Don Williams column: A good Friday? Not so sure about that

In the news business, as clocks move toward 5 p.m. on a Friday, you become accustomed to noteworthy stuff coming out that parties involved feel they must, but would rather not, reveal. The hope in a late Friday news drop is folks will have shifted into weekend mode, maybe started happy hour and be none the wiser.

Last Friday was something different.

Aug. 4, 2023, will go down in college sports history as a seismic day. The Big Ten added Oregon and Washington, and within hours the Big 12, having taken Colorado eight days before, announced Arizona, Arizona State and Utah as new members of the conference, effective the summer of 2024.

Talk about your Friday evening news drop.

Just like that, the Pac-12 is, for all practical purposes, extinct as a major conference after this school year. Oregon State, Washington State, Cal and Stanford are all that’s left.

For Texas Tech and legacy members of the Big 12, it’s welcome news and has plenty of people thumping their chests. The Red Raiders and their brethren now have security based on long-term television agreements and strength in number. Come the summer of 2024, it’ll be a 16-team conference, 12 of the schools having been immediate past members of power-five conferences.

Texas Tech running back Desmond Nisby (32) tries to fend off Arizona State defensive back D.J. Calhoun (3) during the Red Raiders’ 52-45 victory in a September 2017 game at Jones AT&T Stadium. Arizona State joined the Big 12 on Friday, making the two schools conference opponents starting in 2024.

More: Texas Tech football sets Jones Stadium capacity for 2023, sells out of season tickets

More: Texas Tech football earns first preseason coaches poll ranking since 2008

If you’re a Texas Tech fan, you can breathe easily, at least until the 2031 expiration dates on the contracts with ESPN and Fox grow closer. How much can you celebrate, though?

If you consider the latest “round” of realignment as starting two years ago with the bombshell revelation of Texas and Oklahoma having secret discussions with the SEC, the Big 12 didn’t suffer the worst possible outcome in this round of realignment, but it sure didn’t win.

Tech’s not better off being separated from UT and OU, no matter the many trying to convince themselves otherwise. The numbers, whether measured by game attendance, economic impact or viewership, are inarguable.

Four teams from the American and four teams from the Pac-12 — among the latter, two cellar dwellers and one middling program, football-wise — don’t make up for the power and the passion that’s lost. They can’t change that the spotlight is shifting inexorably to the SEC and the Big Ten, which gives a school such as Tech less room for error.

In that regard, what’s gone down the past couple of weeks and the past couple of years is bad for the Big 12.

For college football in general, it’s even worse. To anyone with a historical perspective, it’s unfathomable to think of no major conference on the West Coast.

Oregon State and Washington State in particular, victims of unfortunate geography, deserve better. Washington State’s no less deserving of a spot in a power-five conference than, say, Purdue. Oregon State’s no less deserving than a South Carolina. A couple of solid athletics departments, and what’s their next best hope? To maybe flex some muscle in an arrangement with the Mountain West?

The biggest losers, though, are a great many athletes whose interests, not to mention their health, have been sold out for the dollars dangled by conference television partners. Road trips, especially midweeks by teams in low-budget sports, will be brutal on the body, on classroom attendance, on academic achievement.

Look, I understand conference commissioners and university presidents are between a rock and a hard place. Forego the dollars and the financial security and you wind up in the same position as those four remaining Pac-12 schools, underfunded and with your teams relegated to lesser leagues.

Now the people in charge feel compelled to choose the money over their athletes’ welfare.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: A good Friday? Not so sure about after big college realignment news