Lincoln Riley's Comments Are Latest Proof Conference Realignment Stinks

If you are a college football fan, particularly on the West Coast, you have heard all the grumblings about local start times for some of the games outside the Eastern Time Zone.

It's gotten so bad that some fans have started colloquially referring to the Big Noon Kickoff as the "Big 9am Kickoff."

As an added drawback, many of the programs who have to play cross-country are affected even more thanks to time zone changes and jet lag.

The latest victims of this lunacy are the USC Trojans, who have to take a four-hour flight to Champaign, Illinois to play the Fighting Illini at noon on Saturday, which, for the boys from Southern California, would be a 9am local kickoff.

Head coach Lincoln Riley voiced his displeasure with this "scheduling quirk" when he met with the media earlier this week.

I've had my problems with the way Riley handled his exit from Oklahoma in the past, but the man is spot on with his gripes here.

If only all the schools on the Pacific Coast and in the Pacific Time Zone played each other in conference.

It would be a 12-team league of all teams from the western end of the country. We could call it something cool, like the PAC 12!

If only something like that actually existed.

This is just another example of how conference realignment (in conjunction with a ton of other issues, but we don't have time to get into those) has ruined the tradition that was college football.

No, USC and Oregon are not Big Ten schools, nor do Cal and Stanford belong in the ACC.

What are we doing here, folks?

I understand these kids are all getting paid very handsomely, so we can stop with the illusion that these are poor student-athletes. But don't we care at all about their quality of life and the quality of the product on the field.

I'm sure Jayden Maiava would be an infinitely more effective quarterback (and more fun to watch) if he and his team weren't jet-setting all over the country week in and week out while having to wake up at 5:30 in the morning local time to get ready to play a game.

Give me the old college football back, please.

This is a nearly universal take at this point, so I don't feel like I'm speaking out of turn here.

I know there's no putting the genie back in this bottle, but if the powers that be cared even a little about their product or its fans, then we would go back to regional conferences the way this sport was intended to be played.

But that would require these fat cats to sacrifice a couple percentage points of profit in the process, so we all know that will never happen.

In the meantime, enjoy getting drunk at 8 in the morning, Trojans fans!

At least we know something positive will come out of this.

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