The New York Times has a long feature this weekend about how the realignment of college athletic conferences threatens traditional rivalry games, such as the annual football clash between Oregon State University and the University of Oregon. This season’s edition of the game that used to be called the Civil War (the Times, cheekily, still calls it that) was played last weekend, and so the story starts and ends in Corvallis. (The reporter, Billy Witz, spends some time inside The Angry Beaver downtown bar; it should be required for national sports reporters visiting town to stop by The Angry Beaver for color.)

The Times story says the Oregon State-Oregon game is on the schedule for next year — but, after that, scheduling difficulties may mean that the series takes a hiatus, at least for a few years.

Witz includes in his story a quote from Christian Anderson, an associate professor at the University of South Carolina and an editor of a book on the history of college football, that sums up better than anything else I’ve read the way I feel about all of this:

“Rivalries are at the heart of what college football is. Imagine a world without Harvard playing Yale. That said, the essence of college football is fading — if it’s not gone already. It’s about money and TV and putting yourself on a national stage.”

With that said, I’m not among those fans who think the rivalry game should necessarily continue; the widening gap in resources between the schools suggests to me that beatdowns like the one the Ducks handed the Beavers last weekend will become increasingly common. Every once in a while, though, I guess the Beavers would pull off a shocker, and when that happens, let’s hope the Beavers have a deal in place like Northern Illinois had a couple of weeks ago when it stunned Notre Dame. 16-14. Not only did Northern Illinois get the win, Notre Dame paid the Huskies $1.4 million to come play the game in South Bend. If it’s all about money, let’s see if the Beavers can take away a little bit more of Phil Knight’s stash.

One more odd footnote to college realignment: Ace Pac-12 reporter Jon Wilner reports that the idea for the Pac-12 to add Boise State, Colorado State, San Diego State and Fresno State to the conference actually dates back to spring 2023, when former Commissioner George Kliavkoff was presented with a backup option in the event that Oregon, Washington and the so-called “Four Corners” schools — Utah, Colorado, Arizona and Arizona State — all left the Pac-12. The reasoning at the time was that if you added the four best football programs from the Mountain West, you might be able to get Cal and Stanford to stay in the Pac-12, leaving the conference with eight members. But what were the chances that all six of those schools would leave the Pac-12, right? Kliavkoff took no action on the proposal., Wilner reports. And that’s part of the reason why we can attach the title “former commissioner” to Kliavkoff’s name.

Now, if there’s anything that catches my eye faster than news about conference realignment (what a great time to be a reporter covering the business side of sports), it’s a story about weird stuff going on in the universe. So I was destined to see this Associated Press story about how scientists have spotted a pair of jets streaming from a black hole in a distant galaxy. The jets are shooting hot plasma and supposedly are the size of 140 Milky Ways (the galaxy, not the candy bar) laid end-to-end — which. frankly, is a size comparison that borders on meaninglessness, unless the idea is tell us, wow, that’s huge. Now, I was under the impression that nothing escapes a black hole once it’s within range, but apparently sometimes superheated plasma can escape in a narrow jet like the ones scientists have spotted. This is what I get for believing the science was sound in that Disney chestnut “The Black Hole.”

We’ve seen plenty of reports lately about the sad state of journalism these days, so it was refreshing to read this Nieman Lab story about why journalists stay in the profession. (I personally would want to see a second story focusing more on journalists in smaller newsrooms.) In any event, the story reminded me of an experience I had this summer, working with one of the journalism interns in the Charles Snowden Program for Excellence in Journalism, run by the University of Oregon; It was an overdue reminder me of how much fun the job can be. (By the way, I always had thought the Snowden program was reserved for University of Oregon students, but that’s not true — it takes students from other Oregon universities; this year, seven of its 20 interns were from Oregon State University.)

Of course, it’s very possible that many of those young journalists will be posting their work directly to TikTok: The folks at the Pew Research Center say that 4 out of every 10 young American adults regularly get news from the social media site. In fact, Pew says “no social media platform we’ve studied has seen faster growth in the share of Americans who regularly turn to it for news.”

Speaking of journalists, New York magazine’s well-regarded political correspondent Olivia Nuzzi has been put on leave while a third party investigates reports that she had a personal relationship with a former reporting suspect. Reportedly, the other person involved is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — and I was going to add something right here, but I think I’d better leave it at that.

Finally this week: The Weekend Reader’s always-busy cat desk calls this Associated Press story to your attention: A gray cat named Rayne Beau (pronounced, of course, Rain Bow) was lost during a June camping trip his Salinas, California-based owners had taken to Yellowstone National Park. In August, a microchip company notified the cat’s owners that Rayne Beau had been found — in Roseville, California, 900 miles from Yellowstone and only 200 miles from Salinas. A couple of quick lessons for you cat owners: Make sure your cats are microchipped. And maybe your cats don’t like camping as much as you think they do.