[Mick]

Those other UCs are either too new to have their sports in the NCAA (UC Merced,) happy to be non-scholarship in D3 (UC Santa Cruz,) or now all clustered together in a non-football D1 conference, the Big West (UCSD, UCR, UCI, UCSB, and UCD.)  

It doesn't seem like any of them are being kept from reaching whatever level they're comfortable with.  To the contrary, the other Big West UCs seem to have gone to bat for San Diego when their CSU conference-mates tried to block the Tritons from joining them.  

But the bears and bruins have long been above the rest. I always assumed that they not only wanted to be together as "co-flagships," but that the regents similarly wanted them to be twins.  I was genuinely surprised by all the earlier reports that the regents and the UCOP consider their role to be largely hands-off when it comes to sports.

Not that it's a precedent, but MVB recently split the very large MPSF into two conferences, the MPSF and the Big West.  The Big West has all of the D1 men's VB teams, including Irvine, Santa Barbara, San Diego, along with CSU Northridge and CSU Long Beach.  The MPSF kept UCLA, along with the traditional powers Pepperdine, USC, BYU, Stanford, and two newbies, Concordia and Grand Canyon.  So...precedent to separate UCLA from the rest of the UC's.

[Mick]

Those other UCs are either too new to have their sports in the NCAA (UC Merced,) happy to be non-scholarship in D3 (UC Santa Cruz,) or now all clustered together in a non-football D1 conference, the Big West (UCSD, UCR, UCI, UCSB, and UCD.)  

It doesn't seem like any of them are being kept from reaching whatever level they're comfortable with.  To the contrary, the other Big West UCs seem to have gone to bat for San Diego when their CSU conference-mates tried to block the Tritons from joining them.  

But the bears and bruins have long been above the rest. I always assumed that they not only wanted to be together as "co-flagships," but that the regents similarly wanted them to be twins.  I was genuinely surprised by all the earlier reports that the regents and the UCOP consider their role to be largely hands-off when it comes to sports.

Not that it's a precedent, but MVB recently split the very large MPSF into two conferences, the MPSF and the Big West.  The Big West has all of the D1 men's VB teams, including Irvine, Santa Barbara, San Diego, along with CSU Northridge and CSU Long Beach.  The MPSF kept UCLA, along with the traditional powers Pepperdine, USC, BYU, Stanford, and two newbies, Concordia and Grand Canyon.  So...precedent to separate UCLA from the rest of the UC's.