Grading the Week: CU, Nebraska, Stanford should be in same conference
We give up. I mean, yeah, everybody got dragged across the Rubicon ages ago, the minute Fox and USC (allegedly) hatched a plan with the Big Ten, let UCLA ride shotgun, and took an almighty howitzer to maps and common sense.
But the dumb keeps getting dumber.
CU-Central Florida? Conference game. Oregon-Rutgers? Conference game. SMU-Boston College? Conference game. Stanford-Virginia Tech? Conference game. As the curtain closes on Summer 2023, Stanford and Cal are bound for the ACC, The Golden Gate Bridge is now an extension of Tobacco Road, and the kids in the GTW offices are measuring the drapes for a cell with padded walls. Yay, realignment!
ACC meets West Coast — F
College sports’ provincial, regional dynamic, one of the tenets that made it unique within American sporting fare, has been replaced by the ethos of “Let’s Be In All Four Time Zones” — which, of course, is code for, “Let’s Be A Junior NFL.” ACC? Junior NFL. Big 12? Junior NFL. SEC? Junior NFL (With only two time zones. For now.) Big Ten? Shameless, two-faced, hypocritical Junior NFL.
And sure, it was inevitable that the latter was going to make a play for both coasts. The crying, screaming shame is that they couldn’t convince their TV partners that there was enough juice west of Gunnison over most or all of the Pac-12, en masse, to create some kind of Super Big Ten.
I mean, imagine a conference that paired the 14 teams from the #B1G with, say, the most appealing 10 departments from what used to be the Pac-12. That’s 24 teams, re-arrangeable into six four-team, NFL-style divisions along the lines of:
B1G Northwest: Washington, Oregon, Cal, Stanford
B1G Southwest: USC, UCLA, Arizona State, Arizona
B1G South: Utah, CU, Nebraska, Iowa
B1G North: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Illinois
B1G Northeast: Michigan, Michigan State, Indiana, Purdue
B1G Southeast: Ohio State, Penn State, Rutgers, Maryland
Six schools each fall can brag about a division championship and put up banners and do a happy dance. (The Huskers probably still wouldn’t win one within this hypothetical, but what the heck, let ‘em dream.) For a championship, the B1G team with the highest CFP ranking plays the Pac-Northwest or Pac-Southwest team with the highest CFP ranking in a little place called the Rose Bowl. No matter how you slice it, this conference is going to account for anywhere from two to five playoff berths anyway depending on the political headwinds. While Salt Lake City to Iowa City is a bit of a stretch, at least these are geographic divisions that made some sense for Olympic sports travel — which almost none of Junior NFLs account for.
Also: CU and Nebraska. Together again. The way the Good Lord and the Sapp Bros. intended.
Instead, Buffs fans are scoping out flights to Cincinnati and Morgantown and Orlando while Stanford faithful are going to try shopping for caviar and avocado toast in Blacksburg, Va., and Winston-Salem, N.C. What a country. What a time.
Oregon State winning the final “classic” Pac-12 football crown — A-
If the Buffs can’t win this league, and we won’t rule anything out after the last nine months, then what the heck? Go Beavs.
After the way Jonathan Smith’s OSU program has been overlooked, abandoned and generally yanked around over the last two months, it would be sweet, poetic justice for lil’ Benny Beaver to snatch the last laugh on his big brothers. Right before he has pull his dam apart, limb by limb, and ship it to the Mountain West.
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