Pac-12 announces location for 2023 championship game

The Pac-12 Conference announced Thursday that they will be extending their deal with Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas to host the Pac-12 Football Championship Game through 2023. The partnership started last year, with the 2021 conference championship game being the debut season of what will now be a three-year partnership between the conference, Allegiant Stadium, and MGM.

“As the sports and entertainment capital of the world, Las Vegas has been an amazing home for our premier Pac-12 events and Allegiant Stadium is an amazing setting to host our football championship for our teams, student-athletes and fans,”  George Kliavkoff, Pac-12 Commissioner, said.

Last season’s Pac-12 Championship game broke the neutral site attendance record for the event with 56,511 fans in attendance, with the conference recently announcing that this year’s matchup has sold out and is expected to break that record.

No. 4 USC will take on No. 11 Utah in this year’s edition of the Pac-12 Championship game this Friday at 8:00 p.m. ET on FOX in a rematch of one of college football’s most exciting regular season games.

Paul Finebaum previews how Oregon, Washington could play into future expansion

NIL and the transfer portal are present changes that have already made a strong impact on the college sports landscape, but future moves regarding conference realignment will be the next big change. With Texas and Oklahoma already slated to move to the SEC, and USC and UCLA to the Big Ten, many are wondering what other teams can be calling a new conference their home in the upcoming years. ESPN college football analyst Paul Finebaum shared which programs he believes may be next on his most recent appearance on the Dan Patrick Show.

“You look at Oregon and Washington, they’re a natural geographical fit to the Big Ten now,” Finebaum said. “I think right now none of that matters.”

In years past programs on the west coast seemed highly unlikely to join conferences based out of the east, but the Big Ten’s move to add USC and UCLA to their conference has erased borders, expanding their footprint from Los Angeles, California to Piscataway, New Jersey. The additions of Oregon and Washington would certainly help spread the Big Ten’s footprint, and according to Finebaum so can the nuances in how college football will be consumed in the future.

“I mean we used to talk 10, 15 years ago TV footprint, that doesn’t matter in the streaming world,” Finebaum said. “And I think Amazon remains a major player here to help supplement the Big Ten, I frankly think the Big Ten will perhaps go after Oregon and Washington before they’re done.”

Patrick countered, asking why a team like Oregon would leave a conference like the Pac-12 where they can remain dominant and have an increased chance to make the College Football Playoff, but both understood that future playoff expansion will alter that reality.

“But Dan we are going to a 12 sometime as soon as this committee of geniuses stops talking about how difficult it is, it could come as early as ’24, I think it will come no later than ’25,” Finebaum said.