Commentary: We’ll all adjust, but the Pac-12’s demise just feels wrong

SEATTLE – Objectively and intellectually — coldbloodedly — I understand why Washington hitched its athletic future to the Big Ten. I might begrudgingly even acknowledge it’s the right thing for the Huskies to do. Or, to put it slightly differently, that they had no other choice.

But I’d like to at least take a little time to properly mourn the demise of the conference that has been at the core of my athletic focus my entire life. I started out as an avid Pac-8 fan as a kid growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, then watched it grow into the Pac-10 as a student at California in the 1970s and, finally, have been chronicling its incarnation into the Pac-12 as a sports writer in first Yakima and then Seattle since the 1980s.

It’s hardly a story unique to me. I’m surpassed in both the length and depth of my Pac passion by legions of fans. But that’s roughly six decades of emotional investment that I’m being asked to toss aside as if it never happened, just so Washington and Oregon can maximize revenue and exposure.

I daresay I’m far from alone among readers of this newspaper and website, and followers of the conference everywhere, in finding it difficult to instantly sever our emotional attachments to the rivalries, traditions and history of the Pac-12, all in the service of an increased media-rights share.

Oh, that will come eventually. New rivalries will form, new traditions will develop, new history will be written. In his recent column, my colleague Matt Calkins wisely advised people to put emotion aside and look at the practical advantages of a move to the Big Ten. You can find those on spreadsheets and ratings lists, and I’ll get there in due time.

But before bottom-line, bloodless practicality takes over, I’d like just a little time to wax nostalgic, if you don’t mind. My head will take over tomorrow, or at least in a few weeks. For now I want to lead with my heart — which is broken by the cruel fate being foisted upon Washington State and Oregon State. These are proud teams with muddled futures now that they’ve been scorned by the conference they’ve helped nurture for more than a century.

And then there’s my alma mater, Cal, which has no viable fallback if the Big Ten decides not to take it and Stanford. In the expansive spirit of the occasion, I’ll even depart from my Golden Bear instincts and hope for a soft landing for denizens of The Farm. The dirty, dark secret is that I never had any animosity for Stanford; that disappeared when I started covering their athletes, men and women, and found them, much to my displeasure, to be approachable and engaging. Damn the Cardinal and their infuriating likability.

But I digress. Right now I’m thinking about those great USC football teams in the 1960s of Mike Garrett and, yes, O.J. Simpson. I’m thinking about John Wooden’s UCLA dynasties of Lew Alcindor (before he became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), Bill Walton and Marques Johnson. I’m thinking of the Cal powerhouses during my time on campus of Steve Bartkowski, the late Joe Roth, Chuck Muncie and Wesley Walker, and the wondrous John Elway across the bay. I’m thinking about the brilliant Throwin’ Samoan, Jack Thompson, at Washington State and the fun times I had interviewing WSU’s loquacious Jim Walden, the most accessible coach I ever covered. I’m thinking of the great Don James teams at Washington and all the superb athletes over the years in the Pac-12’s women’s sports and so-called minor sports — there was nothing minor about them — that so enriched our athletic enjoyment.

I’m cutting this list drastically short, because I have a word limit, but suffice it to say I could fill pages reminiscing about the great teams and great players that came out of the Pac. People love to mock Walton’s ceaseless reminder of the “Conference of Champions,” but it produced 553 national-championship teams over the years, far more than any other conference. That’s a legacy that shouldn’t just be shunted aside without at least a nod of appreciation.

As with most eulogies, you tend to gloss over the rough patches and distasteful elements. The fact of the matter is, the Pac-12 has been in decline for a decade or longer, spiraling under the weight of a series of misguided or incompetent administrators, wrongheaded decisions and shortsighted strategic planning.

That’s why it all fell apart this week, a stunningly quick disintegration that was actually years in the making. And while I know it’s absolutely the right thing for Washington and Oregon as far as self-preservation, something about the demise of the Pac-12 just feels wrong. We’ll adjust, but there’s a deep sense of loss that I won’t apologize for. The new setup will surely be more lucrative, but I can’t help but wonder if it will ever be as fulfilling.

Poof, the Apple Cup — which has produced more than a century of indelible memories, will never quite be the same, even if it can be maintained in some fashion. Poof, the Rose Bowl is gone as the coveted determinant of Pac-12 and Big Ten superiority (a ship that started sailing a long time ago).

You can’t tell me that teams located nearly 3,000 miles apart in the same conference makes sense to anyone but an accountant or TV executive. I acknowledge that chaos is titillating, and change can be exciting, and I understand the lure of joining an elite conference and what that can mean as far as prestige and visibility. But those trips to Iowa City and Piscataway, N.J., are going to take some getting used to.

When USC and UCLA bolted the conference around 13 months ago, I wrote about how the departure hit me most deeply on an emotional level. It wasn’t hard to see where this was going to ultimately lead, even though the demise of the conference came about far more quickly than most of us imagined.

So here we are, with the Pac-12 splintered in multiple directions, and Washington prepared to start an entirely new athletic chapter in 2024. It’s a merger of former rivals that no one could have even fathomed when I first fell in love with the conference more than half a century ago watching the likes of Gary Beban and Charles White.

By 2024, most of us will have had time to process the vast changes that are coming, and grudgingly admit that it’s all for the better.

It just doesn’t feel like that right now.