Column: Pac-12 has that rare chance in sports to go out on top

In sports, going out on top is a rarity indeed.

John Elway walked away after two straight Super Bowl titles. Bill Russell called it a career on the heels of his 11th NBA championship in 13 seasons. Heavyweight champ Rocky Marciano escaped the ring without a loss on his resume.

But it’s far more common to hang on for one game too many, one season too long.

In that sense, the Pac-12 will be leaving with its head held high.

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This was not the path it would’ve chosen, of course. Head-in-the-sand decisions, bungled negotiations and an insatiable quest for the almighty buck spelled doom for the “Conference of Champions,” which stunningly collapsed into a heap like a game of Jenga.

Still, with its forced demise lurking right around the corner, the Pac-12 has a chance to add one more football title to its legacy.

Nothing personal, Michigan, but it’s hard not to pull for the Washington Huskies in the national championship game Monday night — if for no other reason than to put a fitting capper on this season of chaos.

Seriously, what would be a more appropriate way to close out this latest round of realignment frenzy than awarding the national title to a conference that will be snuffed out in a few months as all but two of its 12 members bolt for greener financial pastures?

Next season, Washington will be competing in the Big Ten, becoming an out-of-place, regular-season rival to the Wolverines, the team they’ll be facing for the title in Houston.

“Certainly they’re on our schedule a year from now and it’s a whole different deal that we’ll be involved with as far as a new conference,” Huskies coach Kalen DeBoer said. “I think this year, where we’re at right now in the season, this is all about really us representing the Pac-12 and going to win a national championship for our program and finishing off this season for this group of guys that have worked really hard.”

Indeed, let’s put the eulogies on hold for just a moment.

Given its storied past, the Pac-12 is deserving of one last celebration before being swept into the dustbin of other dearly departed leagues such as the Southwest Conference and Big Eight.

This is a conference that has claimed at least a share of nine national championships in the poll era — with a chance to make it 10. This is a conference that produced a dozen Heisman Trophy winners. This is a conference that became synonymous with the granddaddy of all postseason games, the Rose Bowl. This is a conference that gave us some of college football’s most memorable moments — and maybe a few more before it’s done.

Soon enough, the tears will flow. There will surely come a time when we realize what’s been tossed aside — the traditions, the history, the uniqueness of the West Coast style — but it’s far too late to reverse course now. There’s no chance of salvaging some degree of sanity amid all the piles of money.

Southern Cal and UCLA got the ball rolling with their stunning joint decision to move to the Big Ten. They would soon be followed by Washington and Oregon, the league’s two powerhouse teams this season.

Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah defected to the Big 12, while Stanford and Cal desperately accepted a downright ludicrous offer to join the Atlantic Coast Conference, way on the other side of the country.

That left Oregon State and Washington State as the Pac-12’s only holdovers, largely because no other Power Five league wanted them. While those two lonely schools have vowed to carry on in some fashion, they would seem to have few options beyond fashioning some sort of merger with a second-tier league such as the Mountain West.

Even if the Pac-12 name carries on in some fashion, it will be a pitiful shell of the proud league it once was.

Sadly, the conference’s demise arrived during a season when it recaptured much of its gridiron glory after years of irrelevance.

Colorado’s new coach, Deion Sanders, hogged the early headlines. Nine of the league’s 12 schools were ranked in The Associated Press Top 25 at some point during the campaign. Washington swept through a perfect season to capture the league’s first berth in the College Football Playoff since 2016. Oregon — with its only two losses both to the Huskies — also landed a major bowl bid. Six other schools received postseason berths.

With one game remaining, the biggest one of all, the Pac-12 has a 5-3 mark during bowl season — the best winning percentage of any league.

DeBoer talked of the gauntlet his team went through to emerge without a single loss. He hasn’t really had time to think about the impending move to the Big Ten.

“In all honesty, we’ve been so focused on the Pac-12, which was just a grind this year,” he said. “Just a tough schedule, each and every team being elite. I think that has prepared us for next year in a lot of ways.”

There will be a few more opportunities for the Conference of Champions to add to its trophy case before the lights are turned out.

The Pac-12 has four of the top nine teams in the AP’s women’s basketball poll. In baseball, Stanford will be looking to follow up on last year’s trip to the College World Series. The league is a powerhouse in softball, claiming three of eight spots in the 2023 Women’s World Series. And the Pac-12 always fares well in Olympic sports such as swimming.

But given how football was the driver of the whole realignment train, the game Monday night definitely feels like an ending.

Farewell, Pac-12.

You’ll be missed.

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Paul Newberry is the national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at [email protected]

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