Pac-12's Parting Shot; College Football's Season of Change; A TV Recommendation

Despite what the NCAA and the ACC may tell you, the college athletic conference that won the most medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics was the Pac-12.

According to the NCAA, the ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) led all conferences with 91 medals, followed by the SEC with 80 and the Big Ten with 78.

Don't believe it.

Those numbers include a raft of athletes who competed for schools in the Pac-12 conference. None of them should count for the ACC or the Big Ten, because none of them ever competed in the ACC or the Big Ten.

Now that we have that straightened out, here's the real tally.

Athletes from Pac-12 schools won 94 medals in Paris, including 34 golds, far more than any other conference. When you subtract Stanford's 39 medals and Cal's 23, the ACC's total is actually 29.

The same thing held true at the Tokyo Olympics, where Pac-12 athletes won 108 medals.

Without question, there was a strong commitment to Olympic sports in the late, great, “Conference of Champions.” 

One must wonder, what happens now that the Pac-12 is splintered and scattered? And what happens if NIL funding and the revenue shared with college athletes isn’t subject to Title IX? 

What happens when colleges forced to pay ridiculous sums of money to football and basketball players because of the House Settlement decide to drop Olympic sports?

What happens? Many of America's best Olympic development programs will be eliminated. That’s what.

Season of Change: A lot is going on this year in college football. The playoff has been expanded from four to 12 teams. Players are being paid huge sums of money. They are transferring to other schools without penalty, as often as they like. Huge lawsuits are being settled.  And the Pac-12 is now the Pac-2.

Conference realignment has resulted in 15 teams changing their affiliation this year (see list below). There’s a lot of uncertainty about whether athletes will soon officially become employees. 

It's all unsettling and, in many ways, unsavory. Many of the things we've known and loved about college football for decades have been corrupted almost beyond recognition.

But once the football season kicks off, at least for a while, we’ll get to remember why we fell in love with the sport in the first place. As a friend told me recently, I hate what goes on from Sunday to Friday, but I still love the games on Saturday.

Early schedules:  Speaking of which, thankfully, the games begin in less than two weeks.

The 2024 season kicks off with four games on Saturday, August 24: Florida State at Georgia Tech, SMU at Nevada, Montana State at New Mexico and Delaware State at Hawaii.

The following week there's a full schedule that includes a number of interesting and important matchups: TCU at Stanford on Friday night, Aug. 30, Georgia at Clemson, Miami at Florida and Notre Dame at Texas A&M on Saturday, Aug. 31, and LSU at USC on Sunday, Sept. 1 (no NFL games til the following week).

This will be the first year of the expanded playoff with a 12-team field, so there's lots of debate as to whether the regular season is more or less important. 

That remains to be seen, but my guess is that 20 or more teams will be in contention for those playoff spots going into the final weekend, which makes the regular season more compelling.

Now if we could just get rid of those conference championship games...

Who's Moved? For the record, these are the schools who've changed conferences in 2024.

Pac-12 to Big Ten:

Oregon

UCLA

USC

Washington

Pac-12 to Big 12:

Arizona

Arizona State

Colorado

Utah

Pac-12 to ACC:

Cal

Stanford

Big 12 to SEC:

Oklahoma

Texas

AAC to ACC:

SMU

Independent to AAC (football only):

Army

And one most of you might have missed:

FCS (Football College Subdivision) to Conference USA:

Kennesaw State (Thank you, Doug Kelly)

Rule Changes: There are a few rules changes this year in college football. Consecutive timeouts have been outlawed, preventing coaches from calling one timeout after another to "ice" a kicker. And the clock will no longer stop after a first down, except inside the final two minutes of a half.

TV Time: Last year Netflix featured a documentary series, produced by Peyton Manning's Omaha Productions, called "Quarterback." It followed Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins and Marcus Mariota through the 2022 season and playoffs. 

I thought the show was fantastic. It took you inside the huddle, inside the homes, inside the heads of the three quarterbacks. Over the course of eight weeks, you got to know them very well. You also got to know their wives, their girlfriends, their kids, in some cases, their parents. 

It revealed their successes and failures, their injuries, their training regimen, their game preparation, the stresses they endured, their thoughts during the games themselves.

The three quarterbacks showcased a player en route to the Super Bowl (Mahomes), a player whose team had a great season before suffering disappointment in the playoffs (Cousins) and a player who endured a disappointing season and a benching (Mariota).

This year, the series focuses on "Receiver." Five of the top receivers in the NFL are featured--49ers Deebo Samuel and George Kittle, Minnesota's Justin Jefferson, Detroit's Amon-Ra St. Brown and Oakland's Davante Adams--throughout the 2023 season and 2024 playoff.

Each player's storyline is a little different: Jefferson, perhaps the best receiver in the NFL, dealing with a hamstring that forced him to miss seven weeks and then the loss of his quarterback (Cousins). 

Adams, suffering through a losing season on a team that failed to utilize his amazing talent; St. John, helping to lead the Lions to the playoffs and (almost) the Super Bowl; Samuels, dealing with the highs and lows of a year when he mixed great performances with major shoulder injuries; Kittle, whose engaging personality and remarkable family dynamic made for great television.

It's brilliant, compelling stuff. 

Last year my wife fell in love with Cousins. This year, Kittle. I guess I'll have to deal with it...