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As UW Enters CFP Spotlight, It's RIP Pac-12 and Thanks For the Memories

Legendary USC tailback Marcus Allen was in attendance for the final Pac-12 championship game between Washington and Oregon, wandering the floor of splashy
Dan Raley|
As UW Enters CFP Spotlight, It's RIP Pac-12 and Thanks For the Memories
As UW Enters CFP Spotlight, It's RIP Pac-12 and Thanks For the Memories

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Washington Huskies

Legendary USC tailback Marcus Allen was in attendance for the final Pac-12 championship game between Washington and Oregon, wandering the floor of splashy Allegiant Stadium and taking it all in. 

League commissioner George Kliavkoff was noticeably subdued as he presided over a league in which most of it getting ready to desert him, but he was there just the same.

Amazingly, one-time all-world Husky defensive tackle Steve Emtman, previously estranged from the UW football program, showed up and was photographed enjoying himself in a stadium suite, sharing in party festivities. 

These were some of the last vestiges of a once-proud, 100-year-old conference winding down its football offerings, with the Huskies and Ducks putting on an impressive show last Friday in a game won by the UW 34-31. 

Husky coach Kalen DeBoer, part of the Pac-12 for just two seasons before everything came undone and 10 of the dozen conference members fled to three other conferences to save themselves, was asked for a postgame eulogy to size up the league's accomplishments. 

"Just the historic tradition of what this conference has done, the great teams throughout all the years — we've had many of 'em at U-Dub, historic moments there, conference championships, national championships," DeBoer said. "It is sad to see it happen, that this is the last football game."

As Pac-12 members, eight schools still have bowls to play against others under that conference banner stretching from Seattle to Tucson.

They'll go out knowing the league collectively was as good as it's ever been to the bitter end, with two-thirds of the final lineup finding its way into the polls, beating each other and walking away proud.

The competition has made the Huskies' spotless 13-0 run look all that much better because it largely came against high-quality players.

"I think the other part is, just understanding how strong the conference was this year," DeBoer said. "There were eight teams at one point I believe that were ranked in the top 25. We played the best ones. We played one of 'em twice. I don't think there's anyone else in the country that's gone through what we went through."

With the head-to-head football competition a wrap, positive developments recently emerged whereas Pac-12 survivors Washington State and Oregon State have reached much-needed agreements to play schedules heavy with Mountain West opponents, and negotiations were successful in preserving the Apple Cup and Civil War rivalry games against the UW and Oregon, respectively.

The Northwest always has been a football entity all to itself, and while the Huskies will continue to play the Ducks in the Big Ten and the Cougars in the Apple Cup, there is ready outlet for maintaining a football relationship with Oregon State, which is unfortunate.

The Beavers (8-4) have suffered the most in this radical Pac-12 realignment in losing head coach Jonathan Smith to Michigan State, and quarterbacks DJ Uiagalelei and Aidan Chiles to the transfer portal.

For everyone, foremost the Huskies, it's sad to see Pac-12 football tradition, so customized in so many different parts of the region, simply disappear. It will be up to the individual football programs to remember what once took place.

"The rivalries that are built in, each team kind of has those within the conference," DeBoer said. "There's been so many big games, so many great players that have stepped on the football field. I know I vowed to make sure the guys that won championships for us and had those great individual and team efforts, we'll always remember and make sure we celebrate those teams that did great things, that got us to having the program that we have today."

As the Huskies try to run the table of college football, they need just two more wins to be the conference's first and only national champion to come through the playoff system,

DeBoer was quick to credit the Pac-12 with preparing his Huskies for the challenge ahead, with making them a serious contender in his eyes. 

"This team, OK, can do it because we have all those different pieces," he said. "We've got a defense that will take advantage of opportunity and we have an offense you can get in a fast track like we had tonight, you see how explosive they can be. We can do it in the air and on the ground.

"Bring it back to the Pac-12, and we did it against one of the best years ever the Pac-12 has had when it comes to the depth of the league."

Should the Huskies win out, it would be a fitting end to the Pac-12 and probably make everyone wonder out loud why this conference didn't stay together

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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