O'Neil: College athletics feels like Lord of the Flies

Plenty of other sports have cashed in on spiraling revenues from broadcast rights without triggering the fundamental reorganization college football is experiencing.

Note from Christian: Danny O’Neil of “Say Who, Say Pod” fame was kind enough to offer his take on the current TV drama surrounding the Pac-12 and college football.

The Washington Huskies began preseason practice on Wednesday with a Heisman Trophy candidate at quarterback, an utterly electric group of receivers and credible aspirations of winning the conference, maybe even qualifying for the four-team playoff.

Yet the dominant conversation about the Pac-12 involves Apple+, not Michael Penix Jr. Any excitement over the Huskies’ Week 3 game at Michigan State is eclipsed by the debate about whether Washington could wind up in that conference as soon as next season. There are suspicions the Pac-12 will enter hospice care if just one more school follows Colorado to the Big 12. “That thing is standing on a knife’s edge,” one source told Ross Dellenger of Yahoo!.

No one is talking about how good Washington might be this season, only where it will play next year. Same goes for Oregon. And Utah. Throw in Oregon State, and you’ve got four teams that will be nationally ranked when the season begins, and the only reason anyone is talking about them relates to where they’ll be this time next year.

There is something deeply wrong with all of this, and at the root of the problem is the television networks.