What Should the UW Do For a Conference? Here's a Super Idea
The Pac-12 Conference is teetering, no question. It's been the victim of its own neglect, fostered by a pair of ineffectual and apparently clueless commissioners, topped off by power plays put in motion elsewhere by the rich and powerful unconcerned if they push anyone else over the edge. No one seems to care one whit about the overall health of college football.
An even playing field disappeared long ago for the NCAA game, with rampant rules-breaking in certain parts of the country replaced by legalized cheating everywhere with the advent of unsupervised name, image and likeness deals manufactured however anyone sees fit. Let the roster raiding begin.
Furthermore, Tennessee — which put the T in cheating — just got slapped with 200 violations yet will be eligible for the next round of bowl games and the playoff system, which is all any of its fans really care about. Its $8 million fine is almost laughable because the Volunteers can just pass the hat in Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis until the funds materialize.
Yes sir, SEC football is far superior to everyone in just about every facet of the game, which includes masterful rules-bending without much in the way of repercussions.
Which brings us to the Pac-12, which has had its carcass picked over this past year like some helpless moose mauled to death by a more vicious grizzly bear.
In Seattle, the question persists: What will happen to the long-proud University of Washington football team, as well as its other sporting ventures?
Will it end up in the Big Ten? Big 12? Or stay in the incredibly shrinking Pac-12?
Will the westernmost college conference ever get a football media rights deal put together or will it simply be relegated to showing two-minute game highlight clips on Instagram reels or on the artist formerly known as Twitter, of course, should you pay the Elon Musk extortion fee with the latter?
Here's a thought, actually one promoted when the realignment land grab of willing college football programs first began without any apologies five decades ago — the big and all-encompassing super conference.
Seventy-five teams strong.
Broken up into divisions, geographical if preferred.
Another NFL, only double the membership.
With a more super Super Bowl.
Everything and everyone bought and paid for by the networks.
It's unclear how long this college football masterplan might take to put in motion, but everything always has pointed to this model, and still does.
It's probably just a matter of time before all of the other fringe teams are priced out of college football's behemoth level, with the top 75 only playing each other, and something like a stirring Montana upset of Washington becomes forever impossible to pull off let alone schedule such a matchup.
For the time being, the Huskies would best be advised to stay put in the Pac-12 and hang with the Oregons and Utahs of the world and whatever revised conference configuration shakes out for the short term and take advantage of the fast coming easier entry into the playoff system.
Just like basketball's Final Four, winning it all is probably out of the question for the Pac-12, but just being involved in the postseason is enough of a sense of accomplishment.
League officials should simply rename everything from Seattle to Tucson as the Pacific Coast Conference, which was done away with in the 1950s after a flurry of cheating from Seattle to Los Angeles that really did nothing to the league except re-identify it. Get the numbers out of it as membership fluctuates.
If all of this is sounds overly cynical, well, it is. Because no one in Tuscaloosa, Columbus, Norman or Knoxville could care less about what happens to college football in Seattle. One big super conference has, and always will be, the inevitability.
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