Harbaugh vs. Big Ten? Texas vs. Big 12? Welcome to

• Ryan McGee, ESPN

  • Senior WriterNov 30, 2023, 07:00 AM ET Close Senior writer for ESPN The Publication and ESPN.com
  • 2-time Sports Emmy winner
  • 2010, 2014 NMPA Author of the Year

There’s nothing quite as disturbing as that minute when you run into an ex.At the grocery store. The airport. Wherever. Specifically if your separation was remarkable. A soap opera-worthy split that involved name calling and shouts of “I wish we ‘d never fulfill!” and end up with legal representatives included. A schism so sensational that individuals still gossip about it every time you get in a room. What was it that Cady Heron said in “Mean Girls”? “Have you approached individuals and realized they were just discussing you? Have you ever had it occur 60 times in a row?”

Well, what if it happened 80,000 times in a row? What if that uneasy encounter with your previous enjoyed one, that individual whom you so openly skewered then immediately returned the favor, was nationally telecasted? With a prize as a backdrop?Welcome to college

football’s Champion Weekend 2023, the peak of awkwardness. The final, inescapable conclusion at the end of a season when everyone has, for the most part, had the ability to disregard the pigskin-covered elephant in the room.Not anymore.Starting Friday night in Las Vegas

, there will be

24 consecutive hours of conference championships won, College Football Playoff berths earned and more uneasy handshakes than a Roy household reunion on “Succession.”Editor’s Picks 1 Associated Let’s begin right there, on the planet’s largest Roomba, located nearby to the Las Vegas

Strip. Allegiant Stadium is where Oregon and Washington will defend the final Pac-12 champion. No matter where the conference goes from here, it will never be the exact same, as this will most absolutely be the last night of the league as we have actually always known it, anchored by the big box schools of Los Angeles, Arizona and the Pacific Northwest.The loser of that game will right away start preparing for its next stage of life as a member of the Big 10. The winner will more than likely get to deal with a CFP semifinal matchup.But first, that champ will have to base on stage and receive its trophy from the male whom it has actually openly blamed for its decision to bolt because of its lack of confidence in his inability to ink a rewarding media rights offer: commissioner George Kliavkoff. Meanwhile, Oregon and Washington are also both currently on the other side of a remaining claim to determine control and the money of the Pac-12 as it progresses, sitting throughout the table from archrivals Oregon State and Washington State, while those remaining” 2Pac “schools are working with Kliavkoff to figure who and where they may play next season.This will all make presenting for those trophy photos seem like taking your Christmas card image right after everyone in the household just had a substantial battle over what sweaters you need to wear.Awwwwkward.Now let’s take it 1,200 miles east, to Jerry World in Arlington, Texas. AT&T Arena is where Texas is preferred to defeat Oklahoma State in Saturday’s Big 12 title game. This will also be the Longhorns’last contest under their conference’s banner, as they will leave next summer season, together with fellow present conference headliner Oklahoma, for the

SEC. It was their 2021 decision to move deeper south that sparked this existing period of conference adjustment. It’s all been a Texas-sized multiyear countdown, marching through this season with all sorts of four-letter fare-thee-wells, from an unlimited sea of Horns Down gestures to Oklahoma State’s Bedlam Bye-Bye win over the Sooners one month ago.It all peaked– or cratered, relying on your perspective– last weekend, as Texas crushed Texas Tech in its Big 12 regular-season swan tune. That’s when the image and voice of commissioner Brett Yormark appeared on the cinema at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium, a clip from his preseason speech to the Red Raider Club kickoff luncheon when he charged Tech to”function”when it came to keeping Texas out of the Big 12 title game.That sound bite, met with boos and boot scootin’, was followed by an enormous” SEE Y’ ALL IN ARLINGTON”graphic.The Texas video board is playing the hits for Brett Yormark in their last Big 12 home game. pic.twitter.com/DWjMs7mThY!.?.!— Dave Wilson (@dwil )November 25, 2023 If Texas beats Oklahoma State– and the Horns are currently a 15.5-point favorite– then tradition states that Yormark will be the guy to hand Texas its fourth and final Huge 12 championship trophy.Cue that emoji of the smiley face revealing

all its teeth, pressed together like it’s attempting to squash a walnut after a root canal.OK, now let’s travel even further

east, to the Queen City of Charlotte, North Carolina. That’s where fourth-ranked Florida State is also favored, albeit by just 2.5 points, over upstart No. 14 Louisville in the ACC championship game at Bank of America Arena. Now this feud you may have forgotten, lost in the middle of the much greater profile throwdowns we’ve currently discussed. However it was simply last summer season, like a little few months earlier, that the folks down in Tallahassee started

raising a flame-tipped spear of a stink about their membership in the #goacc, a league that was undoubtedly losing ground to its Power 5

mates when it pertained to all the deck reshuffling and cash recounting.There was an Aug. 15 deadline that came and went while Florida State employed a PR company to deal with its extremely loud”We hate it here” message and a personal equity company to see if it could create the $120 million to break free of Tobacco Road. University president Richard McCullough informed ESPN,”I’m not that positive that we’ll be able to stay,”as his Seminoles associates said they should get a bigger piece of the football television cash pie chart because, well, the remainder of the league wasn’t in their league when it comes to gridiron success. An upset fellow ACC member said,” It’s so great remaining in meetings with a school who simply invested all summer informing everyone that the rest of us aren’t worthy to be in the same room with them.” The primary focus of FSU’s ire was commissioner Jim Phillips– the very same male who will hand the Noles their trophy should they clinch their 16th ACC title on Saturday night.Someone call up among those gifs of Britney Spears taking a look around like “How uncomfortable is this?”And lastly, let’s take it as much as Indianapolis for Michigan vs. Iowa. Do we even need to discuss this one? Due to the fact that it is still so going on. A maize-and-blue mess of such immediacy that it has relatively controlled the headlines considering that Halloween. Jim Harbaugh, coach of the Wolverines, will return from penalty purgatory just in time to lead his group to maybe its 3rd consecutive Big Ten champion and 3rd straight CFP look. He has actually been absent from the sidelines due to the fact that of a sign-stealing scandal apparently created by a since-departed employee.Harbaugh’s three-game suspension was not bied far by the NCAA however rather the conference office, a choice sustained in no small part by the B1G sobs of foul from the other league members. There was legal wrangling, marking the first time anyone can remember that a football group in the midst of winning a conference was also in the middle of taking legal action against that conference. Ultimately, the suit was dropped. However the Jim Halpert expression of”Is this really occurring today?”remains.Speaking of faces, the faces of the Michigan vs. Big 10 fight have always been Harbaugh, naturally, and commissioner Tony Petitti, who has been on the job for all of six months. Now, if ESPN Analytics is to be believed, there is a 92.6 %chance Petitti and Harbaugh will be standing shoulder to shoulder

on the field of Lucas Oil Arena on Saturday evening, one greeted with cheers and the other with middle fingers by the fans of the recently crowned”Victors”of the conference. We’ll let you think which is which.In the meantime, the rest of us, from the other six conferences( consisting of the silently drama-free SEC)to our cumulative sofas and recliner chairs, can kick back and see the football awkwardness unfurl like an upset grievance email accidentally sent to the person you’re angrily complaining about. The exact same couches and recliner chairs we were in last week, seeing our drunk uncles wake up on Black Friday and look over their coffee at the silent faces of everyone in the household, believing, “Oh damn, what did I say last night when we were watching the Egg Bowl? “That will be all of us this weekend, eyes instinctively shifting left and ideal as if looking for an escape route and lips and teeth drew back like we’re suffering brain freeze, so thankful we aren’t on those four stages in those four cities, turning over huge prizes and well-wishes to our prospective and soon-to-be exes.Awwwwkward.