This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

I draw this blog headline from a column written by one of the best sports writers going today, Rick Reilly.

In a column for the Washington Post, he produced great words to decry the state of college football today.  He did so in the aftermath of the stunning decision by the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) to turns their backs on the West and defect from the Pac 12 Conference and, of all things, to join the Big 10.

It was only the latest move that threatens many of the traditions and relationships in college football.

And, the move, like a lot of other things in today’s society, was driven by this phrase — It’s all about the money!

So, here, in words better than I could write, I reprint Reilly’s column:

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And now, class, it’s time to catch you up on college football, the sport that brought you the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl.  Please open your textbooks to “madness.”

College football is slaying its history.  It’s selling all its tradition and fans and rivalries down the river on an out-of-control steamboat with a drunk donkey at the wheel.  The lunacy really kicked in on June 30 when USC and UCLA bolted the Pac-12 conference for the Big Ten (which now will have 16 teams, if that makes any sense).

That’s right.  Starting in 2024, the Big Ten conference, longtime symbol of the hearty American Midwest, corn ice cream and 400-pound kickers, will now be playing teams full of surfers, lowriders and guys in hair buns.

Big Ten teams are now conveniently located near their banks, not each other.  Take USC, which is near Hollywood, and their new conference foe Rutgers, which is somewhere near “The Sopranos.”  This is going to be such an exciting new rivalry.  One team has six Heisman Trophy winners, can claim 11 national championships and over the years has spent 91 weeks as the No. 1 team in the country.  The other is Rutgers.

Then you have the University of Maryland — a Midwest-by-the-Chesapeake Big Ten team since 2014 — soon to be taking on UCLA, which is a six-hour flight away.  The winner of the game will take possession of the coveted Dead Polar Bear trophy.  Imagine that:  The flyover states they’ll be flying over are where their conference resides.  College football really needs to get Google Maps.

Why did UCLA abandon the traditions of nearly 100 years in the Pac-12, the conference that has more national championships in more sports than any other?  Because its athletic program was $103 million in debt, according to USA Today, and stands to make about $60 million more per year in TV money with the Big Ten than it was with the Pac-12.  What good are traditions if the repo man just took your blocking sleds?

Not only did the Pac-Whatever lose its two biggest schools, there’s a rumor the conference could lose four more (Colorado, Utah, Arizona and Arizona State) to the Big 12, which last summer found out it was losing its two biggest teams — Oklahoma and Texas — to the Southeastern Conference, which needs two more good teams the way the Kardashians need more selfies.

Without the Sooners and the Longhorns, the Big 12 is left with a lot of teams such as Texas Tech and Iowa State, which don’t fluff up anybody’s pom-poms.  Two-four-six-eight! Why’d we leave the tailgate?

As for talk of a possible merger between the Big 12 and Pac-Whatever … fine.  You can make a tofu and wheatgrass smoothie. There’s still no meat in it.

And if you think those once-respectable conferences now suck like the Dyson factory, imagine how the lesser conferences look.  Their membership changes hourly, as do their names.  Tell you what, I’ll list a few and you try to tell me which one’s fake:  The Big West. Mid-Central. AAC. Sun Country.

Just kidding.  They’re all fake.  Nobody knows anymore.  Nobody cares.

All anybody really cares about is college football’s Godzilla, the SEC, which has won 12 of the last 16 national championships — six of them by Alabama alone.  One SEC team or another has been in the final game for 15 of the past 16 years.  Put it this way:  The SEC just rejected the New York Jets for membership.

Next earthquake up is Notre Dame, which is somehow still an independent, but not for long.  It will almost certainly soon jump to the Big Ten or the SEC — the Big Ten can pay Notre Dame $65 million more per year than it was getting out of its creaky old NBC deal.  Do you know how many golden domes that would buff?

Meanwhile, if you’ve seen the NCAA anywhere, will you have them call the office?  They’re supposed to be in charge of all this insanity but can’t seem to stop it.  Reminds me of the time we came home to find our kids running crazy inside the house and the babysitter locked out, sitting on the porch — crying.

But don’t fret, college football fans.  None of this is permanent: It’s going to get worse, until what we’re left with is two super-conferences — the Big Ten and the SEC — with maybe 40 teams total.  The super-conferences, controlling all the watchable college football in the country, will then put the NCAA out of its misery, take over the game and hold their own national championship.

And the egghead teams that aren’t at all watchable, such as Vanderbilt in the SEC and Northwestern in the Big Ten?  They’ll get kicked down to one of the JV conferences and eventually become accountants for TaxSlayer.

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And this footnote:  As Reilly wrote his column, the future of college football in Oregon and Washington was up for grabs.  The University of Oregon and the University of Washington could be leaving the Pac-12, or whatever it is now becoming, because they draw substantial fan and donor bases.

But, going without almost any mention in what has been written around the country – Oregon State University and Washington State University.  Who knows where or how they will end up when it comes to football or, for that matter, other sports?

I am a college football fan, though not to the degree of many of my friends.  But, in all of these crass moves, I am tempted to echo a two-word phrase from columnist Reilly:  Who cares!