On the College Football Playoff and #BackingThePac
Oregon has ruined the Pac-12's "chance" at the College Football Playoff with two straight title game victories. Was that bad?
As a college football fan—especially one on the west coast—it’s pretty hard to ignore the fact that the Pacific-12 Conference is not particularly respected on the national stage.
Of the twelve FBS teams to ever appear in the College Football Playoff, the Pac-12 has only produced two—2014 Oregon, who advanced to the title game, and 2016 Washington, who did not.
Throw in back-to-back season opening Auburn Bowl losses by the Huskies and Ducks, a comically awful commissioner, and the general competitive drop-off across the conference, and you can understand why the Pac has a legitimate case for fifth place among the Power Fives.
So, as a constant defender of west coast football—and as someone who would like to see his Ducks regain some modicum of National Respect—you’d think I’d be satisfied with any and all success from members of the conference.
The logic of #BackThePac being that if USC, Stanford, Utah, etc. are respected by the rest of the country, then Oregon will be respected too—if and when they beat them.
Rising tides lift all ships along the Juan de Fuca Plate, or something like that.
Heck, the SEC basically invented that special, twisted kind of collectivism.
The BCS era helped them build a brand where even when their best teams beat each other, it was because they were both obviously really good. You can blame the Southeastern Conference for the existence of the term “quality loss.”
At the end of the day, we should all be rooting for more playoff appearances and more wins on the big stage by Pac-12 teams—no matter what. Right?
When Oregon finds themselves in two straight Pac-12 title games against the conference’s best “chance” to make the Playoff, all that “rising tide” idealism should reassure me that any outcome would be alright in the long run. Right?
If Oregon wins, they are conference champs, if they lose, at least the country might take the Pac seriously again. Right?
But I’m not Rob Lowe.
I don’t wake up in the morning and put on a hat adorned with the Pac-12 shield.
I want to see Oregon succeed, and their enemies pulverized. Full stop.
The Pac-12 on the big stage does not bring me joy. The Ducks on the big stage brings me joy. I have zero interest in hitching my train to the conference on a national stage just for the sake of #BackingThePac.
Arkansas fans that pretend to take joy in Alabama’s success are just that—Arkansas fans.
I don’t care to see banners flying in any other Pac-12 stadiums. For me, it’s Oregon or nobody.
I would rather see Oregon ruin the conference’s chance at the CFP for a hundred straight years than see anyone other than the Ducks end up there.
Maybe I’ll let OSU go during Jonathan Smith’s 50th season. Maybe. Out of Respect™. But that’s as far as I’ll go.
Not to be all “we live in a society,” but the #BackThePac mindset is absolutely a symptom of the the bigger college football machine.
The committee lists “championships won” as the number one criteria to gaining their affection. But today—and throughout their short history—they proved that they don’t really care about that.
The playoff system was supposed to democratize college football, but it’s really just helped non-conference-champion-blue-bloods like 2020 Notre Dame, 2017 Alabama, and 2016 Ohio State fail upwards.
So, the bold message to the rest of the country has been:
“We don’t actually care if you win your conference, we only care if you played okay enough in one of the conferences that has enough money, resources, and national acclaim. If you do that, you’re pretty much in.”
After seeing mediocrity rewarded like that, I completely understand why an Oregon fan, or any Pac-12 fan, would fall into the trap of just joining the rat race.
“If only we could do what the SEC did, then we’d be respected,” back-the-Pac-ers say, with a glimmer in their eye, and a dream in their heart.
But just because Jeff Bezos exists doesn’t mean you’re going to become a billionaire.
The system was built for the SEC.
That system is still fallible. If you’re an outsider, you can absolutely still break through. But you don’t do it by joining up with your eleven ugly friends. You do it by being a bulldozer.
USC obviously didn’t have a real chance this year anyway, but even if the Ducks weren’t the ones to knock off Utah last year, I would have still wanted the Utes to lose and miss the Playoff.
Under no circumstances do I ever want to hear Kirk Herbstreit say some shit like, “The Pac-12 is back on the national stage thanks to the Utah Utes.”
I just won’t have it.
#BackThePac and the Fire Larry Scott movement are eerily similar to each other. Fire Larry Scott is probably more rational, and it’s well-justified for so many reasons, but it also feels like when Washington loses to us and they scream about firing all their assistant coaches.
“If only we didn’t have this one guy standing in our way, we’d be on top!”
Will the conference be better off when Scott is long gone? For sure. But Larry Scott is not Oregon’s problem. The machine is the problem.
A great big tidal wave of money and TV deals that Oregon can only dream of taking on because they also have money and happen to be good for ratings.
They still have to be a bulldozer. They have to be a wolfpack of one. They can’t concern themselves with waiting for someone else to break through, or carrying anyone else along with them.
Clemson is the blueprint.
Put your head down, recruit like madmen, spend a bunch of money, and become the most hated member of your otherwise lowly conference. Just win. To hell with the tide.
And not to take Seattle’s line of desperately wanting to be the “Clemson of the West Coast” but if the history of Pac-12 awards has been any indication, Mario seems to be making his way towards “most hated” in record time.
Stop using Larry Scott as an excuse, always ruin everyone else’s day, and never #BackThePac—unless backing the Pac would mean that Colorado would beat Florida or something like that. Because that’d just be funny.
As long as college football exists the way it does right now, I’m more than happy with the rest of the Pac being forced to begrudgingly suckle off of Oregon’s NY6 revenue sharing for the foreseeable future.
It’s Oregon, or nothing.
Go Ducks.