The college football that we know and love is gone.
The sport had been trending in that direction since Texas and Oklahoma bolted for the SEC last year, but the move by USC and UCLA to join the Big Ten put the final nail in the sport’s coffin.
The two schools will officially join the Big Ten in 2024. Subsequently, the Pac-12 will almost assuredly collapse and the conference’s remaining schools will be left in the dust.
This is tearing apart at what makes — or made — college football so great. The regionality and conference rivalries were more passionate than in any other sports league. On the street where I live, in a small town in Washington state, there are Beavers, Ducks, Cougars, Huskies, Golden Bears and Trojans. Most of these schools don’t have a direct rivalry with one another, but best believe there will be friendly animosity between households when these teams face off.
There’s also a common bond in the Pac-12. We root for each other. We know that teams out east will get more priority than our teams, so we stick together. We know that if we don’t have each other’s backs — even our rivals’ — then no one will have ours.
That makes a compelling case to join the teams getting special privilege, but that disrupts exactly what makes college football so unique. Regions come together like in no other league, and places like Pullman, Wash. and Corvallis, Ore. get representation when they may otherwise be ignored entirely.
Now, 10 of the Pac-12 teams I grew up watching are facing relegation to the lower level of college football. Only Oregon and Washington seem to have a shot at getting picked up by one of the two conferences that will have any national relevance in the coming years.
Schools like Oregon State and Washington State are, at best, hoping for a spot in the Big 12 or Mountain West. Even if the Cougs and Beavers stumble their way into the Big 12, that conference will likely have no path to a national championship. The Big Ten and SEC will have a joint monopoly on college football’s top prize.
It’s painful to see.
As a result of the new mega-conferences, national college football writer David Ubben thinks plenty of current college football fans will stop watching the sport. I believe there is some truth to that. Fewer programs will be involved. Fewer cities will be involved. Fewer current fans will be involved.
I’ll admit that consolidating the sport into just two leagues with around 40 teams makes the sport much easier to follow for less devoted fans. That might drive up ratings, even. I’m not naive enough to deny that.
That fact does not make the sport better. The upsets that college football is accustomed to won’t exist anymore once only the premier programs are brought into these major conferences. College football’s absurd features such as Pac-12 After Dark are all but over. Even the weekly win-or-be-eliminated mentality will fall to the wayside now that conference schedules will be almost impossible to get through without at least a couple losses.
And don’t even get me started on the impending abolition of the Rose Bowl, which is — for my money — the greatest sporting event on Earth.
I don’t blame USC and UCLA for this. The SEC forced the Big Ten’s hand when the SEC added Texas and Oklahoma. The Big Ten needed to add teams before the SEC took claim over the best remaining prospects.
Former Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott is another culprit for this change. Scott inked a long-term media rights deal that didn’t compete with the payout of the Big Ten or SEC’s television contracts. USC and UCLA might each earn over $100 million annually in the Big Ten, while their yearly earnings would likely be less than half that if they stayed in the Pac-12. The financial disparity is no joke.
The move is great for USC and UCLA. It’s awful for every other team in the Pac-12. It’s even worse for the sport.
College football will continue, but it just won’t be the same. I don’t have faith that it will keep its aura that distinguishes it from everything else. It was a good run.
It’s time to mourn the Pac-12. Remember the Scooby Wright strip-sack of Marcus Mariota to secure Arizona’s upset over No. 2 Oregon in 2014? Remember when USC was down two scores to Arizona State with 2:52 left and the Trojans went on to win with a Drake London fingertip catch in 2020? Remember when, faced with a 32-point deficit in the third quarter, UCLA put up a monstrous 50-point second half to beat Washington State in 2019?
Yeah, I remember.