[Farm93]

The other option is for USC to pull a BYU and go independent for football. Even now, SC has that kind of leverage. SC could opt to play the California schools, Notre Dame, and a combination of attractive name schools and patsies.

If USC were to threaten that now, it might be enough to swing a few votes toward more California-friendly divisions.

I am pretty sure that is why the 5-2-2 won 7-5.  The threat, likely quite real, was that USC would just get up and leave these 11 deadbeats.  USC likely did not care if C.a.l and Stanford were in a different division as long as they got their precious annual alumni road trip on the I-5.

The 5-2-2 is really good for SC because the only teams in the Pac-10 that were even mild threats to SC\'s historical conference supremacy in football (UW & Oregon) are both in the other division with a built in scheduling bias that avoids a regular season match-up.

For the conference TV ratings this means there is always a chance that the championship game (USC/UCLA vs UW/Oregon) will feature a match-up that did not occur in the regular season.

[Farm93]

The other option is for USC to pull a BYU and go independent for football. Even now, SC has that kind of leverage. SC could opt to play the California schools, Notre Dame, and a combination of attractive name schools and patsies.

If USC were to threaten that now, it might be enough to swing a few votes toward more California-friendly divisions.

I am pretty sure that is why the 5-2-2 won 7-5.  The threat, likely quite real, was that USC would just get up and leave these 11 deadbeats.  USC likely did not care if C.a.l and Stanford were in a different division as long as they got their precious annual alumni road trip on the I-5.

The 5-2-2 is really good for SC because the only teams in the Pac-10 that were even mild threats to SC\'s historical conference supremacy in football (UW & Oregon) are both in the other division with a built in scheduling bias that avoids a regular season match-up.

For the conference TV ratings this means there is always a chance that the championship game (USC/UCLA vs UW/Oregon) will feature a match-up that did not occur in the regular season.