The most humbling aspect of death is that life moves on. For example, when the college football season opens at the end of August, it will do so without the PAC-12, a 113-year-old conference which met its demise at the hands of its greedy peer conferences (whose strings are pulled by even greedier broadcast companies). Brace yourself for a deluge of eulogies for the Conference of Champions, though the words will be both beautiful and empty. Games will go on.

With death brings an unsettling weirdness across the nation. Oregon State and Washington State, which now comprise the mighty PAC 2, will play a mostly Mountain West schedule (apparently, the former Power Five institutions have maintained enough arrogance to self-elevate above the G5 while simultaneously being unceremoniously abandoned by their brethren.) The chagrin of Beaver fans trekking to Boise State for the season finale should provide some teeth gnashing grist for college football traditionalists.

At least the merger of the PAC 2 and the Mountain West makes some kind of sense. The new Big 10 and ACC are ridiculous to behold, with Washington, UCLA, USC and Oregon joining the Big 10, and California, Stanford and SMU making up the western front of the ACC. It’s 2,760 miles between Rutgers and USC, and just 2,258 miles between Stanford and Florida State. What’s a few miles between billionaires?

The SEC will look just as bizarre (though not so geographically blasphemous). The SEC poached two of the Big 12’s wealthiest programs – Texas and Oklahoma – and increased its bloated membership to sixteen. The Big 12, which has been battling attrition from its peer conference for years now, was compelled to add Utah, Arizona State and Arizona to its roster, in addition to its recent AAC raid of Houston, UCF, and Cincinnati (plus BYU, as a weird bonus).

All of this bloody Backstabbing Five action forced the American to castrate CUSA by grabbing North Texas, Rice, UAB and UTSA (plus Army, as a weird bonus), leaving Conference USA to patch up its inglorious membership with a variety of FCS programs – Kennesaw State, Jacksonville State, and Sam Houston (with Missouri State set to arrive forthwith).

Where are the models of consistency in this ever evolving universe? The Sun Belt, having had its burst of decimation and expansion, remains gloriously unchanged. The MAC, strumming along as if nothing is going on, has half-heartedly allowed UMASS entry, while the Mountain West – once thought to be the ultimate beneficiary of the Power Five implosion – gets to pass Oregon State and Washington State around like a bong.

Five paragraphs later, we’re back to where we started – the college football landscape looks nothing like it did last year. It’s not just the realignment. College athletes have agents now. Hugh Freeze is on record saying he could’t bring himself to pay $1 million for a transfer quarterback. EA Sports will release its first college football title after years of courthouse inertness. The NCAA is considering the elimination of walk on athletes thanks to abuses in the NIL system. College football coaches are spending less time coaching and more time being bankers. Meanwhile, the SEC and Big 10 are rapidly seeking to create a College Football Playoff format that 100% rewards only themselves.

Not to worry. Fans will still be occupying the overpriced seats, waving foam fingers while mindlessly waiting through the endless parade of media timeouts – which can be spent scanning QR codes so that we may make a quick donation to the team’s NIL collective. It’s all good, because fans can endure any threshold of pain and humiliation.

At least, that’s what the warlords of college sports is counting on.

PHOTO CREDIT: weird AI