A New Conference Realignment Rumor That Would Kill The Pac-12 Is A Good Reminder Of How Dumb This All Truly Is

Well, here we go again. Now we have another rumor - a common one - that has Oregon and Washington leaving for the Big 10. I'm not here to necessarily talk about that, but rather how miserable conference realignment truly has been. I know it's very much old man yells at clouds, but, shit, my 3.5 year old didn't want to sleep so I'm a little grumpy. Might as well get it all out on the blog.

I say it all the time. Everyone wants to say how great their era was because it's human nature. But we truly killed the greatness of conferences. First off, numbers made sense. The Big 12 had 12 teams, not 10. The Big 10 had 10 teams, not 238 or whatever they are ending up with. The ACC was made up of teams along the Atlantic coast and mid-Atlantic. The Big East was made up of teams that were, you know, in the East. You get the point.

Just looking at the SEC and how I personally feel about Mizzou and A&M in there? Fart noise. I forget about A&M more often than not because Kentucky never plays them. Mizzou is in the East for football and even then it's like oh yeah they are there too. They aren't SEC teams. Just like Colorado isn't a Pac-12 team. Just like Maryland and Rutgers aren't Big 10 teams. 

Chief talked about it here with college football, but it's more than that now. We're a day away from March, conference tournaments have started and none of it makes sense. For decades I grew up with a 9-team ACC. That started on the same day every year. Now we get these two games between teams that are 11-14th in the conference with no shot at doing anything. It feels like a waste. The Big East - while incredibly entertaining basketball this season - was always, ALWAYS, an elite conference tournament. You had Syracuse vs UConn vs Notre Dame vs Pitt - all teams that made sense to be at MSG. Nothing against Xavier, Creighton and Butler but it just looks weird. 

Now to Oregon/Washington specifically? What are we doing here? I know we have USC/UCLA joining and that's dumb as shit. But how does the Pac-12 recover? You're telling me a conference of like Oregon State, Washington State, Arizona, Arizona State, Cal, Stanford, Colorado, Utah and then like San Diego State, Fresno State or something like that works? Hell no. That's not the Pac-10 (12 for the new people). The Pac-12 already is down for basketball, they aren't going to go all-in and take like Gonzaga, SDSU and St. Mary's or something like that. It's going to be the death of the Pac-12. 

I know people like to trash the transfer portal and NIL - but this, the greed of conferences and people in charge- that's what is killing college sports. Rivalries that mattered and were staples of the game - gone. Conference makeup as we knew it - gone. Yeah, things change all the time, but these are things never should have been touched. Conferences were always fine as they were. 

This is just a reminder of how stupid of a time we live in when it comes to college sports.