One story that explains the last 40 years in America is the increasing cultural power of what professor Michael Lind calls the "managerial elite." University educated, upper middle class, often coastal elites who now manage companies owned by shareholders, govern our universities, and reap the benefits of our newly globalized economy. They're the same people who told disenfranchised blue-collar American workers to "learn to code," and they're the same people ushering in a new dialect you might've noticed - one that includes words like "microaggressions," and "intersectionality."
According to our managerial elite, anybody who doesn't hop on board with globalism, shares any skepticism about open boarders, or rejects "woke" culture is deplorable. These elites have a vice grip on our media, university system and, increasingly, on sports.
The new rules are: Whichever league aligns most closely with their agenda is the "best" league. That's why the NBA, and its beloved commissioner Adam Silver, is universally adored by our media institutions and their employees, even though it remains the public's fourth-favorite sport, behind the NFL, college football and the MLB.
These new rules explain the outpouring of support for the Pac-12 and Big Ten, who may not have done the right thing in shutting down fall sports in their conferences, but certainly towed the acceptable line. It also explains the downward-looking attitude we've already seen, and will continue to see, towards the SEC, Big 12 and ACC, for deciding to stay the course and play football this fall.
Oregon State president F. King Alexander - whose name was plucked right out of the managerial elite handbook - says that if those conferences choose to play, then they must not be living in reality.
In other words, those southern hillbillies don't know what's good for them.
Sound familiar?
This trope has been used before. It's what democrats - the political party that now caters to 30-something yoga-goers with communications degrees - said about working-class citizens who voted for George W. Bush.
"They're voting agains their own interests!" said the party that enabled large-scale manufacturing offshoring.
Condescension is a specialty of these man-bun wearers.
So is control.
They hate that the Big 12, SEC and Big 12 control their own destiny. That's why the next few weeks will be filled with hand-wringing hit pieces questioning the morality of those commissioners, the medical advice they've received and whether college football needs more centralization.
ESPN dropped their first "Should College Football Have More Centralized Power?" article today.
Ah, yes, just what we need. Another do-nothing, cosmopolitan suit, pocketing $5 million a year to make decisions for small-town America.