When the new normal descends and college football awakens, the Pac-12 Networks will encounter the same challenges they have faced in the past, only against the backdrop of pandemic and devastation.

The networks will need to engage their core audience, attract new viewers and promote the conference — all with an elevated sense of humanity.

One analyst can help on every front.

The Pac-12 should add Bill Walton to the football coverage.

Whenever the season begins … whether it’s September or November or January … the networks should use Walton as the third voice in the booth for one game each week.

Let Walton be Walton for three-and-a-half hours rather than two

Let Walton talk about the books he’s read and the places he’s been and the people he’s met on a Saturday instead of a Wednesday or Thursday.

Let him utter the phrase ‘Conference of Champions’ over and over (and over, and over) to a far larger and wider audience than the networks generate for their basketball broadcasts.

Walton’s style — his trips over the rails and through a wormhole and into a dimension that only he has explored — isn’t always for everyone:

Not every viewer cares about the time he saw Joan Baez live in ’75 or biked through the Cascades when it’s tied with two minutes left.

But because he can be silly and serious, because his life experiences are so immense, because he has such a profound love for living, Walton was made for broadcasting in a post-pandemic world.

(His recent interview with 750TheGame in Portland is a good example.)

Sure, the networks already have analysts; they have a handful of former players who know the game and the teams and the strategies deployed by the coaches and coordinators.

This isn’t about replacing the current analysts. It’s about enhancing the broadcasts, about meeting the moment in time in a manner that fits the Pac-12 ethos.

Nobody in the conference fits the ethos and embraces the mission like Walton. And nobody at the networks can match his platform.

He is, after all, on the short list of greatest players in college basketball history, a Hall of Famer, world champ and former NBA analyst for the major networks.

Yes, he would be a football analyst with no background in football, except nobody would expect (or want) him to break down the stunts and protection schemes.

You add Bill Walton to football booth in order to increase exposure for your No. 1 product and add context to the role sports play in a changed society.

Full disclosure: The Hotline formulated the idea of Walton joining the Pac-12 Networks’ football coverage team before the coronavirus outbreak, before the sports shutdown, because of the added interest he would bring to the broadcasts.

In fact, the last in-person interview we conducted before everything came to a screeching halt was with Walton.

At the conclusion of the opening round of the Pac-12 tournament, as midnight approached and Walton and play-by-play announcer Ted Robinson collected their gear in an empty T-Mobile Arena, I wandered over to the scorer’s table.

Walton had just finished chatting with some fans.

I asked about broadcasting football in the fall.

“I love the job I have,’’ he said, smiling. “I’m not looking to get another job.”

That wasn’t a categorical no, so I followed up.

Another smile.

“I don’t know anything about anything,’’ he said. “I’m not very smart. I don’t think quickly. I have no memory.”

Then he changed the subject.

The next morning, college sports changed.

A month later, with a new normal bearing down, the idea of Walton doing football makes even more sense.

Our guess is that if the conference asked, he would do it. His love for the Pac-12 is too deep, his sense for the moment too strong.

To be clear, we’re not suggesting that the networks take Walton off basketball.

Rather, they should add football to his schedule — and perhaps baseball and softball, too.

As we chatted that night in the empty arena, Robinson reminded me that Walton had stepped outside his broadcasting comfort zone:

He did color commentary last summer for NBC Sports Chicago when the White Sox played the Angels.

We watched the highlights — not of the game but of Walton.

Some snippets:

— “I understand that (baseball) starts, and then you play, but that the offense can’t touch the ball, and that the defense goes first, and that there’s no time limit, and you just go until somebody says it’s over. Sounds very much like a Dead show.”

— “I’m not a very good catcher. I’m much better at getting high than getting low.”

— “Look at him run! That is the epitome of Usain Bolt right there.”

— “That’s Trout?”

— “I apologize to the human race for destroying your broadcast.”

— “Rainbow is my favorite color.”

— “Carnivorous plants: My favorite.”

And that was the first inning.

Just kidding!

Those comments, and so many more, were scattered throughout the broadcast.

But the Hotline is quite serious about Walton calling football for the Pac-12 Networks.

The conference should put its greatest salesman on its chief export in what promises to be a season like no other.

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