and stands to pick up pieces of the Big 12 North should the South scatter east and west.
But how did CU athletics, long fallen from its early 90’s glory days, start the biggest modern-day realignment of college athletic conferences?
The University of Colorado started the movement away from the Texas-centric TV market that was the Big 12 by using the simple equation of Ratings + Recruiting.
The Big 12 has long suffered from its middle-of-nowhere coagulation of moderately-sized population centers. Four Texas teams (Texas, Baylor, TX Tech & TX A&M) have anchored the conference both in recruiting and from an entertainment market standpoint.
However, CU has had trouble recruiting for football over the last decade as an outpost on the edge of the Big 12. With little access to the California market because of its Midwest-heavy game schedule and no hope of recruiting players away from the huge city-centers east of the Mississippi, the University of Colorado was in no-man’s land. With no men’s basketball program to speak of and a forced crackdown on the party-town atmosphere that once drew star athletes to Boulder, CU has slowly faded from the national spotlight.
By moving to the PAC, the University of Colorado has expanded its formerly light recruiting ability on the West Coast by virtue of two factors.
First, recruits that come to CU are guaranteed to play a dozen or more games in California’s enormous TV market, improving their visibility to professional teams and their marketability to pro-team fans. The PAC gains access to the coveted Denver regional market as a result. (Denver-Metro, Colorado Springs & surrounding areas.)
Second, CU has always acted as a release valve on a crowded coastal college market that includes the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of California (Cal), the University of Southern California (USC), and both Oregon & Oregon State. That release role will be magnified as skilled recruits looking for a larger role in their college careers can stand out more easily on the less crowded Colorado stage while maintaining access to the larger left coast market by playing a bevy of games in California each season.
The same basic philosophies may drive CU’s conference mates east and west. Colorado was a natural fit for the PAC, as Denver is actually closer to Los Angeles than LA is to Portland, Oregon. Geographically, academically and (most importantly) financially speaking, this move by CU is an enormous boon to the school and its athletes.
Of course, once the vast expanse of desert and mountains between Central California and Boulder had been bridged by CU, the floodgates opened.
The potential for Texas, Texas Tech, Baylor and both Oklahoma schools to move west stands to split the Texas college universe in twain. That would also finish the halving of the Big 12 down to 6 teams. Left in the cold would be Texas A&M, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State and Missouri.
Texas A&M is not expected to follow suit by transferring to the PAC. A more likely suitor for A&M is to the stacked South Eastern Conference (SEC).  That move would split the Texas colleges between the SEC and the PAC, which may be the biggest sticking point in this far-ranging negotiating process.
For Texas, the ideal situation would have been a package that included four Texas colleges and both Oklahoma schools joining the PAC to round out at 16 teams. CU mucked up any hope for that happy ending, meaning that either the Oklahomas have to split, or a Texas school gets left out of the Big Move.
Big 12 Commissioner Dan Beebe has been scrambling for two weeks to salvage his predominantly Midwestern conference from complete collapse, but the tide of movement started by the University of Colorado has been too strong. For Beebe and the Big 12, the only hope is that Texas falls back on old allegiances within the state itself, as the inherent marketability of the conference no longer sustains viable pull without two of the North’s three biggest schools. (Missouri is still a solid sports school with a huge market attached, but seems content to let the chips fall where they may before making a move of its own.)
This much is certain; if Texas goes, then so does the Big 12.
The dominoes don’t stop falling until 2012 when CU, Nebraska and anybody/everybody else makes the formal moves into their respective new conferences.  However, the path is set for an enormous shakeup that has CU at the forefront of a new era in college sports.
