This Is The Way The World Ends

Not with a bang, but with a lot of poorly written press releases

The time of death of the Pacific 12 Conference was around 3 p.m. Pacific time Wednesday, when the hounds of hell descended upon the rotten carcass of a conference.

The death blow to the collegiate collective that began business 108 years ago as the Pacific Coast Conference was the cold feet of Colorado Chancellor Phil DiStefano and AD Rick George.

The net result was a hasty decision to retreat to the arms of former used car salesman and current college conference commissioner Brett Yormark.

Who says you can’t go home again?

The Buffs’ will abscond from their 13-year home in the Pac-12 having posted all of one winning campaign in a regular, 12-game season (going 10-4 in 2016 under then-head coach Mike MacIntyre), to go with an all-time W-L record of 48-94 (.338) as a member of the Conference of Champions.

Throw in a men’s basketball team that hasn’t made the Final Four since the Eisenhower administration and you have a rough portrait of an athletics program that’s too big for its britches.

So, how did we get here exactly?

Well, dear reader, the seeds of Wednesday’s shot heard 'round the world of unpaid athletes began roughly a decade ago, when former tennis hack turned Las Vegas suite enthusiast Larry Scott tried and failed to gut the Big-12 of the conference’s marquee brands.

The failure of Scott and company to pry schools like Texas and Oklahoma left the Pac-12 open to continuous body blows (as did Scott’s failure to land the Pac-12 Network on DirecTV and … any other self-respecting provider and … how much space do I have here, again?).

Nonetheless, the seeds of Colorado’s departure from the Pac-12 to their old home on the Plains has been a decade in the making, leaving the husk of the corn that’s left at conference HQ and nine other “CEOs” holding the bag.

So, if CU is so bad at football and other sports, why should we care?

Another solid question, hypothetical reader of this newsletter.

The bottom line, according to conference insiders that actually know how the bacon is made in the East Bay (think John Canzano & Jon Wilner) are reporting that the CU move to the Big-12 could actually be a blessing for what’s left of the conference.

That sounds awfully rosy for a conference that has done nothing but punch itself below the belt time and time again for 10-plus years, but I can see the logic somewhat.

While I’m not sure that a cast of candidates that starts and ends with programs like San Diego State of the Mountain West and SMU of the American is a “trade-up” from the Buffaloes, I can see why getting rid of the headache that is the conference’s No. 1 nostalgia factory would be welcome news across the West.

One way or another, Commissioner George Kliavkoff and his braintrust need to present a viable solution for the remaining members of the Pac-…9 (?), to ensure a united front can withstand the CU defection.

While I have zero faith whatsoever in the Pac-12’s ability to do anything right, it should be noted that the conference is in a similar predicament to what the Big 12 faced when Texas and OU bolted for greener pastures.

For now, the only solution is an actual solution to the Pac-12’s bottomline issues, which starts and ends with Kliavkoff getting a deal done with a respectable TV partner, sooner rather than later.

Until then, the deck chairs on the conference’s luxury ocean liner will continue to grow by the hour, with the usual charlatans throwing gasoline on the Pac-12’s six-alarm PR tire fire.