To say I was shocked upon hearing the that the conference my university represented was imploding would have been an understatement. Before the day was done, both Arizona schools and Utah requested to be put into the Big 12 after Oregon and University of Washington were invited into the Big Ten, leaving four schools, Cal Berkley, Stanford, Oregon State and WSU to fend for themselves.
By Monday evening reports came in that certain people in the ACC were thinking of inviting Stanford and Cal to their conference. At this point it is just rumors circulating that this might be the future, if this, that, and the other occurs.
If that should happen, of course, Oregon State and Washington State would either be stuck in limbo or have their respective athletic directors find a new conference themselves, leaving the Pac 12 the dinosaur distinction of historical archives.
How did this happen? In its most simplest terms, money is what drove this decision. Television, and most importantly football that is televised brings in the lion’s share of the cash for these schools. The other sports programs don’t compare.
The problem of realigning Washington State and Oregon State with other conferences is that they’re too big for most of the conferences in the west with the exception of Mountain West, that we would compete with Boise State, Air Force and UNLV. Is that going to be the answer? Then what happens ten more years down the road when another sudden realignment shift occurs? Like the automobile industry, are university programs going to be just three mega-conferences, like monstrous krakens covering this country just for the pure sinful pleasure of greedy athletic directors and television executives?
Unfortunately, this appears where this country’s university programs are headed, academia be damned.
Jerry Schellhammer 