Pac-12 Championship: 3 Takeaways from Washington’s thrilling win

3. The Huskies basically just won a playoff game

There are many who say that the 12-team playoff will ruin conference championship weekend. Who knows what the sport’s power brokers will change about the schedule next, but one thing is for sure: the 12-team playoff already pretty much exists.

We just watched a first-round playoff game. Washington won, and they are now guaranteed a spot in the four-team field. If Oregon had won, they’d have a 99.9 percent chance of being in themselves.

Sure, there is a charm and a tradition to the conference championship weekend, but conference realignment is already removing the regional aspect of conferences. The Big Ten Title game could be USC against Michigan next year. That’s not a true, traditional Big Ten game. What is any different about it happening in a playoff game instead of a conference title game?

We can complain all day about the neglect of tradition throughout all this change in the sport, and it’s all completely valid. Too many rivalries have disappeared in recent years, and it feels like more are gone every offseason.

And, yeah, the two teams we just watched will be in the Big Ten next year. Pac-12 teams will be playing at Illinois and Indiana in November. The sport is going to look a lot different.

Competitive, exciting football, however, is not going anywhere. The true urgency of conference championship weekend will shift to the first round of the 12-team playoff, but now we get 11 of those games instead of 3. (Which actually creates more true elimination games. There are maybe 6 total games, starting with this weekend, that will be elimination games in the chase for a National Championship.)

This was a playoff game, for all intents and purposes, and Washington just played their way in.