THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Pac-12 free fall could have a safe landing

Call this a bit of dark humor …

A man is pushed off the very top of a 12-story building.

As he sails downward, someone leans out of a sixth-story window and hollers, “You OK?”

And the guy in flight, ground rushing up at him at a startling rate, yells back …

“So far, so good!”

In this little tale starring humans and gravity, the fellow hurtling toward the pavement is Washington State athletics.

Just a month ago, Wazzu was perched comfortably with 11 others on the rooftop of the Pac-12 Conference.

But then, in a stealthy move that can only be described as, um, slimy …

USC (as the lead dog) and UCLA (the pooch following along) shocked the conference, and intercollegiate sports in general, by bolting to the Big Ten — whose closest school to Los Angeles is about 1,500 miles away.

This escape from a conference more than a century old was done entirely in secret, and it was ALL about money.

Every time either of those two schools refers to “student-athletes,” it makes you want to grab one of those airline vomit bags.

The whole thing was despicable.

SADLY, this is the current state of college sports; or more specifically, its two cash cows …

Football and men’s basketball.

(And as for those two cows, always remember that football accounts for about 80 percent of revenue.)

It was almost exactly a year prior to the USC/UCLA escape that, similarly planned and executed in the dead of night, Texas and Oklahoma told the world that they were departing the Big 12 for bigger paydays in the SEC.

Naturally, the staggering question in our neighborhood concerns the fate of the remaining 10 members of the Pac-12 — and particularly Washington State.

Since it doesn’t sit in a huge media market nor have teams vying for national championships in those big-money sports, WSU naturally has reason to feel nervous when schools and conferences start bouncing all over the landscape in search of a buck.

The SEC and the Bigger Ten have the brightest spotlights (and fattest vaults) now pretty much locked up.

The issue beyond that becomes pretty simple …

How does everyone else manage, in this era of huge expenses and the need to find suitable TV deals?

There is a fear among the Cougar Nation that the Pac-12 may not be able to hold together, and if either six or eight of its universities bail out — together or individually — the schools likely to be left out in the cold would be Wazzu and Oregon State.

That assumes, by the way, that state legislatures in Washington and Oregon let their biggest schools walk away while leaving their brothers to feed on scraps.

Hopefully, it never comes to that.

Now, in our little story about the gentleman shoved off the 12-story building, of course he would be Washington State (in the local version).

Since I am a lifetime, card-carrying optimist, I believe there will be fire department rescue crews waiting on the street, and the falling Cougar will be saved.

Everyone will live on, exactly in the way my partner Melissa describes her favorite movies …

HEA.

Happily ever after.

SO, HOW exactly could this play out to the benefit of Washington State when there are wolves waiting in several directions?

Could the Cougs actually be abandoned to play in the Mountain West?

Well, nobody covers the Pac-12 like Jon Wilner of the Bay Area News Group.

Wilner has speculated that the odds the conference will hold together — perhaps with expansion, possibly in mergers with the Big 12 or ACC — are about 60 percent.

There are reasons that percentage actually might rise instead of dropping, too.

The conference is currently negotiating with its media partners, and they have until Aug. 5 to hold their Pac-12 rights.

The alternative is an open market, which is becoming more interesting by the minute — as streaming services like Apple look more and more willing to throw money into sports programming.

Wilner also suggests that believing the Pac-12 might have to go begging to the Big 12 could be a mistake.

He points out that, of the 22 schools remaining in the two conferences, it’s the Pac-12 that holds the two most attractive football programs (Washington and Oregon).

Furthermore, if the Pac-12 expanded to include San Diego State (Fresno State would be the second likely candidate), it would own seven markets with more than a million TV households, compared to just five in the Big 12.

In fact, it could be the Big 12 that has the most to gain by camping on the Pac-12 doorstep — especially since the Big Ten has said it’s done expanding, unless Notre Dame shows an interest.

Naturally, a lot of this belief in the Pac-12 staying together comes from the 10 schools all telling the truth – and living up to their word.

If they do, Washington State is safe.

And by the way …

It deserves to be.

Email: [email protected]

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press three times each week. He also writes Zags Tracker, a commentary on Gonzaga basketball which is published monthly during the offseason, and weekly beginning in October.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”