Author’s note: The majority of this…piece…was written in the very early hours of December 2, 2023 (or the very late hours of December 1, 2023, if you believe that the date does not change until you go to sleep and wake up, as many of us night owls do). I have never written a longform piece like this but I felt compelled at the time. I have been mulling over posting this for a while and finally decided to go for it because I hate it a little bit less than the deafening silence of the offseason. I have edited it for clarity since the initial writing, but it remains largely unchanged. 

For your reading (dis)pleasure:

 

The final PAC-12 Championship for college football took place on December 1, 2023. I imagine that there are people who shed real tears because of this, undoubtedly with fond memories of this conference on their minds. I did not shed tears, but it made me think a lot about death. Death is a funny thing. Countless generations have pondered death, developing answers as best they can to the ever-present question of “what comes next?” I have no clue what happens after death, but I think I might know what comes next in this sport.

The schools themselves are not moving. They may be aligned differently in the beautiful mess we call CFB next year, but the campuses will still be there in a very real sense. I can’t imagine what it is like to lose that sense of identity, though. I am a Michigan fan. The Big Ten will probably be one of the last two conferences standing, or a major player in the One True Superconference, when this is all said and done. I don’t think the ultimate singularity of CFB (discussed below) happens tomorrow, but it feels increasingly like we have all witnessed the initial churning of the wheels on a train destined to crash that will result in the death of the other conferences sometime in the distant future, just not today. There is nothing we can do to stop it, and we don’t know when it will happen, but it will happen. What happens after that?

Other conferences have changed their members, reformed, or otherwise disappeared. Schools have shuttered their programs and entire systems of determining champions have been thrown away. So why does this particular death bother me so damn much?

I think it goes back to identity. What made the conference, and really every conference, unique, is the particular combination of regional schools that help show the multifaceted, multicultural nature of our nation. By looking at the fans of each school, a school's brand, and how they retain fans even after decades of mediocrity or worse (I will not name names but a big school that loves red and corn in the middle of the country comes to mind), you can learn a lot about how people from different areas view themselves. When you condense these bits of regionalism into a conference, it creates an entire, for lack of a better word, ~vibe~ that encapsulates a region of the country. To lose something like that over money is somewhat sobering when considering the long-term implication of the trend continuing.

Death is a funny thing in a few ways. Maybe not laugh-out-loud funny, but funny in an odd or peculiar way. I spent hours scrolling the slowly rotting remnants of Twitter (to anyone who thinks I am EVER calling it “X,” I will personally purchase your ticket for the next boat straight to Columbu...er...Hell) posting about this game, which bled into the inevitable remembrance posts of people’s favorite moments of the conference. My love of football did not begin until I entered college in the 2010s, so I am not familiar with many of the moments I can now recognize as beautiful (or beautiful disasters). I was not there to see these PAC-12 moments happen, but I can appreciate why they are beloved and can grieve and remember with those who did bear witness. That peculiar sense of togetherness over something experienced separately and subjectively is an oddity compared to our daily lives.

My dad told me two things about death when I was young that still hold true today (with some paraphrasing): 

1. Funerals are not for the dead, they are for the living.
2. People die twice. Once when they actually die, and once when they are remembered for the last time.

The way the first point translates here is obvious. We all witnessed the start of a funeral that night while watching the game. Death itself was months or even years ago, but, luckily, conferences do not have the decomposition-related smell of actual bodies. The death itself was not pretty. Maybe it was the moment USC and UCLA left over the course of what felt like an 8 hour, rumor-to-reality whirlwind. I am not here to debate specifics. But the start of this funeral? An absolute masterpiece. The game? Exquisite. The transition of my Twitter timeline from the screams of “lulz Oregon” to the highlight posts constructed by everyday lovers of the game instead of the money-hungry networks that killed the conference in the first place? Pitch-perfect. As this is no ordinary funeral, it will likely continue at this rate for weeks (at least until Washington loses horribly in the Rose Bowl to the Ultimate and Righteous Heroes of History, The University of Michigan Wolverines)*. But as all funerals do, it will end. Funerals are for the living, after all. People have to go home, sleep, and get up for work on Monday. This is not an insult, it is just a fact of life. We spend funerals as a time to pour our emotions on the floor, then we do our best to button ourselves back up and move on.

This is where the second point is so important. The PAC-12 is going to live on in CFB memory in some form forever. In that sense, it will never truly die. All things die once, but the closest anyone or anything can come to immortality is to sit at the horizon of the second death, never crossing the threshold because someone always remembers you. And what do they remember? Your identity.

Death is also a funny thing because you don’t really know what you are losing until it is gone. I have lived in Michigan my entire life. I really don’t plan on leaving. Yes, I’ve traveled to every time zone in the continental US, and I am sure I will travel much more, but I like it here. Michigan is my home. It is a beautiful, unique place that has some of the greatest scenery in the world in the Great Lakes. No one can really understand it unless you have lived here (I’ll be kind and include any of the surrounding states in this) and experienced the beauty. I also love my school, for better or worse. But the Big Ten has always been Midwest Football (™). Michigan is a part of that, just like OSU, MSU, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota all lend their identities to The Brand. The SEC is Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and LSU, among all the others. The smaller schools, like Northwestern or Vanderbilt, provide fascinating views into pockets of tribalism that persist against legions of hundreds of thousands of fans and millions of dollars in NIL war chests compiled by the Big Boys. This entire dynamic, this identity, is irreplaceable. Everyone loves an underdog, but underdogs in professional sports feel, well, fake. Professional leagues have rules about league entry for franchises and minor leagues and constantly-new stadiums that strip away history and salary caps and trade deadlines and load management and bullshit and more bullshit and team owners who do dumb things for eons (see: Chicago, generally) who can do so because they use teams as playthings and if they get bored they might just sell the team or just move it somewhere else like a goddam circus. Where is the attachment to the community if a franchise can just MOVE? I am a fan of multiple professional teams, but no amount of joy I get from the Detroit Red Wings winning a Stanley Cup can ever compare to the sense of belonging one feels with their school.**

The schools are not physically moving anywhere, but the identity that bound that region of the country, the PAC-12 Conference, is gone. It may reform through the Mountain West and Friends (OSU and WSU), but it won’t be the same. Oregon, Washington, and goddam USC and UCLA are now in the Big Ten. Midwest Football (™). What happens now that there is a clear path for networks to make even MORE money by consolidating conferences at the cost of tradition, history, and identity?

Let’s take this ride to the end, which is the point I like to call “The Singularity.” You may be familiar with the technological singularity, or the moment in the future when computer intelligence surpasses the collective intelligence of humanity. We know what happens before the singularity because we are living in it now. But what happens at that moment when a true AI grows to outpace our entire civilization and realizes that it doesn’t need us anymore and we can’t really stop it? What happens when all of the tech advancements humanity has achieved become obsolete because WE are obsolete? Similarly, what happens when the almighty networks realize that they have won, and they can do whatever the hell they want in the name of money?

Eventually, the largest schools will break off and create their own 30-60ish team super league that spans the country, tell the NCAA (assuming that shitshow still exists by then, let alone 5 minutes from now if their $4 billion lawsuit loss stays the course) to kick rocks, and start their own club with blackjack and hookers. Some SEC schools may (continue to) offer these ‘services’ for real, but why not take some traditions with you when you burn everything else to the ground in the name of money? 

Is this really what we want? NFL Junior? Count me out. I’ll still watch Michigan until the Sun expands and engulfs the Earth, and I’ll probably watch some of the larger games, but it will never be the same as watching Arizona State randomly whoop a ranked PAC-12 team’s ass up and down Tempe at 1:30 in the morning just because they wore the correct uniform combination that night and the place happens to be haunted. I’ll never be able to watch Utah brand their name into USC’s forehead on live national TV 4 times in a fucking row by running the ball and playing nasty defense The Way God Intended in the face of Lincoln Riley’s pretty offense. Yes, USC will continue to underachieve to real teams that run the ball and play actual defense (welcome to Midwest Football, kids) and Utah will continue to Beat Ass in the most Utah way possible. And yes, these teams will probably (occasionally) continue to play each other in non-conference games for the foreseeable future. That is the whole problem though. Why did we need to take that away? The cost of What Comes Next doesn't seem to be worth it.

 

The death of the PAC-12 is not really an end, but the beginning of an end. Careful readers will note that your author called the PAC-12 Championship the “start” of a funeral. A Power 5 Conference with 2 Playoff-caliber teams and decades of history dissolved before our eyes and we are supposed to act like this is not a warning sign. If that is the start, What the Hell Comes Next?

I believe that regional identity is dying in an increasingly connected nation. In a social and political context, that can be good or bad depending on your position. But for college sports? It is an absolute tragedy. In one singular moment when that transition is finally completed, everything we love will be destroyed. 

I am reminded of the climax of one of the greatest pieces of media I’ve ever consumed, the video game God of War 2 (2022), when contemplating What Comes Next. *SPOILER ALERT* Odin, the All-Father, has reached the end of his grand designs. He has labored for multiple eternities; planning, scheming, murdering, manipulating, destroying entire societies and cultures all in the name searching for the answer to his eternal question of “What comes next?” What lies Beyond? What is the next step? Even he, the mightiest of the gods, always pushed for more in pursuit of his goal, but he had no clue what the ramifications of achieving that goal would be. *SERIOUSLY SPOILER ALERT* His predictable defeat at the hand of the player is not the lesson. It is the swift, revenge-fueled dropping of Sindri’s hammer onto the stone holding Odin's imprisoned life essence as payback for the murder of Sindri’s brother, Brok, that is the lesson. Utter destruction of your very soul because of what you have done in the name of What Comes Next.
 

When college football hits the singularity of a nationwide superconference that wipes away regional identity in favor of What Comes Next, try to remember what it once was. When college football as we know it dies, don’t let it die a second time. Remember it the same way we remember the PAC-12, with joyful reminiscence and a wish that the powers that be had never wondered What Comes Next.

What Comes Next is not always good. Can it be? Maybe. But we never really know until it happens and then we are stuck with it. Maybe that is what is ultimately so funny about death. We can't get the joke without experiencing it first.

 

We never know the punchline until we can’t go back.

 

 

Go Blue.

 

*Obviously, some things changed. Like I said, I wanted to keep this intact as much as possible.

**Especially when they win a National Championship. Like Michigan did. Just a reminder.