Five For Friday the 13th: A New Beginning for The Pac-12; Restoring Rivalries

The Pac-12 appears poised to return from the grave like Jason Voorhees, and keeping a rivalry alive can be as hard as it was to make Freddy vs. Jason a reality.

Autumn is such a special time of year. Football is in full swing, baseball intensifies with the push to the postseason and magic of the Playoffs, basketball and hockey season are on the horizon, and Halloween offers up a month-long celebration.

Halloween vibes are possessing me earlier than usual this year with a Friday the 13^th in September. See, part of my October ritual is binging on horror movies. Likewise, I cannot let a Friday the 13^th pass without revisiting at least one installment in the film series of the same name. 

Are the Friday the 13th any good in any traditional sense of the word? Well…Here was the late Roger Ebert’s take on the fourth entry, The Final Chapter, upon its release in 1984.

I really can’t argue with Ebert’s argument. For what it’s worth, though, critics of football dismiss the sport as empty violence.

Similarly, the realignment of conferences dictated by TV network executives and free-agent market surfacing from the transfer portal give the college game in particular an aura of cynical cash grab in the same vein as Ebert’s charges against Paramount Pictures.

I recognize the flaws in both. And at the same time, I love both. So with that, please join on me on this Friday the 13th inspired edition of Five for Friday, examining storylines for the week to come in college football.

Before we dive in, indulge me in a few plugs. For the San Diego Union-Tribune, I chronicled the journey of North County San Diego product, FCS All-American and current Duke standout Ozzie Nicholas. And, for FloFootball, I spotlighted the comeback journey of Roosevelt University wide receiver Keonta Nixon.

Pac-12 Lives?

Six isn’t usually a promising number when it comes to a series. There’s only so many storylines that can be fleshed out before having to really reach for gimmicks like…I don’t know, going to outer space.

Friday the 13^th is an exception. The franchise’s sixth film, Jason Lives, is my favorite and easily the most creative in the series. Director Tom McLaughlin took a new approach, introducing a comedic and somewhat meta tone similar to Scream, a full decade before Wes Craven’s film became a critical and commercial sensation.

McLaughlin also borrowed from golden-age Universal Studios monster movies like the genre-defining Bride of Frankenstein to reinvent Jason Voorhees as a larger-than-life character. Subsequent movies abandoned McLaughlin’s refreshing style in several key ways, but retained the characteristics of Jason as a super-charged force of nature.

As it was for Friday the 13th, six is a promising number for the seemingly finished Pac-12 Conference. The league is up from two to six members as of this week, with the hope of finding new life in the changing sports landscape.

Like Tommy Jarvis unintentionally reanimating the corpse of Jason Voorhees at the beginning of Jason Lives, the Pac-12 Conference received the proverbial lightning bolt-to-a fence post with the addition of Mountain West Conference members Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State set to join Oregon State and Washington State in 2026.

So is this a new beginning for the Pac? Or is it a football version of The New Beginning, Friday the 13th’s fifth entry and ill-fated attempt to reboot with a new villain failing to take the place of Jason Voorhees?