TEMPE, Ariz. — Arizona State’s regularly scheduled football practice featured a couple of special guests on Saturday morning. University president Michael Crow and athletic director Ray Anderson spoke with members of the media following the announcement that ASU will be leaving the Pac-12 for the Big 12 beginning 2024.
“How do we feel about the destruction of the Pac-12 and what do we feel about our responsibility for that? We were the stalwarts fighting for the Pac-12 until the last ditch,” Crow said. “Yesterday morning at 7 a.m. was another called meeting of the Pac-12 presidents and some schools didn’t show up. So you might know that then, therefore, the conference was no longer viable.”
Once Oregon and Washington announced their move to the Big Ten on Friday, Crow and Anderson said they knew they had to act fast. In a matter of hours, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah all applied for and were admitted into the Big 12 with official news releases sent out by Friday night. The Pac-12 has been sent into a tailspin over the course of just 10 days with six schools defecting from the conference.
“We were trying to save it [the Pac-12] and stayed in the trenches as long as we could until it became clear that it was no longer in our control,” Anderson said. “It made a lot more sense from the student-athlete experience, and competitive, to get into the Big 12… We’ve talked to our coaches, a number of them, particularly in the Olympic sports and they couldn’t be more pleased.”
One thing Crow and Anderson stressed was their joint commitment with the University of Arizona to maintain the tradition of competing as in-state rivals. The Wildcats are Big 12-bound next year and, according to Crow, there was no scenario in which one university left for another conference without the other.
“Arizona and Arizona State decided we wouldn’t split up under any circumstance,” Crow said. “Before we went into anything, any uncertainty, we were together.”
Anderson explained that he and Dave Heeke, U of A’s athletic director, have discussed the universities staying together in conference realignment for quite some time. University leaders were bracing for more defections after the fallout first began last summer when USC and UCLA announced that they would be leaving for the Big Ten beginning in 2024.
ASU’s first-year head football coach Kenny Dillingham is looking forward to competing against teams out of Texas but the former Sun Devil admits to having mixed emotions about the demise of the Pac-12.
“Yeah, I mean, there’s two sides. I have the fan in me that’s like ‘man, I grew up in the Pac!’ The rivalries, the tradition, that’s the fan in me,” Dillingham said after practice Saturday. “The coach in me -- who came in here to do a job and to get this place where I know it can go -- is excited and thrilled because I know this was, by far, the best thing for Arizona State.”
ASU football kicks off its final season of Pac-12 play in Tempe on Thursday, Aug. 31, against Southern Utah. The Wildcats open their season at home hosting Northern Arizona on Saturday, Sept. 2.
Watch the full interview here:
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