Buffs Join Pac-10

(Photo from Pac-10 website http://www.pac-10.org/)


As a native Boulderite, long time Buffs fan who grew up going to CU football games and Pac-10 school alumni who holds Cal Men's Basketball season tickets to this day, I feel compelled to comment on the the recent announcement that CU will be joining the Pac-10 along with Utah to create the Pac-12.


First, a note about my recent dearth of blog entries. In May and June, both my wife and my mother were ill. Thankfully, both are doing much better now and I have the time and energy to return to blogging.


From an economic development perspective this announcement is a very positive step for Boulder and Metro Denver because it helps reinforce existing academic, scientific, geographic and cultural ties between Colorado and the West Coast of the United States where a significant degree of scientific and technological innovation occurs. To take one small example of the scientific brain power on the West Coast, the University of California at Berkeley, where I went to graduate school, is the only school that I know of that has so many Nobel Laureates on the Faculty that it dedicates a parking lot for prize winners with free parking in the center of campus. CU's affiliation with the Pac-10 schools will buttress the Metro Denver area's status as a regional "technopole" and help tie Boulder to the innovation infrastructure in Silicon Valley.

For many years Colorado has felt competing gravitational pulls between Texas and the West Coast. The New York Times once described Denver as a mix between Portland, Oregon and Houston, Texas. By taking its flagship public university into the Pac-10 (and turning away from the Texas dominated Big 12), Colorado is pointing west towards a future where global economic influence shifts to the Pacific Rim and technological innovation remains a key to economic success.

Now a bit about what all this means from a football rivalry perspective. One of the things that makes college football so compelling is continuity and the loss of the Nebraska and other Big Eight rivalries is undoubtedly a blow to tradition. I will certainly miss the annual post-thanksgiving game against the Huskers. Nebraska undoubtedly got the better of this series but CU got in a few good shots over the years (can anyone say "62-36" or "back to back Big Eight champs 1989 and 1990"?). The CU-Nebraska rivalry has always had a bit of a nasty edge to it with Nebraska partisans thinking the Buffs were not a worthy rival and CU fans smug, but accurate, sense of geographic superiority over "corn land." Things really heated up in the 1980s when Bill McCartney painted the Nebraska game in RED CAPs on the Colorado schedule and Tom Osborne treacherously cost the Buffs the 1990 UPI National Championship in the Coaches' Poll by voting for Georgia Tech.

If Nebraska had broken up the Big 12 by heading to the Big 10 and Colorado had ended up in the Mountain West due the machinations of Texas politics it would have been a final Husker insult to Colorado that would have stung for decades. In any case, Colorado now has a chance to revive a classic geographic rivalry with our new Pac-12 travel partner, the University of Utah, a budding football powerhouse. The Buffs are going to have to rev up our athletic program to compete with the Pac-10 and our new foes in Salt Lake City.