**Editor’s Note: Time to take the 6-0 Challenge and make your Week 6 picks against “Joe vs. the Pro and the Hero.” Joseph Goodman’s popular college football picks feature, “Joe vs. the Pro and the Hero,” is adding readers to the action this season. Pick your Week 6 games here, and sign up for Joe’s newsletter to see how your picks compare to the experts (and Joe) as well as other readers.

________________________

This is an opinion column.

We’re at the midway point of a college football season that reads like a Shakespearian tragedy. The finest days of the Pac-12 conference will also likely be its last.

Three or four teams in the Pac-12 look like playoff contenders. The best quarterbacks in the country are all out west. Colorado is a TV ratings monster. Remind me again why this conference had to die?

If you’re one of those fans who roots for chaos in college football, then get behind the idea of the Pac-12 putting two teams in the final iteration of the disastrous four-team model of the College Football Playoff. If you’re a real sicko, then dream of one of those teams being either Oregon State or Washington State. The playoff jumps to 12 teams next year. For good or ill, part of me will always wonder if the four-team playoff model was the beginning of the end for college football as we know it.

CASAGRANDE: Why experts were humbled by CFB’s wackiness

RELATED: What Hugh Freeze learned during Auburn’s bye week

RELATED: What Saban said to a Texas A&M player after the game

The big takeaway from the first half of the 2023 college football season is that we’re beginning to fully realize the positive effects created by the transfer portal and NIL. Don’t believe the bunkum being shoveled by guys like SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and Alabama coach Nick Saban. The transfer portal and NIL are making the game more competitive across the board.

Deion Sanders was heavily criticized in the offseason for flipping Colorado’s entire roster. The new-look Buffaloes then went out and upset 2022 national championship runner-up TCU 45-42 in the opening week of the season. That was just the beginning of college football’s brave new world.

In Week 1 and Week 2, four SEC schools lost to non-conference opponents. South Carolina was throttled by North Carolina, LSU was embarrassed by Florida State, Texas A&M couldn’t hang with Miami and — the biggest shocker of all — Alabama gave up 21 fourth-quarter points to Texas at Bryant-Denny Stadium.

Entering Week 7, No.1 Georgia (6-0) is the only undefeated team in the SEC and the AP Top 10 tastes like a Pop-Tart at the skating rink from the 1990s.

The game isn’t regressing, though. College football has never been more engaging. Tulane (4-1) is back. Yes, you read that correctly, but that’s not even the wackiest thing of all. No.17 Duke (4-1), No.23 Kansas (5-1) and No.24 Kentucky (5-1) are beginning to look like football schools.

It all happened a season too late for the Pac-12, though.

A combination of arrogance, greed and terrible leadership allowed the Pac-12 to be dismantled before the beginning of what now looks like a defiant memorial to what could have been. Ten of the 12 teams in the conference will be in other leagues in 2024. It makes little sense why it had to happen. Before everyone goes their separate ways, the Pac-12′s football teams are determined to make the liquidation of its conference as memorable (and awkward) as possible.

It’s bittersweet madness for lovers of college football, and it’s setting the backdrop for the most extraordinary season in college football history.

Amplifying the cringe factor of the Pac-12′s ordeal, ESPN College GameDay is heading to Seattle this weekend for Saturday’s big game between No.7 Washington (5-0) and No.8 Oregon (5-0). Most recently, the show’s animated analyst, Pat McAfee, took some unnecessary shots at Washington State for having the nerve to complain about its unfair treatment by McAfee’s employer.

The GameDay crew can’t avoid the awkward truth, though, which is the rise of the Pac-12 on the eve of its collapse. It’s the biggest story in college football. Some talking points:

— Colorado’s early season spectacles against Colorado State and Oregon registered some of the highest-ever television ratings for regular-season college football games. Colorado is the most-watched college football team in the country through the first six weeks of the season.

— The Pac-12 is the most exciting conference in college football. A record eight teams in the Pac-12 were ranked in the AP Top 25 after the first two weeks of the season. Only the SEC has ever had more (10). Seven teams in the Pac-12 are ranked in the AP Top 25 entering Week 7: No.7 Washington (5-0), No.8 Oregon (5-0), No.10 USC (6-0), No.15 Oregon State (5-1), No.16 Utah (4-1), No.18 UCLA (4-1) and No.19 Washington State (4-1).

— The top three contenders for the Heisman Trophy halfway through the season are USC quarterback Caleb Williams, Washington quarterback Michael Penix, Jr., and Oregon quarterback Bo Nix.

And it all goes away after this season.

Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA are heading to the Big Ten in 2024 while Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State are leaving for the Big 12. The odd couple out — or still in — are Oregon State and Washington State.

Last week, McAfee told Washington State to “f— off” during his television show after Wazzu complained about a joke made by GameDay’s Lee Corso. Corso called the matchup between Oregon State and Washington State the “no-one-wants-us bowl.” Considering ESPN is partly to blame for the breakup of the Pac-12, the joke landed about as flat as Alabama’s energy levels at the beginning of games this season.

It’s unfair to blame the death of the Pac-12 solely on the corporate machine of TV networks ESPN and Fox, though. Conferences were originally formed to curb cheating among regional members. Conferences now exist to leverage TV contracts. The Pac-12′s leaders failed to secure the bag and it destroyed the conference from the inside out.

In the end, the schools that left the Pac-12 did what was best for themselves. There is a touch of sadness to see the Pac-12 go, but observers of college football learned an important lesson. For people who pay the bills, conferences are more about TV time slots and time zones than regional rivalries.

The SEC will expand to 16 teams in 2024 with additions of Texas and Oklahoma, and Sankey of the SEC calls that number “healthy.” He won’t rule out the idea of more expansion, though, so buckle up. Is the SEC still the most powerful conference in sports? Something tells me that the league will be aggressive in the pursuit of an answer.

The cruel irony of it all is that the rise of the Pac-12 this season is proof that the new mechanisms throughout college football to create more parity in the sport are clearly working. With six games to go in the regular season, it’s beginning to look like a one-loss team in the Pac-12 will be more deserving of a spot in the College Football Playoff than a one-loss team in the SEC.

If the final four-team playoff is a going away party for the Pac-12, then I nominate ESPN’s McAfee for the big reveal. As Macbeth would say, it would be a tale told by an idiot.

Joseph Goodman is the lead sports columnist for the Alabama Media Group, and author of “We Want Bama”, a book about togetherness, wild times and rum. You can find him on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.