Later this week, the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC will reveal the TV networks and kickoff times for the first three Saturdays of the season and any special-date matchups throughout the fall.

Which games will be relegated to streaming platforms? How will the Friday night assignments be distributed, especially within the Big Ten? How much airtime with the broadcast networks provide Colorado coach Deion Sanders? Will Fox place any 7:30 p.m. kickoffs (Pacific) on its over-the-air network?

What the release of information on Thursday won’t show: Which West Coast teams have the coveted prime-time slots for mammoth intersection duels destined to draw huge ratings and shape the playoff race.

Because there aren’t any.

For a variety of reasons, Pac-12 legacy schools are not involved in any early-season games that could be deemed must-see affairs.

It’s the slimmest pickings in eons for the region.

The 2025 season has no equivalent of USC vs. LSU, Oregon vs. Georgia, Washington vs. Auburn or Utah vs. Florida.

There isn’t even a version of UCLA vs. LSU or Colorado vs. Nebraska.

In fact, the most interesting early-season matchup might be an affair between former Pac-12 South division foes: Utah opens the season at UCLA.

The game could be slotted in prime-time on Fox’s over-the-air network — as a UCLA home game, it must be shown by the Big Ten’s TV partners (Fox, NBC and CBS) — but it hardly stands as a narrative-shaping affair for the sport writ large.

Certainly, it doesn’t rise to the level of the premier matchups set for Week 1, which features Texas at Ohio State, Alabama at Florida State and LSU at Clemson.

In our view, the most interesting nonconference matchups for teams in the western third of the country come when Boise State and USC visit Notre Dame on Oct. 4 and Oct. 18, respectively.

— Arizona did not know back in 2016, when it scheduled a home-and-home series against Kansas State for 2024-25, that the schools would both be in the Big 12. (The matchup in Tucson on Sept. 12 is considered a nonconference game.)

— Oregon did not know back in 2018, when it scheduled a series with Oklahoma State, that the Cowboys would be coming off a three-win season.

— Washington was scheduled to visit Ohio State this fall for a nonconference duel, but the Buckeyes canceled the series in the winter of 2023, months before UW joined the Big Ten.

There are other factors involved, including longstanding uncertainty over the format of the College Football Playoff and the impact of realignment moves from 2021-23. But nonconference matchups are typically set eight or 10 years in advance, and 2025 ended up drawing the shortest of straws.

The end result? Three weekends of play in which the West Coast is effectively an observer of games that carry the greatest national significance.

Of those 32 nonconference slots, only 10 feature opponents from the power conferences.

Two are the traditional USC and Stanford dates with Notre Dame, and one is an affair between conference foes that doesn’t count toward the league standings (Kansas State at Arizona).

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The other opponents?

No offense, but Georgia Tech, Mississippi State, Minnesota and Oklahoma State aren’t exactly A-listers these days.

You could make a strong case that Georgia Southern’s visit to USC on Sept. 6 is more interesting than most of those listed above.

After all, former Trojans coach Clay Helton is in his fourth season with the Eagles, and the possibility of an upset in the Coliseum, however remote, makes the game worth tracking.

That the matchup stands as one of the best in the West for the opening weeks of 2025 is nobody’s fault but deeply disappointing nonetheless.

*** Note: The Apple Cup and Civil War are scheduled for the fourth weekend of the season and therefore won’t be part of the Thursday announcements. The former is set for CBS at either 4:30 or 5 p.m. The latter has no TV network or kickoff window yet.