What’s Never Alive Can never Be Killed; Big 12/Pac12 Merger Talks Dead
Monday evening ESPN, The Athletic, and other media outlets reported that merger talks between the Big 12 and the hospice bound Pac 12 Conference were over.
This news isn’t shocking to those paying attention to the litany of West Coast media members who floated the idea of possible mergers for the past week. All of these media sources kept feeding merger talks so to keep the illusion alive that the Pac 12 can be saved.
The merger was never going to happen. The working parts of the Pac 12 are going to be assimilated in the Big 12 collective. Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, Utah, Oregon, and Washington need to realize that resistance in futile. For California and Stanford expecting help to arrive after spurning merger talks with the Big 12 last season just remember the words from Samuel Beckett, “Don’t touch me! Don’t question me! Don’t speak to me! Stay with me!”
The Pac 12 and it’s media can only blame themselves. Living in the Elysium of the West Coast has sheltered these folks from the rest of the country for how the other half lives and that bubble is soon to be burst with the departure of two schools, if not six this fall for greener pastures.
To borrow from Nietzsche the we can ask if the Pac 12 one of man’s blunders? Or is man, see west coast media, one of the Pac 12’s blunders?
The Pac 12 is dead and we have killed it.
Allen Corbin
Allen Corbin resides along the Wasatch Mountain range in Salt Lake City, UT. He covered Texas Tech Football and Basketball from 2008-2015 and is currently a recovering sports radio host and newsreader.
