Musical Chairs – Pac-12 Edition

Colorado did it last week.  Don’t be surprised if Oregon is next. By exiting my newly re-named Pack-12® Conference, the Colorado Buffaloes will mosey eastward across the plains into the Midwest to compete once again in the Big 12 Conference. Colorado joined the original Big Eight Conference in 1947.  That conference morphed into the Big 12 in 1996. In 2011, the Buffaloes stampeded westward to join the Pac-12 Conference.  The Buffs were expected to become a competitive force in their new athletics conference.   After a dozen years playing against the West Coast universities, CU has languished in relative mediocrity in most major sports. The Pac-12 teams are not significantly better than Colorado’s former Big 12 Conference foes. The Buffaloes would have been bottom feeders in most every major conference in America over the past decade.  The school’s athletics department has been a major disappointment and deserves the blame of loyal sports fans of the university. This spring, new hope for the CU football team arrived with the announcement of former NFL Hall-of-Famer Deion Sanders as the new head coach.  “Coach Prime” jumped into college coaching at Jackson State University a couple of years ago and turned around that program almost immediately. His challenge at Colorado will be as high as the Rockies. Deion Sanders is bringing some much needed excitement to Boulder after his arrival.  His new contact (worth about $5 ½ million per season) has already paid for itself with skyrocketing demand for season tickets. The football team hosted nearly 50,000 fans for its annual spring exhibition game a few months ago.  The previous spring football game record crowd in Boulder was just 17,800. Season ticket sales for Colorado’s 2023 home football schedule sold out – in April.  After seeing only one winning season on the football field since 2006, Colorado Buffaloes fans are starved for some success. If Coach Deion Sanders can deliver a winning season to Boulder within his first two years as the team’s head coach, his legend as a coaching Pied Piper will grow. So, why is Colora