I-95 Exclusive: What Killed the Pac-12? Armen Keteyian Says Greed

You may recognize Armen Keteyian from his work on 60 Minutes or HBO Sports, or perhaps you've read one of his six New York Times bestsellers. Keteyian has just released a new book, co-authored with John Talty, titled The Price: What It Takes to Win in College Football's Era of Chaos.

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We were fortunate to secure an interview with this sports journalism legend to discuss the constantly evolving landscape of college football in 2024. Keteyian joined us on the Thursday (08/29/24) edition of the I-95 Morning Show, where we covered a wide range of topics, from the demise of the Pac-12 to NIL money and the transfer portal.

Lou: The name of the book is "The Price: What it Takes to Win in College Football's Era of Chaos." Let me congratulate you on getting this book out at just the right time but chaos is the operative word. We have conference realignment, NIL money, the transfer portal, the expansion of the playoffs, the game we love is unrecognizable from just five or six years ago, right?

Armen: "No question. Jeff Benedict and I, another Connecticut guy, did The System back in 2013. At that time, college football was chaotic with realignment and the playoffs, but that really is child's play compared to what John Talty and I experienced in the last couple of years while reporting this book. You mentioned all the main ingredients that have contributed to this chaos. I think what the book does is, in a very in-depth, behind-the-scenes way, bring to life what the schools, coaches, athletic departments, university presidents, heads of collectives, NCAA enforcement staff, and others are grappling with in this brave new world on a daily, even hourly, basis."

Lou: In terms of the NIL money, I always thought the players should have been paid, there was too much money for them not to be compensated but I'm already worried. Last year I saw Shedeur Sanders start to do something that I'd never really seen in college football. He was doing this celebration, pointing at his very expensive watch. It felt like a very NFL thing, you know? I wonder is this will mess with the youthful exuberance and pageantry of the sport? What do you think about that?

Armen: "I think we're in a wild, wild west right now. With NIL money, you can look back in time and ask, or you can be in the present moment and ask, how in the world did this happen? Why are we experiencing what we're experiencing? But, as we do in the book, you have to go back decades to understand what Walter Byers called the 'original lie.' Byers, who was the President of the NCAA for thirty-six years, created the phrase 'student-athlete' primarily to deny potential workers' compensation claims that they didn’t want to pay as employees. The whole façade of amateurism persisted while the NCAA was raking in millions and then billions of dollars in revenue, and conferences were receiving significant payouts—some schools in the SEC are now getting over $60 million a year. Revenue sharing was long overdue, but it has hit college football like a neutron bomb or an atomic bomb. Then you add in the portal, and as you mentioned, Lou, there’s conference realignment and all the intangibles that coaching staffs are dealing with. It’s as tumultuous a period as I’ve ever witnessed in covering college football for nearly forty years."

Lou: I'm going to mess up this kid's name because it is so hard to say but DJ Uiagalelei is now playing for Florida State, last year he played for Oregon State, and the year before he played for Clemson. The transfer portal, I hate to sound like an old man yelling at the clouds here but are we going to get players, playing for four different teams in four years at college?

Armen: "I think it's a distinct possibility. I mean, I just read something this morning: of the 68 Power 4 conferences, 43 of those 68 have transfer starting quarterbacks coming into this weekend. That is extraordinary. From some of the reporting we’ve done, it takes a lot to astonish me at this point, but I had a conversation with a senior NCAA investigator. I asked him, 'What’s the big number?' If you take a graduate assistant—not an assistant, but a grad-school student—with one year of eligibility left, and you look at, say, an SEC or Big Ten school with a big budget, a large collective, and an opportunity to win a national championship, it could cost $8 million for a single year for a transfer student to come in and play for that program. $8 million."

Lou: How is it possible the Pac-12 wasn't saved, were they really that mismanaged? They had to have had an insane monetary value as a full entity. How did this happen?

Armen: "I'm glad you asked that. There is a chapter called 'Unrealistic' that I spent a lot of time working on, as did John; we collaborated on that chapter. It's one of my favorites in the book because it provides a blow-by-blow, behind-the-scenes look at the destruction and demolition of a 108-year-old so-called 'conference of champions' in about forty-eight hours. It really boiled down to what we describe in that chapter as wanton greed and extreme self-interest—neither of which is good for the common good of college football. What happened was that USC decided to join the Big Ten due to the money being offered by FOX, in conjunction with the Commissioner at the time. For USC to move to the Midwest and then bring UCLA along was the beginning of the end; that was the domino that fell, signaling the start of the end for the entire conference. When FOX sensed weakness and disarray as the Pac-10 was trying to secure a linear and streaming deal—neither of which met the expectations of the college presidents—the situation became dire. The President of Utah even proposed that each school’s grant of rights should be $50 million annually. That figure put them in the Big Ten or SEC category, but there was no way the Pac-10 was worth $50 million at that time. This illustrates how unrealistic their thinking was. As things began to fall apart, FOX came in and poached Washington and then Oregon, sealing the conference’s fate. There’s some great reporting on Bobby Robbins, the current President of the University of Arizona, who tried desperately to save the conference but was undermined by USC President Carol Folt. Once that happened, it marked the beginning of the end for the Pac-12. As one executive at ESPN told me, when people say it’s not about the money, just look at the loss of the Pac-12—it was all about the money."

You can listen to our complete interview with Armen Keteyian below.

Part 1 - Armen speaks about the wide variety of changes college football has gone through in the past few years. 

Part 2 - Armen discusses the BIG-12's attempts to lure  UCONN and the death of the PAC-12. 

Check out the Ethan, Lou & Large Dave Podcast on Apple and Spotify