Pac-12 found dead at the age of 107
There remain suspicions the passing is related to the time a former caretaker sought to strangle the conference using cables from the TV network he built from scratch.
Dearly beloved,
I stand here before you to mourn the passing of our conference. It died on Thursday. Not in a medical sense. We’ve still got a pulse and the George Klapandkough guy is stating the patient is most definitely not at all dead, but we know better. The spirit of this conference died on Thursday when USC and UCLA announced that they were headed to the Big Ten, and while we all had known the conference was very sick, the end still feels very sudden.
No cause of death has been announced, and while the authorities have said there are no signs of foul play, there remain suspicions that the passing is related to an incident in which a former caretaker sought to strangle the conference using the camera cables of the TV network he built from scratch. That caretaker was not charged in the incident, though he was fired a year ago and was last seen in his tennis whites, sipping champagne. While the circumstances remain in dispute, it’s clear the conference never recovered.
It’s a sad and ignominious end for a conference that was conceived in 1915 in Portland. The consummation itself took place at the Imperial Hotel on Dec. 2, 1915, which makes it one of the very best things to ever come out of Oregon. That and the Leatherman tool.
The conference changed names twice over the course of its life, gave birth to UCLA’s basketball dynasty and USC’s seven-year run of dominance in football. It was the playground for one of our country’s greatest heroes in Jackie Robinson, and later, someone who would become so infamous he’s known by two letters: O.J.
It liked to bill itself as the “The Conference of Champions” though Bill Walton is the only one who actually called it that. The Pac-12 liked to boast its members had won more than 500 NCAA championships though most of these were in sports that no one cared about except for the parents of the participants.