It turns out that alignment and revenue sharing are nowhere near decided as the Pac-12 athletic directors work to figure out how their expanded conference will work. There's been reports indicating a North/South alignment is a "done deal", with the Colorado and Utah joining the Northwest schools in one division and the California and Arizona schools being combined in the other. Multiple athletic directors are flat denying these reports now.
ESPN's Ted Miller put together an extensive breakdown of the conference meetings and gave a status report on the ongoing negotiations.
The general consensus that I can gather from talking to folks in the know is that the athletic directors are going to make discussing revenue sharing the first priority before talking about divisions. There is significant support for adopting the SEC and Big Ten model of equal revenue sharing instead of the current model based on appearances, but that would require sacrifice from the southern California schools, who benefit from the appearance-based model.
Miller continues by saying revenue sharing will be a bargaining chip in divisional alignment talks, something we've assumed from the beginning. However, athletic directors are saying talks of a North/South split is not a done-deal at all.
The moral of the story is that we shouldn't expect any news to show up soon, even though the conference is meeting next weekend. Miller thinks the meeting will result in multiple proposals that will be presented to the chancellors in an October 21st meeting. Only then will we start to get some real answers.
It's going to be a long month for those of us wondering how the new Pac-12 will take shape, but word that equal revenue sharing has plenty of support should be encouraging for Cougs. Now if we could just get a favorable alignment, Pac-10 expansion will go from being good for WSU to being an epic win.