It’s called the Power Five — the five biggest conferences in college athletics in general, and college football (which pays the bills) in specific. The ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-12 and SEC.
Increasingly, and without an end in sight, that characterization sounds like a polite form of inclusion than anything based in reality.
The Pac-12 has a big problem — Big Ten for one. SEC, for another. The gap between the financial resources of those conferences (and to a lesser degree the ACC and Big 12) and their western “peer” is so great that equal footing appears to be a fleeting mirage.