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Each Friday night this season, Ted Robinson pulled out a bottle of Jameson whiskey. The Pac-12 Network play-by-play veteran didn’t want his crew — wherever they may have been gathered for a game that week — to forget what was being left behind.
They did shots together on those Fridays because the next day would bring their occupational existences to an end as the conference moved one step closer to its expiration.
“This year,” Robinson told CBS Sports, “was going to be an Irish wake for us.”
Irish wakes are a centuries-old tradition of honoring the deceased with one last party in their honor. Robinson merely added a realignment twist. A once-glorious conference was dying and deserved a proper memorial.
No. 5 Oregon and No. 3 Washington meet Friday night in what will be the final Pac-12 Championship Game. Scattered to the four winds will be 108 years of tradition. The league started in 1915 with a consolidation of four West Coast schools: Cal, Washington, Oregon and Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State).
It ends with all the sadness and mourning any wake would imply — along with that shot of whiskey.
“You go to an Irish wake and no one is crying and no one is maudlin,” Robinson explained. “Everybody is telling stories, trying their best to smile while remembering the departed. You try to remember good things about them. And yeah, you have a little drink with it, too.”
Some deaths are expected. In this case, it has been 18 months since news broke of USC and UCLA intending to join the Big Ten. For some, those 1 ½ years have only slightly numbed the initial pain. In fact, the end has come in a series of atomic-level shockwaves.
There was a year-long quest to land a new, lucrative television deal in efforts to salvage…
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Author : Dennis Dodd
Publish date : 2023-11-29 17:23:43
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