Yes, Pac-12 can still stir up some things

SAN DIEGO — The fading Pac12, in its final football days, seems intent on kicking up some dust as teams scurry for the exits. Forget quietly sliding stage left so the SEC can gobble up national titles and Heismans as the rest of the sport munches on popcorn.

The winner of Friday’s conference title game between Washington and Oregon is positioned to earn a shot at the whole and sizable enchilada, something that has not happened since USC did it two decades ago.

Of course, Georgia (or maybe Alabama) and Michigan (or maybe Florida State) stand in the way. At this point on the calendar, though, the Pac-12 routinely has been relegated to sorry, saggy afterthoughts.

The conference decided to hang around in its swan song — with apologies to Oregon State, Washington State and the court brawls to come — to make things interesting somewhere other than Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Athens, Ga.

The Pac-whatever even had the audacity to make a run at a final Heisman Trophy, with top quarterback contenders Bo Nix of Oregon and Michael Penix Jr. of Washington. Before Caleb Williams shuffled from Oklahoma to USC to win it a season ago, the conference had not walked away with the stiff-arming trophy since 2014.

It all sets up an awkwardly timed encore. As teams and players finally are mixing it up with the best in the college game at the end of the season, suitcases are packed.

Show that conference pride. See you at the airport.

USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington are Big Ten-bound. Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado will hitch their gold-plated wagons to the TV riches of the Big 12.

It’s beyond strange and surreal to see a conference and an entire athletic region unravel in front of your eyes. History is a quaint concept when the dollars start rolling in.

There’s more than a century’s worth of history in the conference, dating back to 1915 and Pacific Coast

Conference founding members Cal, Washington, Oregon and modern-day Oregon State. They met in a Portland hotel room the same year the Germans sunk the Lusitania and fanned the flames of World War I. A year later, Washington State joined the fold.

Now, two of those original five find themselves clinging to the substantial money tied to the Pac-12 name among the ashes after losing the ultimate game of musical chairs.

San Diego claims significant football roots in the conference, from Marcus Allen, Dan Fouts and Junior Seau to Ron Mix, Ed White and Reggie Bush. Those are legendary names that rub shoulder pads with other conference supernovas like Ronnie Lott, Frank Gifford, James Lofton, O.J. Simpson, Lynn Swann and Anthony Munoz.

The conference gave us one of the wildest touchdowns in the history of the game, when Cal’s Kevin Moen zig-zagged through the Stanford band to win in 1982. No toppled trombone player even held such a lasting place in college football lore.

The Pac-12, leaking oil with the radiator hissing, might just have another highlight or two left.

Oregon is nearly a double-digit favorite over Washington, the undefeated team that beat the Ducks in October. That can be a lifetime ago in the college game, especially for teams that tussled to within a field goal.

Nix might have been around in 1915 when the conference began. Penix could have been lacing up cleats right next to him. It seems as if both have been in college so long that they could be working on second mortgages at BYU.

Nix began at Auburn; Penix at Indiana. Each found the finish line in the Pac-12, a conference facing down a finish line of its own. One will win Friday and keep dreaming about hoisting a championship trophy. The other could hoist a Heisman.

There’s much at stake at a time when there generally has been so little. They’re playing for things that matter. They’re making things interesting.

The Pac-12 is choosing not to quietly go its separate ways. Better late than never.