Rallying 70,000 fans to “roll on” the Golden Bears inside a packed California Memorial Stadium was a life-defining experience for former “Mic Man” Ken Montgomery.
But as the Pac-12 teeters on the brink of collapse, the now-56-year-old alum has started grieving the Cal pride he’s enthusiastically embodied since he first arrived on campus in the early 1990s.
Amid the chaos on Friday, five Pac-12 conference schools announced they were headed out the door: Arizona, Arizona State and Utah to the Big 12, and Oregon and Washington to the Big Ten. Colorado gave its notice the week before, while USC and UCLA fled last year. The moves are expected to go through in 2024, after the upcoming academic year, leaving only four schools standing: Cal, Stanford, Washington State and Oregon State.
This exodus of teams from the “Conference of Champions,” anchored in the promise of more television money, may solidify the 108-year-old conference’s dissolution next summer.
Montgomery is one of thousands of other fans devastated by the upheaval and left fearing that the Bay Area’s two most storied college sports programs could be left without a conference to call home, spelling the end of longtime traditions and rivalries thickly woven up and down the West Coast.
And at no time is that Cal-Stanford rivalry on more resplendent display than during the Big Game, a 130-year tradition where the two football teams battle and the victor walks away with the coveted trophy: the Stanford Axe.
“This is just such a blow to the face — we’ve taken that fabric and put it through the shredder,” Montgomery said Saturday morning. “It’s not just that Cal and Stanford are being left by the side of the road — even though there’s definitely indignity about that — but everything seems to be getting blown up, even things that you think are foundational.”
The financial implications could also be huge.
Can the two universities maintain competitive football and basketball programs without the massive revenue that comes with being in a top conference? Will that loss of revenue force cuts to their Olympic sports and other athletic departments? And will the schools — which count Alex Morgan, Marshawn Lynch, Tiger Woods, Natalie Coughlin, Jennifer Azzi and Katie Ledecky as just a few the star former student-athletes — remain prime destinations for collegiate talent?
While a new conference or independent status could give Cal’s recently lackluster football and basketball teams a leg up on the competition, the fact that fans and players alike are now left in the dark about the university’s sports future has emerged as one of the most disappointing elements of the shakeup.
“Cal never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity,” Montgomery said. “College football is about the traditions and alliances between the school, the alumni, the students and the community. If you take away those things, then people start judging you just based on the product you have in the arena or on the field, and there’s really no reason for us to go to those games.”
Ed Mitchell, a Cal alum and longtime football season ticket holder, said he saw the writing on the wall after USC and UCLA left and rumors picked up about more schools leaving.
“I’m shocked at the speed with which everything is unraveling, but I’m not surprised something like this was going to happen,” he said.
Whatever’s next for the conference, William Eggers, a decathlete and volunteer track coach with Stanford, expects the school’s track program to remain a powerhouse thanks to its reputation for churning out pro runners and Olympians.
But Eggers said the Pac-12 schools fleeing the conference to land more lucrative TV deals remains frustrating.
“Let’s be honest, it’s about football, right? Sports like track that don’t bring in money get pushed to the wayside a little bit,” he said.
Eggers is hopeful the school, with its multi-billion dollar endowment, can still find the money to support the program. And he’s optimistic other top teams will continue scheduling meets with Stanford. Still, the news is hard to fathom.
“It’s crazy man,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine a ‘Power Five’ conference just disappearing, but it could happen.”
Denis Cuff, a Stanford alumn and 15-year season ticket holder for the Cardinal football team, is also disappointed his alma mater doesn’t seem to prioritize its smaller sports programs, which more consistently produce national champions and Olympians.
“There’s a little resentment in that football — a sport that the average American cannot do because it’s too rigorous or risky — is the one that is driving a lot of decisions about all these other sports that people can do for life,” said Cuff, a former news reporter for the East Bay Times.
Instead, he believes the country would be better off, culturally, if college conferences put more focus on offering sports that are accessible to more people.
“It seems like the climate of the land now is that money counts and commercialization is driving these sports decisions,” he said.
Mitchell is holding out hope the Cal Golden Bears will end up joining either the Big Ten or Big 12. But either way, he sees next season — the last with all 12 teams still in the conference — as an opportunity.
“I’m hoping the football players who are sticking around for this year realize this is a chance to stick it to teams and schools across the country with a good year,” he said.