Commentary: Realignment bulldozed the Pac-12. All that’s left is sadness and pain.

It felt like an initiation. In 2006, after one of the first games I covered in a peculiar league originally known as the Pacific Coast Conference, a California junior running back named Marshawn Lynch took the injury cart for a joyride.

Standing on the field as Lynch bobbed his head and wove through traffic, I feared he would hit me or 100 other people. But he was just a young Beast Mode being Beast Mode, celebrating after scoring the winning touchdown in an overtime victory against Washington. And this was just another wild afternoon in a conference that has stood, stubborn but lovable, for 108 years.

The conference, now known as the Pac-12, might not make it another year. It’s depressing. College football realignment has conquered the West region and sold it for parts, scattering eight of the schools and forcing the remaining four to scramble. In 2024, the Big Ten will add USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon to form an 18-team monstrosity. The Big 12 will take Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah in a 16-member conference. Neither will change its name because, well, why bother anymore?

It makes no regional sense. It makes no practical sense for athletic departments that must trek across the country in all sports because a football power struggle demands it. But the TV money is really good – for now, until some team or conference decides it can generate more revenue by creating more chaos.

This is the turbulent state of an industry that still wants to be considered amateur athletics and declares breathlessly, and with ill intentions, that the transfer portal and players receiving name, image and likeness (NIL) money have robbed college sports of their charm.

To understand the depth of this farce, just look at Stanford and California, two Bay Area rivals that share academic prestige and long-standing commitments to excellence throughout their entire athletic departments. Stanford, which has 134 NCAA national championships and dominates the annual Learfield Cup that measures proficiency across all sports, can stake a claim as the greatest of all Power Five schools in both of those areas. But with the Pac-12 imploding, Stanford and Cal are stranded.

If they’re not desirable, the platitudes about caring for student-athletes and valuing the entire athletic department hold even less credibility. They’re quality all-around programs in a top-10 media market. Admittedly, the Bay Area is not a crazed college football area, and the Stanford and Cal programs have both struggled recently. But other than preliminary interest from the ACC, they carry limited appeal in the current turf war. Even the ACC’s exploration of the schools received dismissive reactions because it’s a geographically absurd effort at inclusion. Louisville, which is more than 2,300 miles from the Palo Alto and Berkeley campuses, is the closest ACC school.

This is what happens when you lop off an entire region. The Pac-12 has done plenty of self-harm, failing to modernize, hiring bad commissioner fits to navigate a changing landscape and exacerbating its visibility issues with the poorly conceived Pac-12 networks. The conference has played the game wrong for decades, falling further behind with every major shift in college football. The problem hasn’t necessarily been competitiveness on the field, but rather an inattention to the ensuring access and employing functional business practices.

Still, the Conference of Champions – which has more collegiate titles than any of its peers – doesn’t deserve to die. But it seems that, with Stanford, Cal, Oregon State and Washington State as the only teams left and no lucrative media-rights deal possible anymore, the conference is left to manage the pain in its final days.

It’s incomprehensible for those who appreciate the long and glorious history of the conference. Between 1975 and 1992, the conference won 15 of 18 Rose Bowls against the Big Ten. Stretch back a few more years, and the streak was 20 of 25 overall.

This is the conference that raised Hall of Fame quarterbacks John Elway, Troy Aikman, Warren Moon and Norm Van Brocklin. This is where Marcus Allen, Reggie Bush, Hugh McElhenny and O.J. Simpson ran their way to history. Where cornerback Mike Haynes roamed, and safety Ronnie Lott pulverized, and tight end Tony Gonzalez juggled two sports, and offensive tackle Anthony Munoz swallowed defenders.

In 1970, former USC coach John McKay took the Trojans to Birmingham and routed Alabama 42-21, a victory that helped expedite racial integration in the Southeastern Conference. McKay was a towering coaching figure in a conference that has also seen Pete Carroll, Terry Donahue, Don James and John Robinson.

There are so many more names and important influencers, 108 years of them. And if not for the mass exodus, this football season could be appreciated for something besides a last dance. Five teams are ranked in the top 18 of the preseason coaches poll: No. 6 USC, No. 11 Washington, No. 14 Utah, No. 15 Oregon and No. 18 Oregon State. The Pac-12 returns six quarterbacks who surpassed 3,000 passing yards last season, including Heisman Trophy winner Caleb Williams, the presumptive top pick in the 2023 NFL draft.

It could have been a season in which the conference raised its profile. During the nine years of the College Football Playoff, the Pac-12 has made just two appearances in the four-team tournament, the lowest total among Power Five conferences. In the first year of the playoff, Oregon advanced to the championship game before falling to Ohio State. Washington lost a semifinal game to Alabama six years ago.

With better coaching talent and stability, the conference was poised to be a factor, especially with the playoff set to expand to 12 teams next season. Instead, the Pac-12 is about to disappear entirely or cobble together enough of the remaining second-tier West(ish) programs to at least keep the Pac-TBD men’s and women’s basketball automatic NCAA Tournament bids intact. It’s hard to know which would prompt more sadness: a diminished brand or an obliterated one.

Instead, the superconference era that we’ve seen coming for several years is now here. The Power Five will soon be a Power Four. But in actuality, it’s more like the Power Two plus Two. The SEC, by adding Texas and Oklahoma, is about to be mightier than ever. The Big Ten, by extracting the best Pac-12 teams from Los Angeles and the Pacific Northwest, sprawled to the west. The other two surviving conferences, the ACC and Big 12, still have football assets and a pathway to survival.

Then again, the Pac-12’s demise indicates another movement afoot: As the most powerful conferences bulk up, the television-driven ambition isn’t just to add big-name and big-market value. It also aims to lock out others. These superconference aspirations are a precursor to a super football division. But bringing powers together will result in leaving more longtime partners behind.

For different reasons than Stanford and Cal, it’s just as concerning that Oregon State and Washington State – glue members of the Pac-12 but not sexy realignment options elsewhere – can be rendered insignificant. In every conference, there are programs similar to OSU and WSU, and they matter for regional flavor, for rivalries and for their creativity. They work around disadvantages to create programs that often better represent the essence of college athletics. If they’re not desirable, the sport will suffer during this blind pursuit of exclusivity.

College football resembles a mafia movie now. It’s not personal; it’s strictly business.

Prepare for this game to turn more cutthroat than ever.