Conference Realignment Doomsday

Thanks for nothing, Larry Scott

Well... this sucks. A week after everyone on the West coast was watering at the mouth over the prospect of Texas joining the Pac-10, our hopes and dreams were squashed by the Big 12 arranging a sweetheart deal to the Longhorns to keep the conference together. It's pathetic how much of a stranglehold on the conference the other Big 12 schools were willing to give Texas. I would be embarrassed if I was a fan of any Big 12 school other than Texas, as they all were basically admitting that they were willing to do anything to be associated with Texas. They're like the guy at the party who screams "That's my best friend!" from across the room as Texas performs a killer keg stand.

So now we're left with the deplorable situation of inviting in Colorado and Utah into the conference. Yeah, those two athletic powerhouses. Colorado's athletics have done nothing in our lifetimes, and Utah is only known for their perennial complain-fest at the end of each football season lamenting the fact that they aren't in a bigger conference. Well, now they've finally made it, and we get to see them leach off the revenue shares of the more successful programs in the conference.

Northwest fans are also now faced with unbearable situation of being put in a different conference than the LA schools, which puts a significant dent in our marketability to recruits. If we are cut off from LA, expect more idiots like Terrence Jones to do the hat trick routine at press conferences and think that they need to go to other conferences with bigger markets. If Colorado ends up in the same division as USC then that's a travesty, because they bring a laughable program to the table and have none of the tradition of schools like U-Dub, U of O, or Cal.

Even worse- the Pac-10 basketball schedule, which used to be the ideal "round robin" (each team plays each other home and away), will no longer exist. I was willing to put up with this if programs like Texas and Oklahoma were added to the mix, but now we have to stomach the loss of a round robin schedule so that storied basketball programs like Colorado join the conference. This is literally a worst-case scenario. The only positive is that overall, the Pac-10 will probably get more money, but adding Colorado and Utah does nothing in terms of our ambitions to be looked at on the same level as the SEC in football (note: SEC basketball is a joke, still).