THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: So much for the good ol’ days of the Pac-8, WAC and others

First of all, thank you so much for all the kind responses to last Sunday’s column on Kenzie.

Many of you shared your own experiences of having to say goodbye to one of your four-legged friends, and I could feel your emotion in your words.

Then there was the voicemail from a nice lady, who called the other day about “the article about your doggies."

"Oh, it was delightful," she said. "I even shed a few tears. So thank you, thank you, for making my day."

So, thanks again to all of you.

I GREW up listening to Oregon State football and men’s basketball games on the radio, listening to Beavers games in the Pac-8 conference.

Back then, it was a big deal when Lew Alcindor and UCLA rolled into your town.

(There probably won’t be as much buzz in a couple of years, when UCLA rolls into Piscataway, N.J., for a late-season Big Ten game.)

Back then, the WAC was also a heckuva league, with Utah and BYU and Arizona and Arizona State. And the most rabid fans were at New Mexico and UTEP. Getting out of El Paso and Albuquerque unscathed, much less with a victory, was an accomplishment.

BUT PERHAPS the Arizona schools outgrew the WAC by the late 1970s, and it seemed a seamless transition for them to join the Pac-8 in 1978 and make it the Pac-10.

Eventually most of the remaining WAC schools morphed into the Mountain West Conference, with Utah and BYU the headliners.

(A few years later, I also grew up listening to Utah and BYU games on the radio — BYU on a 50,000-watt station that I could sometimes still pull in years later when I lived in Sandpoint. Utah’s flagship station was so weak I was afraid the signal was going to fade out during the game — though it helped if you turned your clock/radio a certain way.)

Anyway, when Utah (and Colorado) joined the Pac-10 in 2011, making it the Pac-12, I was happy for the Utes — better they be in the Pac-12 then still in the Mountain West, or the Big 8.

When BYU opted to go independent in football in 2011 — storing the rest of its programs in the West Coast Conference — it was like, BYU is sort of a national brand, especially in football, so let’s see how this goes.

WCC fans, whether you like BYU or not, your conference will miss the Cougars when they join the Big 12 in 2023. Because, especially in men’s basketball, BYU was at least one of the few WCC teams that could challenge Gonzaga on a yearly basis.

WITH USC and UCLA leaving the league in 2024, most folks want to blame the demise of the Pac-12 on former commissioner Larry Scott.

Some point to the equal distribution of revenue among the 12 schools, which appeared to irk USC and UCLA, two of the highest profile schools in the league.

And while other conferences have TV networks that thrive on DirecTV, the best the Pac-12 Networks could do was wind up on a streaming service, hard for most people to find.

That was Larry’s fault as well. Some might even blame COVID-19 and high gas prices on Scott, but that might be going a bit far.

NOBODY KNOWS what’s going to happen next.

Depending on which internet “expert” you read, the top remaining Pac-12 schools are going to get swallowed up by the Big-12 — which is not so Big anymore with its two top schools, Oklahoma and Texas, headed to the SEC in a year or two or three.

Or, if you scroll down a little further, the Pac-12 and the ACC are discussing a “loose partnership” in which the ACC Network — a channel you can actually get on DirecTV — would televise Pac-12 games to West Coast cable households.

WITHIN THE last week or so, a couple of local standout athletes committed to “Power 5” schools — one in the storied ACC, one in the Pac-12.

While I was happy for them, I couldn’t help but wonder what conference they’ll actually be playing in when they arrive on campus in a year or so. Both schools will be fine wherever they end up, and will continue to play at a high level, but the uncertainty is something you didn’t have to worry about in the past.

These days, money matters way more than tradition — Oklahoma-Nebraska used to be a heckuva football game.

Change is sometimes scary because of the uncertainty, but sometimes change can be refreshing, with new rivalries and perhaps a few more games we can actually see on TV.

How does all this shuffling affect local/regional schools like Washington State and Boise State?

Stay tuned.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.