It started when Larry Scott took over. It continued when the Pac-12 presidents replaced one doofus with another in George Kliavkoff. It accelerated when nearly every other school in what was the Pac-12 jumped ship. The bleeding was staunched for a brief period in the form of four straight, season-opening wins and a largely meaningless court victory. But it turned out that the bleeding had to be stopped with a tourniquet, and if you know anything about how tourniquets work, you know the limb eventually dies.
The limb, in this case, is Cougar Football. After the bleeding stopped, October arrived, and the Cougar football team as we have known it over the years - for better or (mostly) worse - is dead.