UCLA forced to pay Cal alimony as part of Pac-12 breakup

Back before the Pac-12 became the Pac-2, the conference's hopes for an intact survival hinged on the University of California system's board of regents.

The Big Ten announced its annexation of Los Angeles in the summer of 2022, and that fall the UC board of regents was openly questioning whether it would allow UCLA to join USC in the B1G, reasoning that the Bruins' move would harm their cousins in Berkeley.

The hope -- prayer, really -- outside the UC system was that if UCLA wasn't allowed to go, USC would get cold feet and the status quo would prevail. “It’s clear that UCLA and USC made a decision for short-term financial gain at the expense of their student-athletes,” Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff said in 2022. “It’s 100 percent clear to me. It’s really unfortunate, and I think they are already regretting it, given the pushback that they’ve gotten from almost every corner of their communities. I think they will regret it more as time goes on.”

My theory all along was that, if UCLA's move was blocked, the Big Ten would've just picked Stanford instead and moved forward with their version of manifest destiny.

The whole thing eventually came to a vote, and on Dec. 14, 2022, by an 11-5 margin the UC board of regents approved of UCLA's move to the Big Ten.

In the months that followed, the Pac-12 failed to secure a satisfactory TV deal that was necessary to the conference's survival, Oregon and Washington agreed to join USC and UCLA in the Big Ten, the Four Corners schools joined the Big 12, and Cal and Stanford joined the ACC (lol). 

Now, weeks before the University of California and the University of California at Los Angeles are set to officially become members of difference conferences for the first time since 1927, the UC board of regents has decided how much alimony the richer party of the divorce has to pay the other.

Dubbed "Calimony," regents ruled that UCLA has to pay Cal $10 million for the next three years. Cal president Michael Drake originally asked for six years of alimony, but regents elected for a 3-year term and will revisit the topic in the summer of 2027. (I think everyone's hoping sanity will prevail by then and UCLA and Cal will have found a way to play each other, and not Rutgers and Syracuse.) One regent suggested reducing the term all the way to one year, according to the San Jose Mercury-News.

UCLA anticipates earning $60 million a year from the Big Ten through the end of the decade, while Cal will not ramp up to a full ACC share until the 2030s begin. Until then, the ACC will only pay the Golden Bears (and Stanford) $10 million a year for the next seven years. (SMU, remember, joined the ACC at no payment for seven years.)

While Calimony will help the Berkeley campus offset the gap for a time, it will place the Los Angeles campus at a significant disadvantage compared to its new Big Ten brethren, including their rivals across town. UCLA already reported a near $37 million budget deficit, per the Mercury News, and estimate $12 million in annual travel costs, along with the human cost of actually traveling to the Midwest and East Coast multiple times per year, per sport.

It's all enough to make someone wonder why we can't just have a conference comprised of 12 major state and private universities located near the Pacific Ocean. 

As always, stay tuned to The Scoop for the latest.