The USC-UCLA transfer intensifies school soccer’s SEC-Large Ten battle

The British fleet had the Spanish Armada. The US had the Soviet Union. The Beatles had the Rolling Stones. Now the SEC has the Large Ten.

For others on the planet of faculty sports activities, listening to that hurts. The reality all the time does.

Simply as there have been different navies, different nations and different rock bands, in the end everybody else within the room, regardless of who they’re or what they’ve performed or what they nonetheless may do, all of them find yourself standing in opposition to the partitions and watching who actually issues do what actually issues.

As a result of there are solely two gamers in a chess match. And apologies for the cliché, however there are solely two true chess masters in at the moment’s collegiate athletics, two superpowers with the fanciest enjoying items, particularly Oklahoma and Texas and now UCLA and USC. The remaining are enjoying checkers. They could have some good items right here and there, however they do not have an entire set.

Solely the Large Ten and SEC do.

In addition to, we will not use the instance of Stratego or Danger. These video games use maps. If we have discovered nothing else over the previous 24 hours, it is that maps now not matter. The final place the place it kinda sorta did was within the Pac-12. Even whereas making loads of missteps over time (see: a struggling TV community, a really dangerous non-Rose Bowl lineup, repeatedly whiffing on School Soccer Playoff berths, a convention title recreation nobody attended and a since-departed commissioner nobody appeared to love outdoors of San Francisco landlords), the one facet of being a Energy 5 convention that the Pac-12 bought proper was geography.

It way back locked down almost each huge model identify and TV market west of the Rockies. When the SEC was making an attempt to persuade us that Auburn was within the west and Missouri was within the east and the Large Ten was stretching itself like Mr. Incredible to rope within the decidedly non-Midwestern Maryland Terrapins and Rutgers, and the Large 12 established an outpost in West Virginia — heck, even manner again when the Large East was extending to Miami and the WAC’s battle to outlive pulled it from Hawaii to Louisiana — the Pac-12 was all the time the tidiest a part of the atlas. A lot in order that when Texas and Oklahoma began sniffing round, the old fashioned membership scoffed as a result of the logistics of their membership felt laughable.

However that was 11 entire years in the past. As former Cal Tech visiting professor Albert Einstein would remind us, time is a relative idea, and on this period of faculty sports activities, 11 years may as nicely be a century.

So it’s that the video games we used to have to attend for New 12 months’s Day to see — USC vs. Michigan, UCLA vs. Wisconsin — and the hoops clashes we used to see solely in March — UCLA vs. Indiana — will occur each fall and winter. Hey, who cares if the vaunted UCLA volleyball group and USC tennis group should journey a bazillion miles with out constitution planes? Apparently, nobody. OK, that is not honest. Somebody cares. Proper?

Lengthy bus rides and cartography issues are mere particulars that should be — and will likely be — labored out. Ultimately, these offers needed to be performed. Needed to be. Had SEC commissioner Greg Sankey didn’t return the cellphone calls of the Longhorns and Sooners one 12 months in the past, he would have misplaced his job. Conversely, had the directors at Texas and Oklahoma not accepted Sankey’s invitation, they too would have rightfully been proven the door. Of their protection, they waited patiently for the Large 12 bosses to make the strikes that will guarantee their league might sustain with the likes of the SEC and Large Ten. It didn’t. So, they left for a lot greener southeastern pastures.

Be at liberty to repeat and paste USC, UCLA, Pac-12 and Large Ten into these sentences you simply learn. It really works. Identical state of affairs. If they do not ask they usually do not be a part of or the Large Ten does not agree and everybody finds out later that it might have gone down that manner, all of them get fired. Likewise, the flagship faculties of the Pac-12, each sitting squarely within the heart of America’s second-largest media market, waited for the convention to make the strikes its leaders have all the time promised — particularly, an enormous media rights deal and a greater seat on the expanded CFP desk — and it by no means occurred. They have been dropping floor, and it wasn’t getting any higher. So, sure, they lower and ran.

And sure, I mentioned flagships. USC and UCLA weren’t constitution members of the Pac-12. When the Pacific Coast Convention was shaped in 1912, the primary within the fold have been Cal, Washington, Oregon and Oregon State. Washington State and Stanford joined a number of years later. USC did not come on board till 1922 and UCLA in ’28. However within the century since, they’ve been the flagships of the league that turned the Pac-8, -10 and -12. One or the opposite has real best-of eras in a number of sports activities. All due respect to their colleagues on the West Coast, however when these of us who have been raised east of Denver have ever thought concerning the Pac-12 or the Rose Bowl, it has all the time been the Trojans and Bruins who’ve instantly come to our thoughts’s eye. No totally different from how when those that have been born within the Pacific time zone have been requested to play phrase affiliation with phrases like “Southeast” they’ve instantly considered Alabama vs. Auburn, or “Southwest” led to Texas vs. Oklahoma, or “Large Ten” conjured up Michigan and Ohio State in The Sport.

The Trojans and the Bruins are the largest manufacturers within the Pac-12. Test that, they have been. Now they’re taking these manufacturers and going east, to Madison and Champaign and West Lafayette, marching Ray Bans-first into an acute case of frostbite.

It is unnecessary. It hurts a whole lot of emotions. We would not ever get used to seeing their in-conference scores scrolling throughout the ESPN Backside Line. However it’s taking place. It wasn’t the primary huge transfer we did not see coming, and it will not be the final. However it should all the time be the weirdest.

Now we wait to see what occurs subsequent. Not within the ACC, Large 12 or Pac-12, as a result of prefer it or not, they’re the sparring companions relegated to standing across the wall of the fitness center watching as Rocky and Apollo put of their mouthpieces and climb between the ropes. As soon as once more, they can not do squat till the actual heavyweight contenders are performed doing no matter comes subsequent.

Ding ding.