There's no doubt that academics get's lots of lip service when discussing conference affiliations. Being classified as a tier 1 research institution gets you past the velet rope at the door. But it's still an arbitrary and irrelevant qualifier.
I still have seen nothing that shows how an affiliation with the Pac10 would help CU win research grants or attract top faculty. DiStephano has already said in that ESPN article that CU already has many ties to various Pac10 member school even without the Pac10 conference affiliation.
If the Pac were serious about academics, they'd be courting Cal Poly and Cal Inst of Tech. I have no idea how Arizona, ASU, Washington State or Oregon State are considered more attractive academically than those two brain shops.
Any discussion about academic status is window dressing. The focus in this conference reallignment has everything to do with negotiating attractive network contracts that are competitive with the SEC and Big10.
We can talk all we want about how academics matter in conference decissions, but at the end of the day, it doesn't.
It is what's holding it up with the Pac 10, though. One of their best paths to 16 is to first own the Mountain and Pacific time zones. The way to accomplish that is to take CU (#16 Denver media market), Utah (#31 Salt Lake media market), UNLV (#42 Las Vegas media market), and New Mexico (#44 Albuquerque-Santa Fe media market). These are all growth cities that would expand the Pac's popularity and give it ownership of the West. They are also state universities with large alumni bases. Unfortunately, UNLV and New Mexico aren't meeting the academic criteria necessary to get the votes.
Also, if it was all about the money, the Pac would look to San Diego State and Fresno State to get to 16. As far as media markets, San Diego is #28 and Fresno-Visalia is #55. While they're not necessarily additive since the Pac would already consider itself dominant in those markets, there's also the argument to be made that by taking those 2 schools you cripple the Mountain West's cable network by keeping it out of California and also cripple California recruiting for the MWC and WAC (San Jose State's not gonna get it done and there is literally no one else). Unfortunately, SDSU and FSU have a long way to go before they meet the Pac's academic standards.
Frankly, though, I'd like to see this happen. Maybe Fresno isn't necessary. #55 is a pretty small media market and may not be worth it. There aren't a lot of recruits that come out of that area either. And they're the worst academics of all the programs I mentioned. If I'm calling the shots, I'd leave Fresno alone and target Kansas. They're an outlier since they're in the Central time zone, but they meet all the other requirements I'd be looking for: Tier 1 graduate research, Association of American Universities member, large and successful AD with good football and great basketball, #32 Kansas City media market, long history with Colorado that lends itself to a rivalry (like Denver and KC in the NFL)... and it looks like they'll be left out of Big 10 expansion so their only place to look may be west.
So, reducing the academic requirement a bit, looking to dominate the Western USA for media purposes, and getting to a 16-team conference that could have a 4-team playoff for the conference championship every year in football (like the Big Televen is talking about), here is my 16-team Pac West Conference:
Arizona (#66 Tucson market)
Arizona State (#12 Phoenix market)
Cal (#6 San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose market) + (#20 Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto market)
Colorado (#16 Denver market)
Kansas (#32 Kansas City market)
New Mexico (#44 Albuquerque-Santa Fe market)
Oregon (#22 Portland market) + (#119 Eugene)
Oregon State (#22 Portland market)
San Diego State (#28 San Diego market)
Stanford (#6 San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose market) + (#20 Sacramento-Stockton-Modesto market)
UCLA (#2 Los Angeles market)
UNLV (#42 Las Vegas market)
USC (#2 Los Angeles market)
Utah (#31 Salt Lake City market)
Washington (#13 Seattle-Tacoma market)
Washington State (#75 Spokane market)
That would give the new conference 12 of the Top 50 markets in its direct footprint, complete dominance of the US West, and a number of ancillary Top 150 markets that would be within its footprint and could realistically be expected to carry a Pac-West network on its expanded basic cable (#55 Fresno-Visalia, #69 Wichita-Hutchinson, #71 Honolulu, #92 Colorado Springs-Pueblo, #108 Reno, #112 Boise, #120 Santa Barbara-Santa Maria-San Luis Obispo, #124 Monterey-Salinas, #125 Bakersfield, #126 Yakima-Pasco-Richland-Kennewick, #130 Chico-Redding, #136 Topeka, #140 Medford-Kalamath Falls, #142 Palm Springs and #147 Joplin/MO-Pittsburg/KS).
(P.S. The university I feel kind of bad for in all this talk is Iowa State. They're a good school and an AAU member for academics, have century-long ties to the Big 8 schools in football and an equally long rivalry with Big 10 Iowa, they've been great in Women's basketball, good in Men's basketball, and pretty good in a number of other sports, and have been free of scandal. But the Des Moines-Ames media market is only ranked #72, most of the population in that market is located in U of Iowa-dominated Des Moines, and the Clones are the #3 team in the rest of their small population state (#1 Iowa, #2 Nebraska, #3 Iowa State). Unless UT, OU and TAMU decide to save a weakened Big 12, ISU is destined for mid-major status.)