legislation for expedited consideration in Congress for free-trade agreements, known as fast-track authority, was not coming up for a vote now, according to several people who were in the meeting.

Winning that authority is viewed as necessary for Mr. Obama to extract politically difficult concessions from Japan, Singapore and other Pacific Rim countries. The Trans-Pacific Partnership aims to reduce tariffs on a vast array of goods and services and to harmonize regulations. It would affect 40 percent of America’s exports and imports.

For Mr. Obama, the trade deal would also lend economic substance to a policy on Asia that is otherwise largely about shifting some military forces to the region as a counterweight to a rising China.Sometimes conferences have Golden Ages. Think of the Big East's three Final Four teams in 1985. Or the SEC’s clobbering everyone in recent years in college football.

The Pac-12 is currently not in a Golden Age.

Last winter it was shut out of the college football championship playoff. But it confidently sent out nine of its members into lesser bowl games.

They went 1-8, with the only win coming from Utah in the Heart of Dallas Bowl. Washington State managed to lose the Holiday Bowl to Michigan State by 42-17.

The basketball season has not been delightful either.

Three U.C.L.A. players were arrested in China for shoplifting, leading to an intervention by President Trump. The F.B.I. reportedly launched an investigation into six-figure payments to land star recruits, with Arizona among those programs implicated.