8/7/2023 football Edit

Ten Thoughts for Monday Morning presented by Will Gar...

Gabe DeArmond • PowerMizzou

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@powermizzoucom

Gabe has covered the Tigers for PowerMizzou.com since August of 2003 and been the site's publisher since 2006.

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1) We are going to talk plenty about Mizzou here but we're going to start big picture. Because if you follow college sports, last week was one of the wildest weeks you've ever seen. It started with Colorado going back to the conference it left 12 years ago and ended with the PAC-12 basically not being a thing anymore. Arizona, Arizona State and Utah joined the Buffs in the Big 12. Oregon and Washington followed USC and UCLA to the Big Ten (just hours after basically assuring their current conference mates they were staying if reports are to be believed).

It's not the first time in our lives a conference has gone away. The Southwest Conferenced folded largely due to repeated recruiting scandals, in the early 1990s. Half of those teams ended up in the Big 12 with Arkansas heading to the SEC. The Metro Conference started in 1975 with the following members: Cincinnati, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Memphis State, SLU and Tulane. They'd add Florida State, lose Georgia Tech, add Virginia Tech and eventually merge with the Great Midwest Conference to form Conference USA.

So, yes, it's happened before. But this feels different. The PAC-12 has been around for 65 years and grew out of the Pacific Coast Conference, which was founded in 1915 by Oregon, Washington, Cal and Oregon State. It's been home to USC football and UCLA hoops and the most overall NCAA titles of any conference in the country. And now it no longer exists.Washington and UCLA are now in a conference with Maryland and Rutgers. Arizona, UCF and West Virginia are all in the same league. Geography has ceased to matter, tradition has ceased to matter. Nobody really seems to think it's a good thing for college sports. But it happened anyway. Things change, we'll move on and we'll still watch the games I'm sure. But this week has taken away the last possible vestige we had of pretending this is anything other than a business run by television executives.

2) The main question I've been asking my friends this week is "Did the Big 12 and Big Ten get better? Or did they just get bigger?" The PAC-12 schools that are going to the Big 12 are fine. They're representative schools. Arizona's good at basketball, Utah has had a good amount of success over the last 25 years. But what do they really add to the Big 12? It's pretty obvious this was mostly a race between the Big 12 and the PAC 12 to see which one could kill the other one first.

The Big Ten, prestige wise, clearly added more good programs. USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington have all competed for or won national titles in my lifetime. They're the strength of the artist formerly known as the PAC 12 (by the way, the similarities to 12 years ago are stunning: The Big Ten repeatedly talks about the importance of not being "predatory" and doesn't want to be seen as the one who killed a league, while 100% absolutely trying to kill a league. In 2010, the Big Ten thought taking Nebraska would kill the Big 12, it just didn't work; On whatever day the PAC-12 eventually dies, it will be directly traced back to the day USC and UCLA joined the Big Ten). So you can argue the Big Ten got better. But did it? The Big Ten was already doing fine. It was making the playoff most years, it has one of the two best TV contracts in college football. Is an 18 team league that goes from one coast to the other better than the 14-team league they had? Maybe, I don't know.

This is all clearly heading toward the consolidation of the top teams in college football and likely toward some sort of organization of "Power Five" schools away from NCAA football. The only real question is probably how many teams will be involved. If you're in the Big Ten or the SEC are you automatically going to get a seat at the table? Or would teams like Vanderbilt and Indiana be jettisoned out of the club? There's a lot to be decided (hell, nothing even changed with the ACC this week) and a lot more will change. Who knows how long it takes or where it ends up? It's all the latest step in a sport that continues to succeed in spite of itself. Over and over the schools and their administrations completely ignore what is good for the fan. And we just keep watching. Now we even pay their players for them. And on goes the abusive relationship.

3) The announcements begin today as we hit one of the most anticipated weeks in Mizzou recruiting history.

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