We have seen two seasons since the massive conference realignment in college football and as a west coast sports fan I must admit… it worked so much better than I wished it would have. I am still pissed about there not being a PAC-12 for us west coasters. I miss PAC-12 after dark, I miss having our own league that everyone else would shit talk. Now, most of the time we did eat ourselves alive and never had a true top 25 team but when we did it was the most satisfying feeling in the world. Fernando Mendoza was built in the PAC-12, one of the most iconic plays in all of college football when Cal upset Stanford and John Elway in the 1982 big game as the Cal band stormed the field on the last play of the game and the refs actually let the play stand. The PAC-12 gave us players like Elway, Andrew Luck, Vince Young, Reggie Bush, Marcus Mariota, and more.
However, now that it’s been two years without my beloved PAC-12 and we have teams on the west coast playing in the ACC and BIG 10 I must admit, the product is so much better. We have not just one matchup a week that is must watch we have usually an entire slate from noon til 10 ET of top 25 matchups and playoff implications. We also have some new rivalries that are absolutely amazing, I have absolutely fallen in love with the Ohio State and Oregon rivalry since their first meeting in Autzen. Now, I am marrying an Oregon Duck so I do have a bias in that growing rivalry but man I can’t tell you how much I love watching those teams go at it, it’s nothing like the game of course but man it really does feel like they absolutely hate each other and I can’t wait for week 10 of the upcoming season.
My biggest gripe with the realignment so far has been having the lower tiered PAC-12 teams go to the ACC, that absolutely makes zero sense to me. Why the hell is VT traveling to Cal Berkeley to play a conference game this year? It makes absolutely no sense to me. Or why is Stanford going up against teams like FSU and Syracuse? These teams are the sacrificial lambs to pay the dues for making the two super conferences. If we want to have multiple weeks in a row with heavy hitter matchups they had to get rid of the lightweight schools that can’t hang in the weight class. And again, to other people that don’t live on the west coast I am sure it doesn’t matter to you but imagine Alabama or Georgia flying to Oregon every year to play a conference game on the west coast. It just doesn’t make sense even if they are evenly matched, and yes I did just say that Oregon can not only hang in the BIG 10 they can hang in the SEC, especially this new SEC that hasn’t won the natty in three years.
However, I must say this experiment has worked out pretty well and I don’t hate the entire thing. I must say that I love getting to watch so many amazing matchups and even though the matchups don’t always make sense it is fun to see some teams that historically haven’t played each other go at it every year. However, my favorite part is the fact that people now have to admit that the PAC-12 is actually an amazing football conference and there’s no denying it at all. The PAC-12 has performed much better than people thought it would, winning it their inaugural year and overall going 16-12 against historically BIG 10 teams. People will come up with excuses about why that’s the case or say that we haven’t won a natty yet but they can’t argue with the fact that they are just better. Period. End of story. And until the PAC-12 teams finish all at the bottom of the conference standings they have to respect us but honestly I don’t think that’s happening anytime soon. Donte Moore is returning for a second year as a starter under Dan Lanning on an already stacked squad, Lincoln Riley will have Maiava from the start of the season with some limited experience from last year, UCLA seemed to finally figure out how to get going in the right direction late last year, and Washington does seem to be on track starting to head in the right direction and I think they’ll beat everyone at the bottom of the division and finish middle of the park.
So thank you to all the TV executives that made this happen and thank you to all the PAC 12 haters for always keeping us the underdogs so we can upset you every single Saturday.
AVERAGE SPORTS FAN
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