UTES TO PLAY IN PAC-12 SOUTHERN CONFERENCE

The Pac-10 Conference made it official after a unanimous vote by league presidents on Thursday, assigning the Utah Utes to its new South Division for football and announcing an unprecedented plan for equal revenue distribution.

The Utes, however, still will not receive a full share under that agreement until 2014-15, league commissioner Larry Scott confirmed.

“Nothing has changed in terms of our agreement with Utah,” Scott said.

While the rest of the schools will equally share the league’s revenue starting in 2012, the Utes will receive only an increasingly partial share for the first three years of the agreement. If league revenue dips below $170 million in any year, both USC and UCLA will receive an extra $2 million payout, officials 

said.

The league also announced that its football title game will be played at the site of the division champion with the best conference record, and that teams will play a nine-game schedule that includes five games against divisional opponents and four games against teams from the other division.

However, in an effort to maintain longtime rivalries between the four California schools, USC and UCLA will be assured of playing Cal and Stanford each year. That means Cal and Stanford will play only two opponents from the Pac-12 South each year, reducing the frequency with which they will play the Utes.

Scott also said the league continues to examine starting its own television network, and that men’s and women’s basketball teams will play an 18-game schedule with no divisions.

Each team’s schedule will include a home-and-home series with its traditional rival - the Utes and Colorado will be considered rivals and travel partners, for scheduling purposes - a rotating home-and-home series with six teams and a rotating single-game with the remaining four teams.