Ode to the Pac-12 conference

Before we get on with the autumn win-loss business that is actual college football, let’s pause for a moment — no, make that a dozen moments — and pour one out — no, let’s pour 12 out — for the artist formerly known as the Pac-12 Conference.

What beverage? That’s up to you. In Southern California, now Big Ten country, perhaps you’ll select a double half-caf mocha oat milk latte … though, heads-up, your new conferencemates of the Midwest are going have some questions about your non-dairy creamer choices. In the Sonoran Desert, now Big 12 country, you can return your margarita’s prickly pear garnish back to the sands from whence it came before some guy in a 10-gallon hat from Lubbock replaces it with a can of Lone Star. And in the Bay Area, now … um … I don’t know … Mountain West country? ACC country? Y’all should probably make like melancholy Paul Giamatti in “Sideways” and just pour that 1961 Château Cheval Blanc into a Styrofoam soda cup at a burger joint.

But no matter where you live, what you imbibe or which school colors you wear as you dip your toes into the waves of the Pacific, deep down we should all feel like poor Miles as he secretly sipped his fine wine with crinkle fries. Because even if you have no allegiance to the Pac-12 (hang on, sorry, bad choice of words there, because clearly no one has any allegiance to the Pac-12, let me start over) … because even if you have no ties to a traditional Pac-12 school, you might have some sort of allegiance to the institution of college sports. And even if your blood runneth a Crimson Tide or a Carolina Blue or any other hue that resides well east of the Rockies, the idea of the Pac-12 being vaporized should feel at the very least unsettling and at the very most, sad. Super, super sad.

For nearly 108 years,…