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Uh-oh - Redrum - 10-12-2010

The tide at the Pac-12 division alignment meetings are running against Stanford and Kal.   The Oregons and UDub want access to the Calif. market for exposure to Calif. recruits,  so we have to become Northwest commuters.

Also, the proposed Southern Div. could provide a depleted USC with a reprieve:  A division competition of   Colorado, Utah, Az. St, Arizona and UCLA.   Can you say "cakewalk to the Conf. playoff game"?

Not a done deal, but not looking good.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=5677006&campaign=rss&source=twitter&ex_cid=%20Twitter_espn_5677006

Re: Uh-oh - washingtonismoney - 10-12-2010

Really? I think it\'s the \'zona schools that have gained the most. If the divisions were in play this year, Arizona and Utah would be the best teams in the division.

Re: Uh-oh - jacketree - 10-12-2010

I think the conference-wide freakoutery over division splits is a little misplaced.

1. Traditional rivalry games will be preserved no matter what.  Or created.  I guess Utah and Colorado will have to send out for some sort of Continental Divide trophy. (Or dust off the U.S. 40 Cup; they were regular opponents from about 1903-1962.)

2. Every team will have some exposure in Bluechipville or against a California team every year no matter what.  (There are 11 conference opponents, 8 or 9 conference games and 4 California schools.)  With only 2 LA schools that math doesn\'t work for Southland exposure, of course. Not for everyone.

3. Are UW, Colorado, Arizona, ASU, and Oregon all that underexposed in California; no matter what?

4. "Competitive balance" is subject to change.  Often. Twenty years ago the North was an absolute piece of cake/annual coronation for Washington.  Utah-Oregon in this year\'s title game, btw.

5. No plan is going to please all the schools.  If they wanted it the way it was, they should have left it the way it was.

Re: Uh-oh - yvonne - 10-13-2010

Traditional rivalries would be preserved, but not necessarily the secondary rivalries. (Can you say "Vow Boys"?)  If both sets of rivalries were maintained, Cal and Stanford would be placed in the position of having to face all California schools and at least two very strong Northwest schools every year. That\'s six strong opponents. No other school would face such a gauntlet.

I really don\'t understand why Utah and Colorado have so much clout that they can dictate that they be placed in the south.

Re: Uh-oh - Farm93 - 10-13-2010

Honestly, I think this whole division thing is a bigger deal to C.a.l.

The majority of Stanford students are not from Cali.  The majority of Stanford students were not considering UCLA or USC.  In fact, the majority of Stanford students likely were not actively considering any other Pac-10 school.  So for most incoming students the reality would be that they would look at a list of Pac-12 schools and just shrug.

Stanford football has a slight LA bias, but truthfully almost every other Pac-10/12 team has more LA kids.

Meanwhile, at C.a.l.  The vast majority of their students are Cali based.  The vast majority applied to UCLA since it is the same application.  Many probably applied to USC and Stanford too.  So that cluster of 4 schools means something very different to them.  Also, their roster is packed with SoCal kids.  Getting tossed into a different division would be a recruiting killer.

I suspect the real force behind the division alignment was not Colorado.  Rather the real forces were Oregon and UW.  Both probably demanded a trip to some part of California at least once a year with an option for two trips every other year.  That likely was the power base that created the North-South division.  Blaming everything on Colorado was just an easy out.

I like the alignment... - Mick - 10-13-2010

...where the Northwest schools don\'t visit LA.  Stanford recruits nationally, so as long as we play Cal, it doesn\'t really matter to me.  I\'d like to play UCLA and USC every year, but it doesn\'t kill me if we don\'t; whereas the Northwest schools need to recruit in Southern California.  If it reduces their exposure, it reduces their program.

Re: Uh-oh - CowboyIndian - 10-13-2010

Man, you guys are pretty quick to dump 100 years of history. It will be unmitigated disaster and a spit in the face of ALL the Cali schools if we don\'t play the LA schools every year.

Re: Uh-oh - Robbie - 10-13-2010

Personally, I miss the baseball sub-conference the "Six-Pac" - mostly because of the memorable name. Any chance we can revive it for football?

Re: Uh-oh - Farm93 - 10-13-2010

Quote:Man, you guys are pretty quick to dump 100 years of history. It will be unmitigated disaster and a spit in the face of ALL the Cali schools if we don\'t play the LA schools every year.

It is not that deep.  No Stanford rivalry is like Michigan vs. Ohio State.  In that rivalry everyone in both states knows the deal.  And most of the students are from those two states, so even Frosh on day 1 understand the regional/national importance of the rivalry.

Stanford has rivalries that students, especially non-cali kids, learn about over time while on campus.  I had no real idea that UCLA was important in Stanford sports circles prior to arriving on campus.  I really only had a minimal knowledge of C.a.l\'s deal.  And that was because I took a tour of the C.a.l campus and learned they were basically obsessed with Stanford.

My point was that many Stanford rivalries are learned while in college.  Therefore, it will be much easier for Stanford to create new rivalries than it will be for C.a.l.  In fact, it will be easier for Stanford to create new sports rivalries than it will be for any other current Pac 10 school because of Stanford\'s geographic diversity.

When Tara mentioned UConn during the USC game, the students went nuts.  Like USC in football, it is a rivalry that today\'s students have been told is important.

I am not saying it will be easy.  Rather I am saying if you look at it objectively, it will be easier for Stanford than other Pac-10 schools.  And if you think about it the school that will have the hardest time with the new alignment might be the one across the Bay.

Re: Uh-oh - terry - 10-13-2010

Quote:My point was that many Stanford rivalries are learned while in college.  Therefore, it will be much easier for Stanford to create new rivalries than it will be for C.a.l.  In fact, it will be easier for Stanford to create new sports rivalries than it will be for any other current Pac 10 school because of Stanford\'s geographic diversity.
You can\'t just "create" new rivalries. They have to grow on their own, and it takes many years.

For example, Stanford has been playing Arizona State and Arizona for over 30 years, since the conference last expanded, but we don\'t have a real rivalry with those schools. I expect the same thing to happen with Colorado and Utah. Just two more undistinguished opponents that we have to play a lot more often than we would like to.

But we do already have some strong, long-standing rivalries. The most important of those are UCBerkeley and USC. I\'d hate to diminish one of those rivalries just because Larry Scott screwed up so badly.

Re: Uh-oh - CowboyIndian - 10-13-2010

Quote:It is not that deep.  
And we\'re not talking about Michigan/OSU, either. We\'re talking about our own rivalries: 100+ years with U$C and 85 or so with UCLA. I wouldn\'t be so cavalier in dismissing them to \'create new rivalries\'.

Re: Uh-oh - jayasena - 10-13-2010

Quote:Man, you guys are pretty quick to dump 100 years of history. It will be unmitigated disaster and a spit in the face of ALL the Cali schools if we don\'t play the LA schools every year.

I fear we WILL play the LA schools every year. And doing so, while being in the North division, means Stanford and C.al will have to play what in many years will be the toughest teams in both divisions every year. No other team in the conference will have that burden (unless they make it to the conference championship).

I really don\'t see the validity of Oregon\'s and Washington\'s claims of recruiting access to CA kids. They can at the very least schedule two of the four CA schools every year and get plenty of exposure to the players here. To my biased eyes, that seems like a much easier problem to solve than breaking up the existing 4-way (semi-)rivalries among the CA schools.

Re: Uh-oh - Canalejas - 10-13-2010

I like that we will likely have a harder schedule every year.  That\'s just another way of saying that our team will have more compelling opponents and that I will have more chances to watch my beloved Cardinal on TV or in person here in SoCal.

Re: Uh-oh - yvonne - 10-13-2010

CI,

I suggest you forward that message to Larry Scott (lscott@pac-10.org). I\'m not sure that it will matter much to him because Stanford and Cal clearly don\'t matter to him, but if enough fans listen, he may decide that Stanford and Cal are somewhere remotely as important as the Northwest schools and Colorado and Utah.  



Re: Uh-oh - Farm93 - 10-13-2010

All of this is great, but the Pac-8 became the Pac-10.  The Pac-10 wanted to become the Pac-16, but became the Pac-12.  So expansion brings change.

With 12, or more, teams it is clear that everyone will not get to play USC each year.  The more schools scream that the system is unfair because they do not play SC, the more likely it is that SC will demand more TV revenue and/or go independent, at least in football.  And SC going independent, ironically, might be best for Stanford.

Sadly, C.a.l and Stanford may get exactly what "we want".  And historically what we seem to want normally translates into 2 conferences losses out of division while the other North division teams feast on 2 conference wins against the weaker mountain schools.

Great!  :(

Re: Uh-oh - yvonne - 10-13-2010

Pac-16 would have been much better than the Pac-10. We could have the Pac-8 in one division, and the remaining 8 in another. The other schools would have been happy to get Texas exposure.

What we have is the Pac-12, and it\'s unlikely that more schools will join the conference any time soon. The thing is, the new schools, and the Northwest schools appear to have more clout than the California schools. All four would like to be together, although the desire seems to be greater from Cal and Stanford than from the LA schools. As long as the eight other schools demand California access, the Bay Area schools are going to get short shrift.

Geographically, Utah and Colorado belong in the north, and they have no reason (other than deals Scott made with them) to demand otherwise. The Northwest schools can at least complain that a former advantage is being taken away from them. Utah and Colorado cannot do that.

Re: Uh-oh - Farm93 - 10-13-2010

Oh there is no WAY the Pac-16 would have been better for all of you concerned about tradition and Stanford rivalries.

It is clear that Texas is...well....the thing Brown\'s staffer called Whitman.

Texas was clearly just going to move to the conference that would give it the best terms.  The Pac-10 already had TV revenue hoarding, so that must have looked good to Texas.  Once it was clear the Big 12 would give Texas everything they wanted and more, Texas decided to stay.

Texas would CLEARLY have been the football force in the Pac-16.  Every time renegotiations would have come up, they would have joined forces with USC and threatened to leave if their combined share of the TV revenue dropped below, pick a number, 70%.

Every single thing Texas would demand they would get in the Pac-16.  The others would crumble and support Texas for fear of losing their 2% share of this new Pac-16 TV revenue.  Each school would become addicted to the Texas ticket purchases, and every school would behave like a sad addict to Texas related revenue.  It would be a nightmare.

Texas would never sign up for 9 conference games, so Stanford likely would have 4 or even 5 non-conference games.  Think UCD, SJSU, SacSt every year in front of 15,000 fans.  :(

And make no mistake...the concerns of Stanford\'s little local fan base would not even enter any of the conversations.  If Texas decided it wanted to play SC every year, then I\'d bet on the trade.  Stanford, UCLA and C.a.l you get...Texas Tech.  We will get SC.  But hey, you still get to keep your 2% of this big Pac-16 pie so consider yourselves lucky because people don\'t follow our conference to watch your teams.

Ugh!  We were lucky like a guy that gets arrested before doing anything with that pretty, but HIV+ whXXX.

Re: Uh-oh - yvonne - 10-13-2010

Yes, it\'s true that Texas would ask for a lot. What\'s not true is that USC would be a partner in that. USC would be a rival, and that rivalry would be a counterbalance. Moreover, USC would have an interest in being in a western division away from Texas. It would more easily win the west and face Texas in a more lucrative conference championship.



Re: Uh-oh - fyao - 10-15-2010

I don\'t know why the zipper isn\'t being considered more, as it seems to be more fair than the alternatives.  

Re: Uh-oh - yvonne - 10-15-2010

The cooler plan is best: each team plays the five teams in its zipper half and the three teams in its region.  In addition, teams would play  a rotating two of the remaining four teams every season. ALL regional rivalries are maintained. Everyone gets a NorCal and a SoCal team.  The only thing is Larry Scott will have a harder time marketing a championship game to the rest of the country.

http://www.pac12cooler.com