I came across this while surfing the topic of the PAC-12's new media deal. That is a topic of great interest to me. The future of college sports on the West Coast is at stake. I loved the old Rose Bowl. I loved the PAC, however members they had. "The West" has always pulled Americans, whether that was defined as the Trans-Allegheny, the Trans-Mississippi, the Rocky Mountains or El Dorado: California. It was mysterious and Americans are a curious people. The PAC with its jewel-colored schools, amethyst and emerald in the extreme Northwest, ruby and gold in the Bay Area, gold and sky blue in Southern California beckoned as gemstones strewn along a beach, untouched and there for the taking. So many of us moved to the Pacific Rim states that the country tilted West. Cultural, economic, educational and political trends had their beginnings on the West Coast and bounced back East like an echo. The West became a civilization within a civilization. Dreams will die for me if the PAC-12 dies.
This was not intended to be a post on the PAC but it has become one. Let me yank it back. All of those Okies and Kansans who fled west during the Dust Bowl left behind far less promising areas of the Great Plains for El Dorado. But people remained, and their institutions. They are some of the nicest people I have ever met and their way of life and their institutions, while not glittering like gold for the rest of us, their territory becoming a "fly-over" for the rest of us in fact, is just fine with them. They are happy. The Big XII, the conference of the Midwest, is theirs and they are happy with the Big XII. When the oil schools in Austin and Norman, Oklahoma left they were resilient and added four like-schools. When the two Los Angeles schools left the PAC for the B1G the Big XII beat the PAC to the media rights bargaining table. Now it's the PAC that is getting left behind and may go out of business! But extinction is only the second most dire outcome for the bejeweled schools left behind. Merger with the Big XII is their apocalypse. Berkeley vs Texas Tech? Stanford at Oklahoma State? Egads. I agree with the PAC schools, it is debasing to be contractually bound to associate on big stages with Tech, State and West Virginia, to have to travel to Manhattan, KANSAS to play K-State. But to the people and the institutions in the Big XII it is insulting, and I understand that as well. With too much ado, here is the view from Manhattan, in KANSAS.
