Watching the Pac-12 funeral in 4K
As technology gets better and nears perfection, it's a wrap on the perfect conference
I spent Friday night watching the final Pac-12 Conference football championship game with some friends and our conversations were mostly what you’d expect.
Which four teams should be in the College Football Playoffs … I still can’t believe the Pac-12 is ending ... What does this scheduling alliance between the Pac-2 and Mountain West Conference mean? … These ribs are fabulous, how long were they in the smoker? … Have you checked out your Spotify Wrapped yet? …
As I watched the game from my friend Brandon’s absurdly huge and clear television, I thought about all the items in our lives that have the reached the peak of performance, or are extremely close, and compared that to how college football is one of the few things in our lives that is getting worse due to conference realignment.
Let’s start with televisions.
I’m sure TVs will continue to get better: bigger and wider screens, thinner in the back, crisper pictures. We’re at 4K now and we’ll probably eventually get to 12K, but I’m doubtful our eyes are capable of truly noticing the difference.
My friend’s TV is 83 inches and he thought it was still not big enough. Bigger TVs do exist, and I have no doubt he’ll get another one soon. You can get a projector screen for the entire side of your living room wall or an entire wall in your backyard. You can divide a TV into four or even eight TVs. You can create an experience at your home that’s equal to a movie theatre.
I’m sure we’ll continue to have improvements. But we’ve gotta be in the 90th percentile for the peak of how good a TV experience can ever become.
The craziest thing about TVs is that it’s one of the few things in our lifetime that have consistently gotten better, yet the price gets cheaper.
I saw this advertisement recently, from 1976, when the cost of a 50-inch big screen TV began at $1,995. When accounting for inflation, that’s the equivalent of paying $10,814 for a TV nowadays. That’s insane.
These days, you can get an overwhelmingly better 50-inch TV for roughly $230 (or $44 in 1976 dollars). For roughly $2,500, you can buy an 85-inch TV that becomes a piece of artwork when it’s turned off.
Listening to music is also very close to the peak of how good it can ever become. It’s taken us awhile to get there musically. We’ve had records, 8-tracks, cassette tapes and CDs. In the digital age, we’ve had Napster, iTunes, Pandora, Apple Music, Google Music, and now Spotify.
For $15 a month on Spotify, we now have access to 99% of every song ever created. If we want to start a band and make an album, we can instantly upload it on Spotify. We can play DJ and create an infinite number of playlists. Trust me, I know. I’ve got 68 different playlists on my Spotify and was told that I’m an “alchemist” and I “create your own playlists more than other listeners do.”
Seriously, for the price of one CD in the 1990s, I can listen to any song I want to hear any second of my life. I can listen via my phone, tablet, laptop, TV, through my car, or Bluebooth speaker.
I’m sure another platform will come along and do it slightly better than Spotify, hopefully in a way that is not so inherently unfair to the actual musicians. But from a consumer standpoint, I can’t fathom our musical opportunities will improve much the next century.
If you don’t like your music digitally, that’s fine. We can still get an old-fashioned turntable, buy an actual record, and get all the feels as we drop a needle and hear the scratchiness before the music begins. We listen in our cars to terrestrial radio. My card is old enough that I can still listen to CDs and it sounds just fine.
If you do like digital music, we can create and listen to our own playlists, the playlists created by a total stranger, or the daily playlists created by the Spotify algorithm. We can download these playlists even when there is no internet.
When it comes to cooking food, especially meat, we can grill on charcoal BBQs or gas BBQs. We can smoke it, we can deep fry a turkey for Thanksgiving, we can use an air fryer for a little of everything. We can still bake food, cook it on the stove, slow roast it in the crockpot, microwave it, or we can just put food on top of a fire like a caveman.
Speaking of microwaves, that’s a device that hit its peak a couple decades ago. They’re so good, it’s impossible to make them any better. And that’s just fine.
I’m sure new fancy ways of cooking food will emerge because minds get restless, people are creative, foodies like to experiment, and marketing people are really good at their jobs. But if we went another 100 years without a new invention for how to cook food, I’m sure we’ll be just fine.
Cars keep getting faster, safer, more fuel efficient, and drastically more expensive.
Food gets tastier and healthier, and drastically more expensive.
Phones get better cameras, faster access to the internet, longer batteries, space for more photos and apps, and drastically more expensive.
Which brings me back to college football, which keeps getting more expensive, but keeps getting worse due to conference realignment.
The charm of college football was geographic rivalries, reasonable travel for fans, understanding of the teams in a conference, and the tradition of playing these teams each year.
The demise of the Pac-12 Conference is the result of horrendous executive leadership, the need to pursue every last television dollar, and too many people in power who essentially said, “screw tradition, we’re leaving.”
I always felt the Pac-10 was the perfect conference. Two teams in Washington, two teams in Oregon, two teams in Northern California, two teams in Southern California, and two teams in Arizona. The rivalries and travel partners were obvious. The word Pacific was accurate. The number of teams actually matched the name of the conference. Even the number 10 is personified by perfection, a “perfect 10” in gymnastics, or the name of a Bo Derek movie.
The expansion to a Pac-12, with Utah and Colorado, was a bit clumsy and probably unnecessary, but a preview of a future where all that mattered was how many people watched your football games on those TVs that keep getting better and cheaper.
USC and UCLA started the migration, bolting for the Big Ten. Then Colorado bailed for the Big 12. Then Washington and Oregon joined the LA schools in the Big Ten. Then Arizona, Arizona State and Utah fled for the Big 12. Then Stanford and Cal decided they’d be better 3,000 miles away, traipsing to the Atlantic Coast Conference.
A fan in Los Angeles could previously drive five hours to see games in NorCal or Arizona. Now you’ll have to get on a plane for five hours for a conference games. Yes, we’ll get USC against Michigan. But not every year. The Big Ten went through 262 different versions of a scheduling format before settling on something that will still require us to consult a spreadsheet to remember who plays who in what years.
In a world where almost everything keeps getting better, the only thing that’s better for college football is the money that TV networks will pay universities.
College football fans — and especially the student-athletes and their families — are drastically worse. In the Big 10, we’ll get UCLA vs Indiana. In the Big 12, it’ll be Arizona State vs Cincinnati. In the ACC, it’s Cal vs Wake Forest.
I guess we’ll still watch because, I mean, we have these enormous televisions and all these ways to cook the ribs.
So anyway, what city does Spotify think you should live based on your listening tendencies?
And you don't have to have a forklift to move a TV! Remember the risk to the TV and your back if you had to move even a 32" tube TV on your own?
On conference realignment, the biggest disappointment is the damage to non-football sports. UCLA Women's softball flying commercial to Rutgers then Minnesota then back home during midterms? That's cruel.
I think it's time for universities to just accept college football. There's got to be a way to preserve the regional alliances of conferences for other sports and restructure football to maximize the big dollar benefits. Personally, I prefer an English football system with relegation, though I know it would never be considered.
For now, pour one out for the Pac-12!