The gloves came off over the weekend. At Pac-12 Media Day in Los Angeles, league commissioner George Kliavkoff tossed a grenade of his own right back at the Big 12 and its commissioner, accusing the league of trying to destabilize the Pac-12 and shrugging off any concern about league members jumping overboard to head for the Big 12.

In various sit-downs with different media outlets, Kliavkoff expressed confidence that no one would view the Big 12 as an upgrade over the Pac-12, even without USC and UCLA. Asked about Brett Yormark’s comment that the Big 12 was “open for business,” Kliavkoff shot back by saying, “We haven’t decided if we’re going shopping there or not yet.”

New reporting from Pac-12 insider John Canzano on Wednesday seemed to back up Kliavkoff’s confidence. An anonymous Pac-12 athletic director told Canzano the only threat to the Pac-12 at this point in time is the Big Ten.

From Canzano’s report:

Said the AD: “It’s a singular threat—the Big Ten and the Big Ten only. That’s it. The Big 12 threat is laughable.”

…

I floated that Oregon-Washington-Stanford question to a current Big Ten Conference athletic director, who waved it off.

“I think Stanford might be interesting to our conference presidents just because of the academic piece,” he said, “but unless Notre Dame is coming in too, I don’t think further expansion happens in this cycle.”

The Big Ten has signaled that it isn’t necessarily done with conference expansion, but that another move might not exactly be imminent. Meanwhile, the Big 12 has reported interest in poaching the two Arizona schools, Utah, and Colorado after talks of a possible partnership/merger with the Pac-12 fell apart.

Remaining Pac-12 members are in a holding pattern for the time being, whether it’s a school like Oregon waiting on the Big Ten or the group waiting to see what the Pac-12’s next media deal looks like.

Kliavkoff has spent the last month in an exclusive negotiating window with ESPN and FOX seeking out the Pac-12’s next media deal. The current deal expires in 2024, and the window ends on Aug. 4. But it doesn’t sound like clarity is coming on that front any time soon.

“We already have significant interest from potential partners including both incumbents and new traditional television and most importantly digital media partners,” Kliavkoff said at Media Day. “With the value of premium college sports rights continuing to rise, multiple interested media partners and limited opportunities, particularly in the west, we are confident in the long-term value of our rights.

“To set expectations, this process will accelerate after the Big Ten deals are concluded and will likely take months to complete. Even with the loss of our two L.A. schools, we still believe that after the current cycle of media rights deals, we will be very well positioned among the Power Five from a revenue-per-school standpoint.”