BOULDER — The command center for navigating the Colorado Buffaloes through the pandemic is the home office for one of America’s busiest athletic directors.

Think you haven’t slept much since the coronavirus pandemic hit? Try being CU’s Rick George.

Dating back to March, the 60-year-old George has rarely caught a moment to relax, serving on at least a half-dozen national college athletics committees. He represents the Pac-12 on the Division II Council, helped develop a framework with legislators for athletes to cash in on name, image and likeness changes, and is a member of the College Football Playoff committee.

The Zoom calls never end.

“It����ap funny, there are no hours of the day anymore,” George said. “It����ap 8 o’clock at night and my wife is like: ‘Why are you on the phone?’ … Business.”

George, in his seventh year as CU’s athletic director, has yet to elevate Buffs football to national prominence. However, at a time when uncertainty hangs over the NCAA amid the coronavirus, George has ascended to become among the more prominent behind-the-scenes voices in all of college sports.

“Rick has a great way with people,” said Bill Hancock, executive director of the College Football Playoff. “He listens and uses all that he’s learned to come to a conclusion. Then he speaks his mind. … His experience has served him well at CU. You’re not going to surprise Rick. He’s seen it. He’s been there. He’s done it.”

But no one could see the emergence of COVID-19 and the damage it’s done to collegiate athletics. The initial quake from postponing the football season and limiting fan attendance is testing the financial resolve of programs across the country. Several schools have resorted to cutting non-revenue sports entirely. Budgets are being slashed. A wave of change to the college sports world is building strength.

George has spent the past nine months trying to chart the path forward.

“In our society, when some of our student-athletes weren’t around, there was a pre- 9-11 and a post- 9-11,” George said. “We’ll probably look at it the same with coronavirus. Life is going to look different and we’ve got to be ready to embrace those changes. … It����ap forced us to look at every piece of our business. Do we need this? Do we need to invest more to make this better?”

Search for lost revenue

George’s top priority is ensuring the health and safety of student-athletes. A close second, though, is ensuring the financial viability of the athletic department, which will lose an estimated $12.7 million from the elimination of fans at home football games this fall — in addition to other losses that will cost CU millions more.

The Buffs are searching for new revenue streams, even embracing a connection to sports gambling, something that would’ve been unthinkable just a few years ago.

In September, CU announced a five-year corporate partnership with PointsBet, a global sports betting operator, as the first deal of its kind with an FBS college athletics program. For decades, the NCAA made a strong push against betting on college events. But Colorado legalized sports gambling in May, and the Buffs wasted little time formalizing a partnership.

“It����ap no different than any of our other partnerships that we have with Avery (Brewing) or Coors or Pepsi, or what have you,” George said. “The same elements are in the relationship — it����ap just a different industry that a lot of people aren’t up to speed on. But it����ap one of the best-regulated industries in the country. And we’re going to work very hard with them and with others to ensure that things are going the right way.”

One logical route to making up financial ground is restructuring massive contracts. In 2020, at least 15 head coaches at major FBS programs will earn an annual salary of at least $5 million, . But athletic departments nationwide have already made salary cuts to account for COVID-19.

At CU, new football coach Karl Dorrell, men’s basketball coach Tad Boyle, women’s basketball coach JR Payne, and George have all accepted a 10% pay reduction through the fiscal year. It dropped Dorrell’s salary from $3.2 million to $3.04 million.

Will these cuts become part of a larger financial trend nationally moving forward?

“I hope coronavirus dramatically shifts the business of college athletics, and specifically football, that has made a lot of people a lot of money,” Pac-12 Network football analyst Yogi Roth said. “I would argue a lot of coaches, everywhere in the country in college football, would take a lot less money to coach.”

Meanwhile, the Pac-12 is banking its future economic success on a new TV contract that isn’t set to kick in until 2024 amid the backdrop of a constantly evolving and unpredictable media market. Mix in a global pandemic, , and is it really a safe bet that college football will continue to be a cash cow into the next decade?

The Pac-12 already trailed most of its Power 5 counterparts in annual revenue sharing before the pandemic set in. The Big Ten set a new record for the 2018-19 fiscal year, with $55.6 million in revenue distributed to each member school. The Pac-12 ($32.2M) also trailed the SEC ($45.3M) and Big 12 ($38.2-42M). But Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott remains optimistic that the revenue gap can be narrowed.

“Long-term, we feel we’re very well-placed with all our television rights coming up in 2024, and the value of college sports — football and basketball in particular — continue to rise,” Scott said. “Long-term, we feel very, very good about our competitive position.”

“Transformative shift” ahead

What Scott overlooks, though, is the potential for overwhelming change that uproots the entire system of major college sports as we know it.

Former CU standout Jeremy Bloom sparked the conversation way back in 2002 when he sued the NCAA to continue playing college football while collecting endorsement money from skiing. The rise in athlete activism reached a crescendo in 2020.

Pac-12 and Big Ten athletes successfully lobbied to play a football season and address social issues. Several states, including Colorado, have passed laws that allow college athletes to receive endorsement deals — forcing the NCAA to release its first proposals this week for how to manage NIL changes.

“I don’t think the NCAA is a willing or excited participant in this conversation — their hand is being forced,” Bloom said. “They’re trying to thread the needle here in a way that retains as much control on the revenue aspect of college athletics as possible. … In the not-to-distant future, I’m talking a couple of years, maybe less, there will be University of Colorado athletes signing endorsement deals and getting paid for autograph sessions. That is a transformative shift in the college sports landscape.”

George understands that CU’s surest path to financial stability is returning the football program to national prominence. The Buffs have appeared in one Pac-12 championship game (2016) since officially joining the conference in 2011, which is also their lone winning season over that stretch.

“Eight wins, that, to me, should be the standard there (at CU),” Roth said.

However, the Buffs’ football program has met or exceeded that total just four times (2001, ’02, ’04, ’16) over the past 20 years.

The Buffaloes are placing their collective hopes in Dorrell to finally establish football relevancy. An improbable 2-0 start this season has Ralphie running in the right direction. Dorrell, in his introductory news conference as Buffs head football coach, described CU as “a top-caliber program that has a lot of potential, and I’m excited to return it to that level.”

George remains confident CU has a bright future in the Pac-12.

“We’ve got to get football to where it historically should be,” George said. “I think we’re on track to do that and I want to see that through.”

Can’t steal Traveler? Fine.

Make off with his saddle.

Write a ransom note.

Tell the Men of Troy, “You want it back? You’re going to have to beat us, ya bums.”

When it����ap USC Week, ban — OK, strongly discourage — the wearing of cardinal around Boulder from Sunday through Saturday. Easy peasy. Buffs faithful pretty much know that drill already.

Start a Twitter war with Will Ferrell. Give Matt Leinart the mother of all wedgies. Re-acquaint yourself with USC athletic director Mike Bohn, the former CU AD. Something. Anything. If you can’t come up with a reason to hate on Heritage Hall, give University Park a reason to hate on you. Light a match, cover your ears, and let the fireworks fly.

“I think they should point to USC and say, ‘You are our rival,’” former CU quarterback and Fox Sports analyst Joel Klatt suggested. “Like CU did at a certain point with Bill McCartney and Nebraska. I think that becomes important.”

Can we be real CU fans? A decade into this Pac-12 arrangement, this we-hate-Utah-because-Larry-Scott-told-us-to vibe ain’t sticking. The Buffs-Utes “rivalry” feels like an arranged marriage of geography and political convenience, the new guys being told to go play in the corner and leave the rest of the cool kids alone.

It����ap time to cowboy up against the coolest kid on the block.

Yeah, it sounds crazy. But they said McCartney was nuts, too, four decades ago, when he threw a metaphorical spitball at the Nebraska Cornhuskers — at a time when the Big Red was Alabama North and not Purdue West — and drew a line just east of Alvin, daring Nebraska coach Tom Osborne to cross it.

From 1962-81, a generation, Nebraska won or shared 11 Big Eight titles. The Buffs split one, in 1976, over that same span. In the summer of 1982, the Big Red had beaten CU 14 consecutive times and 19 out of 20. In four scraps from 1978-81, Nebraska had thumped CU by an average score of 49-8.

While Osborne seemed mildly bemused by the whole thing, the way a big brother is whenever baby brother declares war, McCartney was deadly serious.

Even if his own staff thought it was a little loopy, even if the hate was completely one-sided initially, it got to the point where Buffs players believed it. Not only believed it, but passed that hate down from class to class like a cherished heirloom.

“It was a daily mission,” former CU All-American wideout Michael Westbrook told me. “When we were in the weight room or in recruiting meetings, it was, ‘How are we going to beat Nebraska?'”

It took five seasons, and a lot of baking that hate into a program’s DNA, but the worm eventually started to turn. In October 1986, CU beat Nebraska for the first time since 1967. The teams would split the next four matchups, with the Buffs winning back-to-back meetings in 1989 and 1990 — the program’s first consecutive victories over the Big Red since 1960 and 1961.

The trouble with chucking a recyclable at Oregon, which swings the Pac-12’s biggest stick, is that the Buffs don’t play the Ducks every autumn. And while Utah might share our border to the west, hard-core Utes prefer to save their best bile for BYU and the Holy War.

In terms of profile, USC is an ideal target for punching up: It����ap got an iconic brand, regional cache, storied traditions, national championships, Heisman winners, pathos, and, like Nebraska, a fan base that����ap lugging around all kinds of hubris.

And like the Huskers of old, they’ve also had the Buffs despite Clay Helton’s best efforts to loosen that grip. The Men of Troy are 14-0 all-time against CU, 9-0 since the Buffs became Pac-12 brethren. Although three of the last five showdowns have been decided by four points or less, including that gut-punch of a come-from-behind 35-31 Trojans victory at Folsom late last October.

“If I was Colorado, that����ap the way I would do it,” Klatt said. “I would point to USC and say, ‘We’re going to compete with you on the recruiting trail, we’re going to compete with you on the field. You’re the benchmark of the Pac-12, and we’re coming after you.’”

Sometimes, you don’t know if you can win a dang fight unless you pick it. When Mac called out the Big Red, pundits harrumphed. Husker fans laughed.

Many of them still do. Until you point to the scoreboard.

When CU decided to leave the Big 12 for the Pac-12 in 2010, one of the move’s selling points was the promise of a California recruiting gold rush.

The Golden State is home to CU’s largest alumni base outside of Colorado — estimated at roughly 28,000 by Alumni Association director Ryan Chreist — and joining the Pac-12 brought visions of a re-opened recruiting pipeline that would, in turn, lead to a return to national football relevance.

So far, that assumption has turned out to be fool’s gold.

Despite signing a sizable increase in California football recruits since joining the Pac-12, CU’s production on the field has been mediocre, with eight losing seasons since the school officially entered the league in 2011.

“Colorado was a destination place for a lot of top California kids in the early ’90s, while they were cranking out good football teams,” said Bruce Rollinson, the longtime coach at powerhouse Mater Dei in Orange County. “They still have that (notion of) tradition with kids here, but it doesn’t help their situation when they have a one-year coach (Mel Tucker) and he walks out.”

The Buffs had 35 Californians on their 1990 national title team, including pillars such as running back Eric Bieniemy, quarterback Darian Hagan and lineman Joe Garten. That California pipeline continued to feed Bill McCartney’s Buffs with blue-chips through the early ’90s, including the program’s lone Heisman Trophy winner, Rashaan Salaam.

CU didn’t have more than 35 California recruits on its roster again until 2013, and since then the Buffs have averaged 42 per season. But overall instability — following Tucker’s abrupt departure this past winter to Michigan State, Karl Dorrell became the program’s fourth head coach since CU joined the conference — has produced just one winning season in the Pac-12 (10-4 in 2016). California’s blue-chips (four- or five-star recruits) are signing elsewhere.

The increase in the average number of Californians on the roster since joining the Pac-12 is evidence the school is still held in high regard by recruits on the West Coast. Former CU wideout Nelson Spruce, who became the school’s all-time leading receiver during a four-year career from 2012-16, said he wouldn’t have considered the Buffs out of Westlake High School in Los Angeles had they not joined the Pac-12 late in his recruiting process.

“I didn’t follow them at all growing up when they were in the Big-12, but once they joined — and granted that was my only option within the Pac-12 — that was a quick decision for me,” Spruce said. “The ability to play road games in California was part of it. Growing up, UCLA and USC were the schools I mostly followed, so to be able to come back here and play in L.A., and play in front of family in northern California too, that factored in.”

Rollinson said CU is at about “80 or 85” on a scale to 100 in terms of the regard in which California recruits view Boulder. But the coach, whose program produces up to 15 Division I recruits annually, said “that reputation is based on the tradition of the past.”

“I’ve got many players who aren’t going to even consider Colorado — not when the California schools plus Alabama, Oklahoma, etc., are calling,” Rollinson said. “Not yet anyway. That only comes with success.”

Darrin Chiaverini, CU’s recruiting coordinator since 2016, said that after the program’s home state, California, Texas and Arizona are CU’s main recruiting territory. He notes “most of the staff” recruits California in some way. And in Texas — from which CU has plucked recent standouts Steven Montez and Laviska Shenault — Chiaverini said the Buffs have more than doubled their efforts after having single-digit Texans on the roster from 2007-11.

“In terms of traditional recruiting areas, Texas has always been really good to Colorado,” Chiaverini said. “That’s something we’ve gotten back into over the last four cycles… When I came on in 2016, we only had two (recruiters) in Texas — one in Houston and one in Dallas. (Coach Mike MacIntyre) let me revamp it, and we put eight down there — five in Dallas and three in Houston. That allowed us to cover more ground, develop more relationships. We’ve really made a lot of inroads back into that state, which is important.”

Cultivating recruiting success into the win column is something men’s basketball coach Tad Boyle has done well. In the program’s 10 seasons under Boyle in the Pac-12, CU has posted seven 20-win seasons and four NCAA Tournament trips — success that comes, in part, from a measured perspective when Boyle recruits California.

“At CU, to be successful in the long term, you have to be a very good evaluator of talent (because) it’s more of an evaluation job than it is a recruiting job,” Boyle said. “You’re always selling CU and what it has to offer, but in terms of going head-to-head with UCLA on an L.A. kid, you’re not going to win that recruiting battle or the recruiting battle with USC for a kid from L.A… so you have to go to L.A. and you have to find that kid that USC and UCLA don’t think is good enough, a.k.a. (former Buffs star) Spencer Dinwiddie.”

For CU football, Rollinson said re-establishing stability under Dorrell must be a top priority for the Buffs in order to get more blue-chip players in California and beyond. Colorado has signed only three blue-chips since joining the Pac-12, per the 247Sports recruiting database.

“They’ve got to market Karl and they’ve got to re-market the school,” Rollinson said. “If they put Karl on the hot seat in two years, it’s another step back.”

CU athletic director Rick George believes Dorrell, a California native who served as UCLA’s head coach from 2003-07, is well-suited to mine top recruits in his home state.

“Karl’s background there is important and valuable,” said George. “Some of the assistant coaches he hired, and where they’re from, is significant. And having Chiaverini and (assistant coach) Hagan, both West Coast recruiters and guys, is impactful.”

And for Colorado to rise again, the road to success may very well start in California.

“I think we’d all be lying if we didn’t acknowledge the fact that the Pac-12 is at the bottom of the heap for football’s Power 5 conferences,” former CU lineman and local radio host Tyler Polumbus said.

“At the time, (the move) felt like a necessity, but now it feels more like a burden. That makes it even more important to capitalize on the (pipeline) that was part of the original sales pitch. As the former head coach at UCLA, you’d have to imagine (Dorrell) has an incredible network going on with the high school coaches and programs in Southern California. Buff fans certainly hope so.”

CU’s Top Out-of-State Pipelines 

A look at how many Californians and Texans were on each Buffs football roster dating back to 1989.

In that history, the Longhorn Network never happens. Texas and Oklahoma leave the Big 12 for the Pac-10, bringing Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Colorado and one of Texas A&M or Baylor along with them. And Utah is stuck as a big fish in the Mountain West pond — good enough to go toe-to-toe with the big boys, but never quite on equal footing.

Luckily for the Utes, that history never came to pass.

Texas stayed right where it was, as did most of the other Big 12 satellites in its orbit, and Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott was forced to go with his second choice to pair with Colorado to make 12 — its old RMAC rival to the west.

“Let����ap be honest,” former Utah athletic director Chris Hill said during a recent phone interview, “the stars lined up perfectly for us.”

Indeed, of all the schools that found new homes during the last significant period of conference realignment 10 years ago, there’s few that have improved their situation more than the Utes.

In contrast to Colorado, which made a relatively lateral move from one BCS conference to another, Utah “jumped the Grand Canyon” from the Mountain West to the Pac-12, instantly ratcheting up its national profile while aligning itself with the West Coast����ap premier academic institutions. The enthusiasm for the move both in the community and on campus was immediate and dramatic, according to Hill, who served as Utah’s AD from 1987 to 2018.

“Now it����ap Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Seattle (in the Pac-12) as opposed to Albuquerque, Fort Collins and Laramie (in the Mountain West),” Hill said. “It was just a gigantic positive for us… as big as it could get.

“There was no handicap like there was in the Mountain West. We’d start a 100-meter dash and we were 10 meters behind before we started. Now we could look every player in the eye and say, ‘Hey, we can compete for a national championship and not have to get lucky.’”

The Utes’ experience as a Mountain West program, forced to compete with fewer resources, positioned it well for success in the Pac-12.

Prioritizing postseason appearances over conferences titles — the school removed league championship flags at all of its venues — Hill said the Utes initially put most of their resources behind football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball, volleyball and gymnastics in an effort to get their best programs up to Pac-12 snuff.

The results have been mostly positive. Gymnastics has won three conference titles, volleyball has reached the NCAA Tournament five of the past seven seasons and football has claimed the past two South Division championships while going to bowl games seven of the last nine years.

The latter, of course, is what has truly shaped the perception Utah is right where it belongs in the Pac-12. The biggest difference between the Utes and their mountain partners to the east? Stability.

Head coach Kyle Whittingham has led the football program since 2005 — a period that has seen CU cycle through six head coaches. And despite recruiting at a top 30 level just once in 10 years, the Utes have maintained a competitive program that has finished in the AP top 25 four times since 2014.

“I think we’ve met our expectations, and we’ve been good in the big sports,” Hill said.

Pac-12 Network analyst Yogi Roth said the Utes’ model is one the Buffs should try to emulate.

“CU needs to do what Utah does; and that����ap identifying players and developing them when they get there,” Roth said. “ … CU is going to have to identify that three-star player like Utah did with (defensive lineman) Bradlee Anae, (defensive back) Julian Blackmon and some of these guys Utah has developed in the past who weren’t huge recruits.

“I don’t think they can get in the (recruiting) battle consistently with Texas, Texas A&M, Baylor, USC and UW. There are a handful of players they’ll try to steal or flip from them, but with everybody else, it����ap: Do you love football? Or do you just want to make money off your Instagram page?”

Ten years ago, the University of Colorado sold a century of athletic tradition for a spot in the Pac-12.

A decade later, the Buffs find themselves in a hairy situation, with no meaningful rival in a league struggling to maintain its prestige in the big-money sports of football and men’s basketball.

Mike Bohn was the CU athletic director in 2010. He was also Jed Clampett, relentlessly selling the idea that Californy was the place the Buffs ought to be. Swimming pools. Movie stars. Goodbye, Stillwater. Hello, Hollywood.

We were told the Pac-12 had become a better cultural fit for Colorado. And maybe that was the definition of progress in a Rocky Mountain state that preferred to be recognized for aerospace and LoDo nightlife, even if it meant disavowing its hardscrabble past of ore-digging and cowboy bars.

“It was never about any disrespect to any member of the Big 12. It was more about that fundamental positioning and the profile of CU in the West,” Bohn told my Denver Post colleague Sean Keeler.

Ten years ago, I argued long and hard with Bohn that paying a multimillion-dollar exit fee to forsake neighbors in the Big 12 was a mistake unlikely to pay dividends for CU on the field, the court or in the athletic department’s bank account.

A decade later, anyone willing to take an honest look can see a Speedo emblazoned with a Pac-12 logo still looks wrong on Ralphie.

I was lectured 10 years ago that CU had little choice but to bolt for the Pac-12, because the Buffs were not only sick and tired of seeing Kansas State suit up and play C-prep students but those greedy Texas Longhorns always grabbed an unfairly big piece of financial pie.

And one more thing: A regional sports network, promoted by slick-talking Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott, would have CU rolling in dough.

Well, other than trips to Palo Alto, Calif., being a whole lot more scenic than hitting the road for Manhattan, Kan., how’s that working out for you, Buffs?

Since 2011, K-State not only recruited current Broncos offensive lineman and Wiggins High School alum Dalton Risner right out from under CU’s nose, those dastardly Wildcats have made eight bowl appearances to the Buffs’ one.

And should we mention the Big 12 put in excess of $38 million in the coffers of K-State’s athletic department compared to the $32.2 million Colorado took home from the Pac-12 during fiscal year 2018-2019? Or would that be cruel?

The Pac-12 Network Debacle.

That’s how the folly of Scott’s regional sports network has been privately cursed though the years from inside the CU athletic department.

Whether it was former CU football coach Mike MacIntyre griping that having Colorado regularly kick off conference games after 8 p.m. was a disservice to his athletes’ academic health, or the fact a worthy Heisman Trophy campaign for the brilliant 2015 season of Stanford running back Christian McCaffrey got lost in the dead of night, it’s hard to argue the Pac-12 has had the best interest of its student-athletes at heart in a shameless pursuit of TV revenue.

“We feel really entrenched in the Pac-12,” current CU athletic director Rick George insists.

Entrenched? Or stuck?

Bill McCartney became the greatest coach in CU history by picking a fight with the Big Red from Nebraska and winning a national championship in 1990. He turned Boulder into a football beacon luring top-flight recruits from Texas to California, including Alfred Williams and Eric Bieniemy, who won national championship rings.

A decade ago, however, the Buffs wearied of roaming the plains. So they doubled down on monetizing out-of-state tuition from SoCal students without the grades to get in Stanford and checked into the Hotel California, lured by the shimmering lights dangled by Scott, who somehow keeps his job.

Since 2011, Oregon is the only team in a league that touts itself the Conference of Champions that has appeared in the Final Four. The Ducks are also the lone Pac-12 football team to play in the national championship game during that time frame.

A decade ago, McCartney swore to me the move would be a bonanza for the CU football program.

Ten years later, the deal seems more like a boondoggle.

That 1990 national championship seems like a long time ago for the University of California at Boulder.

Banking that a pot of gold, in the form of media dollars, will be landing in the laps of the CU Buffs and their Pac-12 peers as soon as 2023. Or 2024. All he asks is that conference members keep hanging in there, keep gripping to that ledge. Even as the coronavirus threatens to take an aluminum bat to each finger.

“Our primary focus right now is on the (COVID) crisis in front of us, and the health and safety of our student-athletes,” Scott, the Pac-12’s commissioner, told The Denver Post recently. “But more broadly, we’ve been very focused on (any) short-term and long-term efforts we can make to put our schools in the best position possible to financially compete.”

Which was a problem even before COVID-19 wrecked the sports landscape.

Colorado received approximately $32.2 million in revenue distributed from the Pac-12 for the 2019 fiscal year, according to a USA Today report from this past July. But that number is dwarfed by what former Big 12 peers Nebraska ($55.6 million) and Texas A&M ($45.3 million) received from the Big Ten and SEC, respectively, during that same period.

And the numbers for 2020, given the impact of the coronavirus, aren’t expected to be kind, either.

With the failure of the Pac-12 Network to deliver as promised over the past decade, and conference football teams rarely making a national imprint, Scott has come under increased pressure within league circles. Not helping his case is the fact he’s the highest-paid commissioner in college sports, making upwards of $5.4 million a year — a number Scott argues is justified by his dual roles as both the conference’s commissioner and chief executive of the Pac-12 Network.

Making matters worse from a public relations standpoint is that Scott green-lit $4 million in performance bonuses for himself and other league executives after the pandemic hit, . Those came before a second round of furloughs and layoffs that affected at the league’s San Francisco headquarters, decimating both the conference’s digital team and the Pac-12 Network. (Some of the furloughed employees have since been brought back to prepare for the basketball season.)

Of course, Scott has never been shy about compensation. Or ambition.

It was the former professional tennis player and chairman of the Women’s Tennis Association who announced, 10 years ago, that the then-Pac-10 would consider expanding to 16 schools. The conference eventually plucked CU from the Big 12 and Utah from the Mountain West in June 2010.

Nearly a year later in May 2011, Scott helped shepherd a 12-year, $3 billion broadcasting rights deal with ESPN and Fox — the largest deal of its kind at the time for a collegiate conference.

But as bright as the future appeared then for Scott, the Pac-12 and its TV plans, it didn’t take long for dark clouds to form on the horizon.

Pac-12 Network troubles

There are two cardinal sins for a CEO: overpromising and underdelivering, both of which happened with the Pac 12 Network.

The network was birthed in July 2011. About five months later, Scott signed an 11-year lease on a 70,000-square-foot space of pricy downtown San Francisco real estate to house the network and league offices.

While the Big Ten Network partnered with FOX and the SEC Network with ESPN, Scott opted to run and distribute the Pac-12 Network independently — a decision that to date has backfired. At its 2012 launch, the league promised a reach of 48 million homes. The best estimates are that it’s actually seen in fewer than 20 million homes nationwide.

Despite Scott repeatedly touting the channel’s independence as a strength, few are buying that line anymore.

“No media company wanted to partner with the Pac-12 (at the outset) … we weren’t wanted,” a league official , asking for anonymity to protect their job.

Fast forward a decade later, and Scott still has yet to reach a distribution agreement with DirecTV, which reached 16.3 million homes in 2019. The channel was also dropped from AT&T’s U-verse in December 2018.

League athletic directors were told the Pac-12 Network could bring in as much as $3 million to $10 million in annual revenue per school, according to a 2019 investigation by the Mercury News’ Jon Wilner. But that figure had only maxed out to $2.67 million as of 2018, according to league sources in the report. Moreover, internal records showed network revenues from 2014-2018 added up to just $9.7 million total for each conference member, and that’s without subtracting what schools needed to pay in order to buy back local broadcast rights.

More recently, the conference’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has come under scrutiny, as the league followed the Big Ten in canceling its fall football season in early August, then backtracked a month later after the Big Ten did the same. Scott called the — one he did not reveal to athletic directors prior to announcing the partnership — to implement daily testing a “game changer.” But two weeks into the coronavirus-shortened season, four games have already been canceled.

“I don’t know how Larry Scott still has a job, I really don’t,” ESPN/SEC Network commentator Paul Finebaum said. “He’s become a punch line. I don’t know exactly how much of the lack of success for (Pac-12) programs across the board can be laid at his feet. But there’s a lot of it, surely, that can be laid at his footsteps.”

Wrong kind of attention

Scott’s salary, and reported $2.5 million bonus this year, has drawn the wrong kind of attention for a league that consistently underperforms in relation to its Power 5 peers in the two biggest revenue sports — football and men’s basketball.

So, too, does the cost of the league’s headquarters and network, which were rented for $6.9 million in 2019, . By comparison, the Big Ten reportedly pays $1.5 million and the SEC $1 million for annual rent at offices in Rosemont, Ill., and Birmingham, Ala., respectively.

None of which helps the commissioner exude much sympathy from the Buffs’ fan base. Alex Passett, president of the Forever Buffs Kansas City alumni club, provided a simple example of the frustrations he and other CU alums feel, especially if they live outside the league’s footprint. Passett said only three sports bars in the greater Kansas City region, a market with a population of 2.34 million, make the Pac-12 Network available for game-watch parties.

On a scale of 1-5, with “5” being best, the CU alum said he’d grade Scott����ap performance “as a 2.”

“And it really boils down to the fact, for 10 years, CU has been promised money, and fans and alums have been promised DirecTV,” Passett said. “And neither thing has been delivered.”

Scott, meanwhile, continues to preach patience. The Pac-12’s current broadcast deals expire in 2024. Cable-and-satellite services that haven’t embraced the league have also been hemorrhaging subscribers as fans increasingly turn to streaming services. The conference has contracts with two such providers, Sling and fuboTV, and has had talks with digital giants such as Amazon and Facebook in regards to future media rights.

“Long-term, we feel we’re very well-placed with all our television rights coming up in 2024, and the value of college sports — football and basketball in particular — continue to rise,” Scott said. “Long-term, we feel very, very good about our competitive position.”

CU fans will believe it when they can see it. And just like with the Pac-12 Network, it’s easier said than done.

2019 athletic department revenue: $94.9 million

Regular-season conference championships since 2011: 12 (all but one from cross country)

Football record from 2011-19: 39-73 (20-61 Pac-12), 1 bowl bid, 14 NFL draft picks

Men’s basketball record since 2011: 186-120 (84-78 Pac 12), 4 NCAA Tournament berths

Bottom line: The majority of CU’s non-revenue sports have enjoyed success in the Pac-12. However, the football team has mostly floundered during the Buffs’ decade in the conference. CU also recorded the lowest amount of annual revenue compared to fellow Big 12 defectors.

Nebraska

2019 athletic department revenue: $136.2 million

Regular-season conference championships since 2011: 12

Football record from 2011-19: 65-50 (40-36 Big Ten), 6 bowl bids, 20 NFL draft picks

Men’s basketball record since 2011: 135-157 (58-108 Big Ten), 1 NCAA Tournament berth

Bottom line: Joining the Big Ten was a financial boon for Nebraska, but its football team languishes in mediocrity. Big Red basketball is even worse. Nebraska continues to rely on an aging tradition to define most of its athletic success.

Missouri

2019 athletic department revenue: $106.6 million

Regular-season conference championships since 2012: 2 (both from women’s volleyball)

Football record from 2012-19: 58-44 (30-34 SEC), 4 bowl bids, 19 NFL draft picks

Men’s basketball record since 2012: 123-137 (50-94 SEC), 2 NCAA Tournament berths

Bottom line: Missouri football won the SEC East twice (2013-14) but hangs in the shadow of traditional powerhouses. The Tigers’ remaining athletic programs haven’t fared much better. Missouri was more competitive in the Big 12.

Texas A&M

2019 athletic department revenue: $212.7 million

Regular-season conference championships since 2012: 16

Football record since 2012-19: 68-36 (34-30 SEC), 8 bowl bids, 30 NFL draft picks

Men’s basketball record since 2012: 153-112 (72-72 SEC), 2 NCAA Tournament berths

Bottom line: A&M is positioned to become an SEC powerhouse as the only Texas school in the conference with arguably the nation’s top recruiting base in its backyard. The Aggies’ athletic revenue has also skyrocketed in the SEC. Despite lacking football championships, A&M is in a much better place than previously with the Big 12.

* Latest financial information courtesy of USA Today’s database. Statistics compiled from sports-reference.com.

Note: Missouri and Texas A&M did not formally join the SEC until 2012.

Editor’s note: Second installment in series on CU’s move to the Pac-12 a decade ago.

BOULDER — Rick George took long gulps of water from an aluminum bottle in between questions from reporters. But his answers didn’t wander. In fact, the University of Colorado athletic director proved defiant in his optimism during a news conference last winter.

Did football coach Mel Tucker’s departure to Michigan State feel personal?

“I don’t feel jilted at all.”

Where does the program go from here?

“We’re going to go out and hire somebody that shares the same expectations that I do. We’re going to win a championship and we can do that at Colorado with the resources we have.”

While that may be true, losing Tucker after one season represented a stark financial truth for CU a decade after it decided to join the Pac-12: Without the revenue to match many of its Power 5 peers, the Buffs must overcome a growing gap in college football’s arms race, including what it takes to hold on to a hot coach.

Midnight Mel’s disappearing act feels like a lifetime ago with the coronavirus pandemic having infiltrated the sports world the past nine months. Collegiate athletic programs across the country are feeling the financial pinch. When averaging the annual revenue generated from fans on game days over the past three seasons at CU, the Buffs are estimated to lose out on roughly $12.7 million from home football games alone this fall.

However, some schools came into the pandemic more financially immune than others.

Tucker went from being the fourth-lowest paid coach in the Pac-12 ($2.7 million) to earning the 14th-highest FBS salary in the country ($5 million) coaching in the Big Ten. CU hired Karl Dorrell, scheduled to make $3.2 million this season before taking a pay cut due to the coronavirus, and gave him a long leash to turn the program around.

“Even if we were able to match the salary (offered by Michigan State), we wouldn’t have done that,” George told The Post. “We’ve got to determine our priorities. We’re never going to pay our coaches the highest. That����ap just not who we are.”

Cost of winning

Staying true to a program’s identity is noble. Winning championships is more fun. And in the past 10 years, CU has fallen into football irrelevance on a national scale.

Of course, paying a head football coach top dollar doesn’t guarantee titles. But in the Pac-12, head coaches make, on average, far less than their peers in Power 5 conferences. Seventeen head coaches across the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC are better compensated than the Pac-12’s highest-paid coach in 2020: Stanford’s David Shaw ($4.8M). CU’s inability or unwillingness to match Michigan State and keep Tucker speaks to a larger issue of the Pac-12’s current resource disadvantage.

The Big Ten set a new standard for the 2018-19 fiscal year, with roughly $55.6 million in revenue distributed to each member school. The SEC came in second with about $45.3 million per school, followed by the Big 12 ($38.2M-$42M), Pac-12 ($32.2M) and ACC ($27.6M-$34M), . That money not only allows teams to retain coaches, it also funds the increasingly pricey efforts of football programs to recruit nationally for the best talent.

CU’s athletic department reported $775,312 in recruiting expenses for the 2019 fiscal year — a sharp rise from the previous year ($635,077). But that growth falls short of how resources are being spent across the country. SEC schools averaged $1.3 million in football recruiting costs for the 2018 fiscal year, ahead of the Big 12 ($961,981), ACC ($938,424), Big Ten ($855,437), and Pac-12 ($708,750), .

Michigan State’s ability to pluck Tucker from Boulder is just one more example of the Big Ten’s financial superiority to the Pac-12.

RELATED: Larry Scott has CU Buffs, Pac-12 peers playing the long game. But will it pay off?

CU reported $94.9 million in athletics revenue in 2019. Michigan State blew CU away at $140 million. But George told The Post he does not believe the conference revenue gap has impacted CU or the Pac-12’s ability to compete.

“Would I like to have more distribution and be closer to some of our peers? Absolutely,” George said. “There are things that we could do to support our student-athletes maybe even better than we do today. But I don’t think it hurts our ability to play at the highest level. We’ve just got to be smart about how we invest our resources, then go out and play the games.”

It’s a challenge George must bear, but certainly not one of his making.

Conference blunders

In 2012, the Pac-12 entered a landmark 12-year, $3 billion media rights deal with ESPN and Fox Sports to broadcast football and men’s basketball games. The conference also launched the Pac-12 Network for original content — totally independent of major networks.

The , but none were interested, the Oregonian recently reported. Now the network isn’t carrying live football games during this fall’s coronavirus-shortened season as the Pac-12 scrambles to meet its commitments to ESPN and FOX.

“They made a risk when they decided that they were going to do their own network, whereas the Big Ten went with FOX and the SEC and the ACC went with ESPN,” said Chuck Neinas, the interim Big 12 commissioner during conference expansion (2011-12) and a former longtime Big Eight commissioner. “People don’t understand the cost involved. … You’ve got to have the leverage to get clearances. To get exposure and sales, you have to find sponsorships. All those things, the Pac-12 decided they were going to take on themselves.”

The gamble has yet pay off, with the Pac-12 Network’s inability to successfully negotiate a deal with major carrier DirecTV its biggest indictment, and AT&T’s U-verse dropping it in 2018.

Conference leaders also failed to anticipate a meteoric rise in television dollars for college football programming.

Back in 2011, the projected annual revenue distribution per school from the league’s ESPN/Fox Sports television agreement seemed massive at $21 million. Today, that’s small potatoes with the Big Ten topping $50 million in distributions.

The current contract between CBS and the SEC for rights to its “Game of the Week” and conference title game is $55 million annually. When it expires after the 2023 season, ESPN is prepared to pay the SEC $300 million per season for the same rights, . That would be on top of a multi-billion dollar agreement ESPN previously made with the conference to carry other programming and host the SEC Network through 2034.

The Pac-12’s television contracts expire after 2024 with uncertainty over what comes next.

“The biggest question mark for the Pac-12 is the 2024 TV contract,” CU men’s basketball coach Tad Boyle said. “That����ap the unknown and where media is going. There are a lot more questions than there are answers. But it is going to change and I think it����ap going to be interesting to be a part of it.”

The CU football program desperately seeks stability with Dorrell at the helm. But if you ask Martin Greenberg — founder of the National Sports Law Institute at Marquette University — this won’t be the last time Pac-12 schools are poached for head coaches.

Greenberg formerly represented Mark Richt in contract negotiations with Georgia, in addition to a number of high-profile head coaches across college football and basketball. He said programs without the maximum financial resources can still find ways to incentivize coaches to turn down big money elsewhere; with contract amendments such as a longer-term commitment, post-career employment, retention bonuses, additional spousal/family travel, and loosening restrictions on outside income opportunities.

But money talks.

And college football coaches are listening.

“The conferences with greater revenues are going to have much better resources to steal coaches away,” Greenberg said. “It’s just a fact of life.”

THE COST OF COVID-19

What will be the financial toll from an absence of fans at Folsom Field for football games in 2020? The Denver Post created an estimate by averaging the combined revenue generated for sales of tickets, programs, novelties, parking and concessions. Here is the breakdown, courtesy of .

2019

Ticket sales: $11,523,640

Program, novelty, parking and concession sales: $1,143,245

2018

Ticket sales: $12,070,227

Program, novelty, parking and concession sales: $1,011,845

2017

Ticket sales: $11,459,055

Program, novelty, parking and concession sales: $1,073,596

3-YEAR AVERAGE

Ticket sales: $11,684,307

Program, novelty, parking and concession sales: 1,076,228

Total: $12,760,535

Men’s basketball

Record: 186-120 (84-78 in Pac)
Conference titles: 0 (1 tournament title, 2012)
NCAA Tournament bids: 4 (2012, ’13, ’14, ’16 )
Trending – up: While a long sought-after trip to the Sweet 16 still awaits, there is no questioning the stability Tad Boyle has brought to CU. If not for COVID-19, the Buffs would have had five NCAA tournament trips since moving to the Pac-12 and six 20-plus win seasons. In the 42 years prior to that, CU had only four 20-plus win seasons and two tickets to the Big Dance.

Men’s cross country

Conference titles: 7 (2011, ’12, ’13, ’14, ’15, ’16, ’19)
NCAA meet team bids: 9 (2011-19)
Trending – level: The move west has not stopped the momentum of one of CU’s most successful programs, as the Buffs won back-to-back national championships in 2013-14 after claiming three NCAA titles the decade before (2001, ’04, ’06).

Football

Record: 39-73 (20-61 in Pac)
Conference titles: 0
Bowl bids: 1 (2016 Alamo Bowl)
Trending – down: Things were far from rosy for CU heading into the Pac-12 after the Dan Hawkins era (19-39) torpedoed a long run of success. Even Hawkins’ dreadful five-year tenure saw the same number of bowl bids (1) as the Buffs have had in 9 seasons in the Pac-12.

Golf

Conference titles: 0
NCAA tournament team bids: 2 for women (2012, ’18), 0 for men
Trending – down: The Buffs women have been consistently competitive since 2011, reaching regionals seven times in eight years. The men haven’t had a team make it to the NCAA tournament since 2002.

Track and field

Conference titles: 0
Individual NCAA meet bids (outdoor): 23 for men, 23 for women
Trending – level: The Buffs’ reputation as a premier distance running program is a constant no matter the conference. All but six of the program’s NCAA bids since 2012 came in distance events.

Women’s basketball

Record: 147-140 (50-112 in Pac)
Conference titles: 0
NCAA Tournament bids: 1 (2013)
Trending – down: Playing in perhaps the deepest women’s basketball conference in the country has been an uphill battle for the Buffs, who have finished no better than fourth in the Pac-12. The program’s struggles preceded the move, however, with CU reaching the NCAA tourney just once since Ceal Barry retired as coach in 2005.

Women’s cross country

Conference titles: 4 (2011, ’15, ’16, ’17)
NCAA meet team bids: 9 (2011-19)
Trending – up: The Buffs have finished in the top three nationally four of the past five years, including a national championship in 2018 that also saw Dani Jones claim an individual crown.

Women’s soccer

Record: 99-69-22 (35-49-15 in Pac)
Conference titles: 0
NCAA Tournament bids: 5 (2013, ’14, ’16, ’17, ’19)
Trending – up: With five NCAA tournament trips in the past seven years, the next hurdle for the Buffs is to consistently compete in the upper third of the conference. Their best finish so far? Second in 2016.

Women’s tennis

Record: 76-113 (11-70 in Pac)
Conference titles: 0
NCAA meet team bids: 0
Trending – down: Placed into a much stronger tennis conference — a Pac-12 program has played for the NCAA title each of the past 21 years, winning 13 — the Buffs have struggled. They have finished no better than eighth in the conference standings in eight seasons (2019-20 was canceled midway through due to COVID-19).

Volleyball

Record: 146-140 (67-115 in Pac)
Conference titles: 0
NCAA Tournament bids: 4 (2013, ’14, ’17, ’18)
Trending – level: After winning just one conference match in their first season in the Pac-12, the Buffs have slowly become competitive. While they haven’t quite reached the consistency of the 1990s and early 2000s, the Buffs did notch the program’s fourth Sweet 16 trip in 2017.

Note: Women’s lacrosse and skiing not included. Lacrosse recently became a Pac-12 sport, while skiing competes in its own conference.

In early August, with the college football season dangling by a pinkie, nearly a dozen Pac-12 players emailed a letter to conference commissioner Larry Scott. In it, they offered up a list of demands, pleaded for systemic change in how the conference operated and accused it of putting student-athletes “at needless risk.”

It was a watershed moment in the history of the conference, a landmark in the push for NCAA reform. The letter had 11 signatures, 

Every program, that is, except one: CU-Boulder.

A decade after the Buffs decided to call the Pac-12 home, you still get … moments. Moments when CU, situated nearly 1,250 miles from Pac-12 headquarters in San Francisco, comes off as an afterthought to its league brethren, a distant mountain cousin.

The #WeAreUnited letter from August felt like one. So did the conference’s announcement of a return to fall football on Sept. 24 — a declaration made, awkwardly, on the same day Boulder County announced a ban that kept CU from practicing for two weeks.

Back in 2010, the Buffs’ move to the Pac-12 promised stability. Prestige. A partnership with like-minded universities. And more money than the Big 12 — where the University of Texas pulled the strings — could ever dream of. But the reality has played out differently, with the Buffs an outlier in their new home, unseen by a large swath of the country and trailing their former Big 12 peers in terms of revenue and resources.

“We feel really entrenched in the Pac-12,” CU athletic director Rick George told The Post. “We’ve been there, we feel good about the strides that we’re making. Have we won as many games and contests as we’d like? No. But we’re getting there. Our best days are ahead of us.”

From an academic and cultural standpoint, the Buffs are — and always were — a natural fit within the Pac-12. The past decade has also shown the new league to be less of a boon than it was made out to be 10 years ago. Especially for CU football, which has gone through two head coaches this calendar year and five since 2010.

Last week, the Buffs embarked on their 10th football season as a member of the Pac-12. And what was universally praised as a good idea in June 2010 — fleeing the Big 12 Conference, the spiritual successor to the old Big Eight — has more than a few critics now.

“I wouldn’t say I like it. I think it remains to be seen,” said Fox Sports college football analyst Joel Klatt, a former CU quarterback. “And part of the Pac-12 (concern) is that your exposure is just so poor. They have executed their conference network so poorly that it makes it hard … so it remains to be seen, for me. And I trust (the Buffs) and I want it to work for them, but the conference as a whole, I think, has some real struggles.”

And some grounds, even the higher ones, aren’t always secure. Especially as universities try to navigate the financial blows levied by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Challenges were not obvious”

Mike Bohn was a child of the Big Eight. He could also smell a brush fire from 40 yards out. And the Big 12 in the spring of 2010 kept giving off all the wrong smoke signals.

Missouri wasn’t hiding its disdain for the league. Nebraska was, but everyone behind closed doors knew the Big Red had grown tired of the Longhorns calling the shots.

Bohn, CU’s athletic director in 2010, is a graduate of Boulder High School. And the University of Kansas. The old Big Eight felt like family. And that family was coming apart at the seams. This wasn’t about relations anymore.

It was about survival.

“I began to think about, ‘Well, we’re an outlier ourselves, and this is an opportunity for us to possibly look at something different,’” Bohn, now the athletic director at the University of Southern California, told The Post. “Chancellor (Phil) DiStefano gave (senior associate athletic director) Tom McGrath the autonomy to begin exploring a potential move to the Pac-10. It really was spurred by Missouri. And ironically enough, Mizzou is now in the SEC.”

Hindsight is 20/20, except when it comes to 2010. You ask Bohn to ponder this: What if you knew then what we know now? That CU football, thanks to the Pac-12 Network, would be invisible to two-thirds of the country? Would you still feel, in 2020, that jumping from the Big 12 to the Pac-12 was the right call?

“I do,” Bohn replied. “I really believe, with all my heart, that with the number of (CU) alumni that live in the Pac-12 footprint and the number of potential students in the Pac-12 footprint versus the Big 12 footprint, it����ap dramatically different.”

The shot to CU’s coffers, pre-COVID, was dramatic. (Conversely, not having fans at football games will cost the Buffs an estimated $12.8 million this fall). From 2006 to 2018, the Buffs’ athletic department revenues, adjusted for inflation, went up 60%. Donations to athletics increased 90%. And the Buffs’ annual distribution from television rights deals and postseason events shot up a whopping 164%, according to the Knight Commission database.

But those figures also come with one big caveat: Context. While the Buffs’ cash flow had climbed for 13 years, the jumps aren’t nearly as high as those seen by the Big 12 schools they used to compete against. Former CU rivals such as Iowa State and Kansas State compared to the $32.2 million the Pac-12 distributed to the Buffs, based on tax filings acquired by USA Today.

In the arms race for coaches and recruits, those financial gaps add up. So, too, do the gaps in television eyeballs. The Buffs’ football program since August 2017 has been seen by a TV audience of more than 3 million people only three times — and two of those games were against Nebraska, according to SportsMediaWatch.com.

The Pac-12's football reputation, meanwhile, has continued to slide. In the six years since the College Football Playoff was instituted, the "Conference of Champions" has placed its champion in the four-team bracket just twice.

Since beginning league play in 2011, the Buffs have produced one season with a winning record -- a 10-4 mark in 2016 — while finishing in the South division basement six times.

“The challenges of the Pac-12 in football were not obvious at the time,” said ESPN's Chris Fowler, a CU graduate. “Maybe people had expectations ... I think there's concern for every team in the conference that the gap in revenue is real, and it has an impact on the school's ability to compete. We saw that in The Mel Tucker Situation, among other factors."

Ah, yes. The Mel Tucker Situation.

This past February, CU became the latest epicenter for growing frustrations over the conference's direction under Commissioner Larry Scott. When Tucker, the Buffs' football coach, resigned after only 14 months on the job to take the same position at Michigan State, it underscored the limitations for Pac-12 football programs in comparison to the rest of major college football.

Despite being the fourth most-prestigious program in the Big Ten’s stacked East division, the Spartans were able to more than double Tucker’s 2019 CU salary (from a reported $2.4 million in Boulder to $5.5 million in East Lansing) in a far less expensive market.

Even the conference’s old-money club came away embarrassed. During an interview in late February, just a few weeks before COVID-19 hit, Bohn described the state of the Pac-12 as “really tender.”

The former CU athletic director has since walked that comment back. But the sentiment, that tenderness, still lingers.

“Geographically, it makes a lot of sense”

Bohn now swears that CU’s best Pac-12 days are waiting on the other side of the pandemic, whenever that day comes.

That the change in leagues wasn’t just about safety. It was about identity. Getting the Buffs closer to where their fans -- and those fans’ dollars — called home.

“Your out-of-state students that were attending Colorado, 15% were from California," Bohn said. "It was never about any disrespect to any member of the Big 12. It was more about that fundamental positioning and the profile of CU in the West."

And the Buffs' arrow has pointed west for decades. According to university data, roughly 42% of undergraduates who enrolled during the fall semester of 2019 hailed from another state. In 2020, were California natives.

“Geographically, (the Pac-12) makes a lot of sense,” said George, who was hired as Bohn’s successor in 2013. “Los Angeles is an area that we recruit consistently, as we do in San Francisco. And now Arizona is becoming such a hotbed from a recruiting standpoint. So I think from that perspective, it����ap been really good.”

RELATED: A program-by-program look at how CU athletics has fared in the Pac-12

CU had nearly taken the plunge before, when the Pac-10 invited the school to be its 11th member back in 1994, but the switch was rejected by the CU Board of Regents a few days before Christmas.

“There was a poster when I was in school,” recalled Alex Passett, Class of ’86 and now president of Forever Buffs Kansas City. “This poster showed the state of California as this huge (caricature) on this map. And it showed all of the different UC schools in California. And then it showed this huge (caricature) of Colorado. And underneath Boulder it read, ‘The University of California at Boulder.’”

Even though he's at the epicenter of CU’s old conference home in greater Kansas City, Passett understands full well where Bohn and George were coming from. The Buffs alum recalled suggesting out loud, that CU should consider jumping to the Pac-10 during a 2009 meeting of alumni chairs at the Koenig Alumni Center.

“I said, ‘This is going to sound stupid coming from a guy running the Kansas City club, but (CU) should take a look at moving to the Pac-10,’” Passett recalled. “We’d said, ‘We know that it����ap going to potentially hurt our club, but (the Buffs) ought to look. It might be a good thing.'"

For a few years, it was a great thing.

The Pac-12 held all the cards. CU and fellow newbie Utah bridged the Front Range to the coast. The league’s 12-year, $3 billion television rights deal signed in 2012 was the largest in college sports at the time. And those television revenues were being distributed equally, which hadn't been the case in the Big 12. On the academic and research side, the Buffs were going from a conference in which few institutions were also members of the prestigious Association of American Universities to a league in which nine out of 12 schools, including CU, boasted membership to the AAU.

"We did get what we were promised,” Buffs' chancellor Phil DiStefano told The Post.

The perception was that the Buffs had hit the trifecta: They'd found stability. They'd found financial security. They'd even found their tribe.

“My feeling is that public institutions should be linked to conferences that are in the region where they a) get their students; and b) their alumni live and work,” offered former Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe, who was running the league when some of its most critical members were running away from it. “And Colorado is maybe the only (Big 12 defector) that really did that. That Colorado left the Big 12 makes sense.”

RELATED: How the CU Buffs have fared compared to their fellow Big 12 departures

It just hasn't added up to as many dollars and cents as other major college football conferences have enjoyed. According to the USA Today report on 2019 fiscal year tax data, trailed the Big Ten ($55.6 million), the home of ex-CU rival Nebraska; the SEC ($45.3 million); and the Big 12 ($38.2-$42 million).

The Pac-12’s current broadcast deals -- the ones that got lapped by the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC — expire in 2024. Conference officials are stoked for another turn at the trough, another chance to set the bar. And, at CU, to set the Buffs up for generations to come.

“This next round of television negotiation is critical for everyone, including CU,” Bohn said. “And I think that a 10-year look at the decision is probably not as revealing as being able to (look) back at it over the next 25. And the next 50.”