Everything you missed on the internet today: Pac-12 Version

Take a sip of water and a deep breath, it’s gonna be a long night.

Further updates from the latest conference turnaround are afoot as Washington State and Oregon State continue their quest to rebuild the Pac-12 and get the conference up to 8 schools. Social media has begun drafting their picks for what schools are going where, and we’ve got the threads.

To catch you up, the initial expansion began when the Pac-12 tapped in Boise State, Fresno State, Colorado State, and San Diego State (read Michael’s POV here!). We also speculated on some schools that may or may not come aboard here, and while we couldn’t have predicted all of the outcomes, there is still something left to be said about additional names we haven’t thought up yet.

Which brings us to today, when we heard first from Brett McMurphy that Memphis, Tulane, and USF decided to stick with the status quo and remain in the AAC.

And then, murmurings of Gonzaga joining the Conference of Champions began.

However! According to a different reliable source, that might not be the case at all:

If you’re scratching your head about this, you are not alone!

Here, have another one!

A ‘will they or won’t they’ might be endearing in modern romance media, but I can’t exactly say the same for the anticipation of waiting to see what kind of conference will unfold around our athletic programs. Do I expect the executives in charge of all of this to plan their fired off truth-bombs that explode group chats around my schedule, when I am just a 25 year old using her lunch break from her day job to write this up? No, not really. Not at all. But I understand the sentiment of fans wanting to understand why certain choices are being made.

We can speculate all day around what red tape lies where, but the dance is the dance. Survive and advance in more ways than one seems to be the plan.

I personally can’t deny the name recognition and media that Gonzaga would bring, in terms of basketball notoriety, and I am once again reminded of how inherent multi-tasking is when it comes to being a sports fan. I mean, really, it should be a skill on all our resumes at this point – the amount of information we juggle at all times. However, that might not be something anyone has to worry about anyway, but we’ll let you know when it’s time to hit the panic button!

I think there’s space for doom and gloom, and there’s space for excitement, and there’s space for why does this keep happening to us, seriously, what did we do to you to deserve this?

The main thing surrounding all of this, in my case, is feeling like they’re all picking us last in kickball. And they have no idea how good at kickball we are! It’s gotten harder for me as time goes on to keep singing along to the “they’re just sleeping on WSU/OSU” song, I don’t like it anymore. It’s overplayed. I’m tired of going to the mall or grocery store or airport and it’s all I hear! But I can’t change that. I just hope our student athletes don’t look at this like a burden they need to take on. This is not their fault.

For now, I leave you with the only thing I know to be true: it was quite an exhausting internet day, and it’s only Monday. Monday at checks time 2:30 PM. We have a lot more week left, folks!

Be on the lookout for more concrete details later down the line (I don’t know when), but I hadn’t caught up with you lot on this side of things in a second, and figured it might be time to throw my two cents in. As always, Go Cougs.