How is your relationship with Cal sports changing after the disintegration of the Pac-12?
The California Golden Bears will probably be somewhere new in 2024. How deeply will you follow them?
Let’s assume things go okay in the next few weeks, and Cal finds a home in a new Power conference (We all know that if Cal gets relegated, everyone’s relationship will probably significantly downshift).
Aside from most likely maintaining our relationship with Stanford, it’s going to be a drastic paradigm shift.
Here are some potential changes we will have to prepare for.
Casual Cal football fan enthusiasm could drop significantly. Unless Cal ends up in the Big Ten, I imagine ticket sales for an ACC/Big 12 home slate will be a much tougher sell. Aside from maybe Clemson or Florida State, Cal will not have a new opponent that draws any sort of tangible excitement or a huge travelling fanbase either. Basketball would be a bit better. So it’ll be reliant on Cal Athletics to find ways to rebuild connections with a dormant alumni base. This has been an issue they have struggled with for years. No better time than now to start fixing this.
Stanford reportedly would forego media rights payouts for ACC invite. Could Cal do the same?
Cal and Stanford keep pursuing ACC membership, and with no vote being taken, the option is still on the table. One of the most interesting rumors circulating around Stanford’s newest bid is that the Cardinal are willing to forego a lot to get into a major conference.
Cal will no longer play in Los Angeles every year. With the dissolution of the Pac-12, barring a non-conference rearrangement, Cal has most likely lost two historic rivalries with UCLA and USC. This was a bridge toward connecting with the huge Southern California Cal alumni contingent. Cutting that trip off is a significant blow to engaging with a critical portion of our fanbase.
Cal athletes will likely have to travel a lot more. There’s no way around it now. The basketball and football teams are going to be red-eyeing a lot. This would be minimized the most in the Big Ten, but the ACC will definitely stretch us. It’d be great news for Cal fans on the East Coast, but it is likely going to put a significant hamper on recruiting (although this is an issue nearly every West Coast school will now face).
Cal will be playing the bulk of its home games after dark. As television continues to be prioritized for revenue payouts, any major conference that picks up the Bears will mean late night starts every game. That means late window TV kickoffs to fill in the late time slot which Cal will almost certainly occupy. This will be tough for attendance as well, although it’ll be nice to know with 80-100% certainty when Cal is playing football.
Cal will no longer play in Los Angeles every year. With the dissolution of the Pac-12, barring a non-conference rearrangement, Cal has most likely lost two historic rivalries with UCLA and USC. This was a bridge toward connecting with the huge Southern California Cal alumni contingent. Cutting that trip off is a significant blow to engaging with a critical portion of our fanbase.
Some Cal sports are likely hitting the chopping block. We won’t speculate too much until we find a new home, but Cal’s tradition of maintaining 30 sports is likely at an end. Reduced expected revenue payouts are going to be just too much to overcome. This will likely lead to donor anger if things aren’t done right.
The calls from the academic/administrative side of the house to dismantle athletics could grow louder. Most of the arguments against having an athletic department are not in good faith, but Cal in the ACC will definitely invite all of them, good and bad. I do not expect a ton of excitement at hearing that travel costs will be expanding significantly and that athletes will have to likely spend extra time completing classes away from Berkeley to handle longer road trips. A lot of parties will need to be satiated away from the athletic side.
If there is any positive outcome if Cal barely survives, it’s likely this will FINALLY force Cal to recognize the cold hard truth:
Football (and to a smaller extent basketball) must be absolutely prioritized, on every level, or the athletic experiment will end.
Cal can no longer bank on decades of being the best public university saving this department. The athletic department needs to be treated like a real business, and it needs to prioritize the sports that make money for the sports that don’t.
The new chancellor, whoever it is, MUST hire an athletic director who understands these realities. And the two must work in tandem to revitalize the Cal athletic department in a hurry so that it is acceptable to a major conference in a few years, when media rights start rebucketing and more realignment moves start dropping.
Even if Cal survives this round, we are going to be doing this dance for awhile. Cal needs to stop being reactive and figure out the best solutions for what comes next.
Cal fans, your feelings on your relationship with the Bears coming out of all of the realignment shuffle?
As long as Cal is playing football games in Memorial Stadium I'll show up as I have done for most of the past sixty years (including all but one home game in the last thirty-four) but the following statement depresses me: "Cal will be playing the bulk of its home games after dark." Then again most of the changes to college football over the past few decades have depressed me too.
Having six of the core Pac12 teams in the Big 10 would certainly be odd, and absurd. We would be playing each other same as always, yet that would somehow make us more valuable to the TV barons than playing each other in the Pac12. I don't get it. My preference is to never play USC and UCLA again, since they are the ones that destroyed the Pac12 tradition in pursuit of a few more bucks.