Michigan beats Alabama in the CFP semifinals and advances to the national championship
Michigan ousted Alabama and is on its way to the national championship. That's why we enlisted the help of college football star Matt Leinart to find out what makes the Wolverines so special.
In a sport that has become accustomed to recycling its national champion from the same small pool of programs, the final game of this college football season will offer something that hasn't been seen in more than three decades and, unfortunately, never will be again will be seen.
Big Ten vs. Pac-12.
Midwest vs. West Coast.
And perhaps most surprising given the sport's modern history: Michigan vs. Washington.
Since the beginning of the BCS era in 1998 and through the last year of the four-team College Football Playoff, Ohio State was the only Big Ten program to win a national title, while Southern Cal was the only program from the Pacific Time zone to actually finish the job.
That will change on Monday thanks to this matchup. And then, for better or worse, conference chest-thumping will be just a relic of the sport's past.
There will be a lot of talk in the next few days about how Washington and Michigan will play a conference game in the Big Ten next season – a shining moment for new commissioner Tony Petitti and a reminder of the historic embarrassment that George Kliavkoff considered his The Pac-12 collapsed this fall.
Even if Washington wins, it won't be a last hurrah, but rather a reflection of wasted promises that have left generations of Pac-12 administrators withering in their arrogance and ineptitude. And the fact that there will no longer be a major conference on the West Coast is a humiliation that deserves more than shrugs and empty platitudes about how change is inevitable.
The fact is, conference pride — including those obnoxious “SEC!” chants — is a big part of what has made college football interesting for decades. But it wasn't just about what logo your team was currently wearing, it was a symbol of shared traditions and idiosyncrasies that everyone within a conference understood. It was like being part of a dysfunctional family that could argue with each other all year long, but still came to the table and had a nice Thanksgiving.
But which leagues will we get next season?
This is not a conference as we know it. When Texas and Oklahoma arrive to bring the SEC to 16 members, some of the great backyard brawls that made the league what it is will be turned into expendable games that alternate on-schedule and off-schedule. And when the Big Ten joins Oregon, USC and UCLA in adding Washington to an 18-team monstrosity, the only thing that will unite them culturally will be the relentless pursuit of dollars.
Let's not forget the ACC, which really undermined the whole Atlantic Coast thing by adding two teams from California (Cal and Stanford) and one from Texas (SMU). Or the Big 12, which was the most regionally cohesive of all leagues until everything exploded and it had to take over schools in Cincinnati, Orlando and the Phoenix metropolitan area to ensure its survival.
These are no longer cohesive leagues built on academic and cultural commonality, but rather chain restaurants trying to plant their flag in any suburban mall with foot traffic and easy parking. You might as well cheer for Chipotle and Starbucks.
The point here is that if Washington wins the national championship, that should mean something for the institution of West Coast football. Even for Washington's rivals, it should be a sign of pride that a team could actually make it in the Pac-12, despite all the obstacles those teams faced. It should be an inspiration to every high school coach from Seattle to San Diego who has seen so many of their top players end up at schools like Alabama and Georgia because they feel football is taken more seriously there than in their own backyard.
If Michigan wins its first straight national title since Harry Truman's presidency, it will massively change perceptions in the Midwest. Among all these regional powers, the recent national championships won by Penn State, Nebraska and even Notre Dame are slowly moving out of the rearview mirror and into the scrapbook. Only Ohio State seemed capable of acquiring enough talent to compete on the biggest stage of college football's modern era.
But what does that really mean when college football is no longer a sport where regionalism matters? What's the fun in comparing one conference to another when we now know that it's really about which conference makes the most money from its television contracts?
Sure, they'll keep scoring, but the most important game – SEC vs. Big Ten – will go on until they've used up every bit of the rest of college sports they want. A few years ago, fans of both leagues could attend any SEC-Big Ten matchup because it was a clash of styles and ideologies.
Now it's a battle for TV windows and what's left of other leagues that could fold in the near future (I'm looking at you, ACC). That's not nearly as charming.
But on Monday, before college football goes fully in-house, we will get a national champion who truly represents a conference and a region of the country. Unfortunately, this is the last time this will mean anything.