I am so pissed right now at college tackle football. Pissed and disgusted.
You can divide college athletic conferences into buyers and sellers. For its entire existence the PAC until this week the PAC was Old Money sitting on a stable portfolio of eight properties. They became grudging buyers only twice snatching up two properties in the Desert in the late '70's, then--thirty-three years later--snagging two more in the Rockies. The Rock could have been the PAC's logo. They were the conference no one left and everyone else in its writ wanted to join. Until this week when the PAC sold its two crown jewels. Now the PAC 12 is wrecked. Lying in the debris field, the Rose Bowl. How did one fucking reporter in do-you-know-the-way-to have this intel before the commissioner of the conference did? Why did the University of California Systems board of regents permit its Westwood campus to murder its Berkeley campus?
The ACC is teetering. How was the ACC commissioner agayne taken by surprise by this Los Angeles earthquake? Everybody in the ACC but North Carolina, Clemson and Notre Dame, from Georgia to
Boston lie as roadkill along the Tobacco Road extension. Florida State
will be alright, they'll land with Clemson in the SEC; Miami, I don't
know.
The Big XII, in all of its incarnations the sellingest conference of 'em all, was on life support last summer. It became a resurgent, aggressive buying conference in one year, adding four good programs after the defections of Oklahoma and Texas and meeting tomorrow with Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado, four more high quality fly-offs from the PAC 12 machine. [That meeting didn't happen. The Big XII is still in aggressive pursuit.-7/6/22 6:59 pm] Two others, Oregon and Washington, waiting with the B1G, the Gavrilo Princip here, on Notre Dame. The rest of the PAC, the lesser Washington, the lesser Oregon, the Bay duo, are homeless.
It's the 2010's all over again.