Tradition in college football is dead. TV schedule is all that matters. Just ask Pac-12.
INDIANAPOLIS – The Big Ten is close to doubling in size. With 18 schools after the addition of Oregon and Washington next year, the Big Ten will stretch from Seattle to Los Angeles to New Jersey while the Pac-12, which was once the Pac-8 and then the Pac-10, will soon slide off into the Pacific.
IU will be playing league games at Washington. Purdue will travel to Oregon. Some of those games will end after midnight here because, you know, TV.
You’ll be asleep.
You’ll get used to it.
The people whining about the realignment of college by bemoaning all that abandoned history — think of the tradition! — are being intellectually lazy and missing the point. Take a listen to one of the best philosophers of the 20th century, longtime baseball manager Jim Leyland, whose seen some things. Here’s what he always said about momentum in baseball.
“There’s no such thing as momentum in baseball,” he’d growl around a Marlboro. “Momentum is today’s starting pitcher.”
Apply that to the discussion here.
There is no tradition in college football. Tradition is today’s TV schedule.
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The Pac-12 was done the moment it started negotiating its television rights with Apple TV.
No offense to Apple TV, but do you know anybody who has it? Maybe Sling TV wasn’t taking the Pac-12’s calls. Maybe Sling TV doesn’t exist anymore. Maybe it’s impossible to keep up.
The Pac-12 is playing the guilt-trip card right now because that’s the only card it has left to play. There’s a line in the 1967 movie “Cool Hand Luke,” a line so good, so deep, I’m wondering if it was first spoken by Jim Leyland:
“Sometimes nothing can be a real cool hand.”
Cool Hand Luke, played by Paul Newman, hadn’t seen the moping Pac-12 yet. With nothing for a hand, the league put out a real uncool statement Friday, the day the frat boys at Oregon and Washington pledged the Big Ten while the debutantes at Arizona, Arizona State and Utah took to wearing the Big 12 pin:
"Today’s news,” the statement starts, “is incredibly disappointing for student-athletes, fans, alumni and staff of the Pac-12 who cherish the over 100-year history, tradition and rivalries of the Conference of Champions.”
Let’s talk about that history.
The Pac-12 started with four schools as the Pacific Coast Conference in 1915. Oregon and Washington were among those four. By 1924 the league had grown to nine schools, including the additions of Idaho and Montana.
Lots of tradition in the Pac-12 with Idaho and Montana.
The PCC fell apart in 1959, and by that I mean it changed its name, after a cheating scandal. Turns out Oregon, without any help from Nike because Nike didn’t exist yet, was paying its players. Turns out some rich Washington boosters created a slush fund for athletes that sounds an awful lot — and by that I mean it sounds exactly — like today’s so-called NIL collectives that funnel money to players because, well, because.
The PCC was so chagrined, its blew itself up and started over. But with Washington and Oregon, of course. Montana and Idaho? Nah. Those schools weren’t any good in football!
This really happened.
Whine yourself to sleep, Pac-12 leaders. This will be over soon.
It’ll be faster that way.
Pac-12 sleeps with the fishes, and Ted Lasso
There are no good guys in this story, to be clear. The Big Ten wasn’t heroic when it sided with the Pac-12 and ACC in August 2021 to form what the leagues called “an alliance” to stop the SEC from taking over college football. A noble cause, right there, and over the next few months while the Pac-12 wasn’t looking the Big Ten was nobly stealing its two most important schools, USC and UCLA.
That was June 2022.
Doyel in August 2021: Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC form alliance because SEC must be stopped
Doyel in June 2022: Big Ten raids 'alliance partner' Pac-12 for USC, UCLA
The Big Ten is not the good guy here. But it’s your guy, if you cheer for any of these schools, feel free to exhale. Your league survived. Your school, whether it’s Purdue or IU or Rutgers or, let me see, Nebraska, lives to play another game on national television. And by that I don’t mean Apple TV.
Seriously, Apple TV? Was Hulu Live not taking the Pac-12’s calls? Hulu Live has live sports, you know. Baker Mayfield told us.
Maybe the Pac-12 didn’t see the Baker Mayfield commercial.
Maybe tradition is overrated. Seriously, in the Big Ten, one game resonates nationally: Michigan vs. Ohio State. In our state we have IU vs. Purdue, unless you prefer Purdue vs. IU.
The league can add Rutgers and Maryland and USC and Oregon, but in this state do we really care? Seriously, does it matter? Sure the student-athletes will be flying around the country, missing all that class time, and while that’s a nice talking point, do you really care? These kids are getting paid now, and we got used to it. They can transfer every year, and we got used to it. They’ll start spending Tuesday nights on a plane from Seattle to Indianapolis? Do you really care?
They’re going to graduate anyway, because the schools will insist, and these kids will be your kids’ bosses someday. Don’t worry about the academics. The academics will be just fine.
As for the actual games, this is all you need to know: Big Ten games will be on Fox. They will be on CBS. They will be on NBC. They will not be on Apple TV, but then, neither is Ted Lasso. Ted Lasso is over. Long live Ted Lasso.
IU won’t play Iowa as often, and the Purdue-Minnesota game will take a hit, but those games aren’t traditional. No game in Big Ten play is traditional around here except Purdue vs. IU.
Do we still get Purdue vs. IU?
OK cool. Long live the Big Ten.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Big Ten adds Oregon, Washington; tradition is no match for TV schedule
