The Real Downside to No Pac-16

Surely everyone’s heard by now that the much-discussed Pac-16 is dead, as Texas, followed by their fellow Big 12 boys, rejected the Pac-10’s invitation.  It’s kind of a weird move on Texas’ part, since the Big 12 will now have 10 teams, which takes away a conference title game.  They’ll be fine though.  I’d probably rather have a Pac-10 than a Pac-12 with Colorado and Utah, but it does allow a championship game, which brings in some money.  Some new blood will be fun too, at least for a while.  I have a pretty good feeling this will all be revisited in a couple of years anyway, so it might not be the Pac-12 for long.

Anyway, I’m fairly ambivalent about how the whole thing worked out, except for one thing. Ever since these rumors started flying, I’ve been getting excited about the chance to visit Austin.  Austin is probably at the top of the list of places I’d really like to visit but probably never will because I don’t have enough money to often randomly visit places like Austin.  For some reason, Austin has taken over as America’s mecca of cool, at least outside of New York (and this might only be in my mind).  I was really looking forward to flying down with Andrew and my wife if I could talk her into it and anyone else who wanted to come, watching the Huskies lose to UT, eating some barbecue, and hopefully getting lucky and catching Spoon or Okkervil River playing a hometown show.  A UW-UT game was the perfect excuse, and would have been a blast to see even on it’s own.  I guess it wasn’t meant to be.

Thanks for ruining my dreams, Texas!

-Matthew