ACC fans are not thrilled with the idea of adding Cal and Stanfurd. Still stuck on idea of a geographically sensible conference, which is hard to criticize. Though they don't see to get that it would not have much effect on each team (while the effect on the Bay Area schools would be a lot more drastic).
They better get on board, because they need to get ready for the eventual exodus that happens in 2035-2036. The near future ignores regionality, and trying to avoid that is going to be a problem unless you're like the SEC and 60% of your conference is Blue Bloods.
It's rather peculiar that Oregon State is being overlooked despite its status as a top 25 team. The only reason that comes to mind for their absence from the radar of P5 conferences is their previous placement as last in TV ratings within the PAC 12. It's possible that the litmus test for TV networks revolves around the necessity of attracting viewers to tune in and watch the games. But then again there's Arizona which was ranked 11th in TV ratings and yet still got the bag.
I think I saw that one. It still isn't clear whether we had expressed any interest to them (as we had to the B1G) before they admitted Arizona, ASU, and Utah. If we didn't, it was irresponsible.
SMU is only being considered because they both increase carrier rates thanks to being in a new state, and they're willing to forgo media revenue for a good amount of time. They're basically willing to front the money for everything just to be in a P4.
This would be crazy! First the competitive disadvantage for the student athletes. Cal would have to go out on two 2 week road trips for Men’s and Women’s basketball if they went into the ACC to defray travel cost. Missing classes isn’t a big deal with technology as I’m guessing Cal records their classes for students but I could be wrong about.
The best path forward is to take SMU & Rice immediately, although they might not be interested in joining now, also take Idaho & Idaho State, that would bring them to 8 schools. Then next summer look to the MW when the exit fee is 17 million, which they can negotiate to pay in installments. Take Air Force, Colorado State, UNLV & San Diego State. They’re back to 12 teams
People get all caught up in the AAU membership, you’re trying to save a conference not be valedictorian.
Montana, Montana State are all with 7 hours of Washington State, Idaho is 9 miles away. Think regional rivalries. Tulane is a great school and recently their football has been ok, but geographically it’s not a great fit, gotta remember in the short term if the Pac 12 stays together it’s not gonna get tremendous amount of revenue like the Big 12 ,Big 10 or the SEC so you have to be economical factoring in travel costs. The non-revenue sports at Washington State those are bus trips to Idaho, Montana and Montana State. Plus those schools probably have a minimal conference exit fee whereas Tulane would probably have to pony up at least $18 million. The remaining PAC12 members really have to be financially smart when adding members.
We could do this if it were football and basketball only. I wish they would keep the PAC-12 together on the Olympic sports, etc front and make all this alignment for football/basketball(which would be tough).
I am going to keep beating this drum, but we need to keep the Pac-12 going.
Another thought that recently occurred to me is regarding the "promotion" of G5 schools (or lack thereof). TCU was a G5 a little over a decade ago and last year they made it all the way to the national championship game. The reason they were able to make that climb is due to the instability of the conferences in their region.
But due to the stability (and lack of appetite for expansion) of the Pac-12, a lot of west coast teams have been locked out of making the jump to P5 play. And there are some very deserving teams.
The perception of west coast college football has been that we don't take it very seriously, but I wonder how much of that is due to our P5 monopoly? Other regions of the country have been dealing with conference turmoil and relegation for quite a while now, so it is no surprise that they take it more seriously. If they don't take it seriously they risk getting relegated (TCU is a good example here again, as they were previously P5, before going down to G5, before climbing back to P5).
I feel like this relegation business is an opportunity to reinvigorate the west coast football community. We can open the door for a number of very deserving G5 programs, and in return I suspect that they will bring a lot of excitement and energy to the conference. For example, I highly doubt that USC fans were tuning in to watch our games against teams like WSU. But Boise St., San Diego St., Fresno St., ... those fans are the type of fans to watch every game in the conference.
And my final thought for this post. My new goal in life is to will USC football into irrelevancy. If we promote San Diego St., Fresno St. and UNLV to P5, suddenly USC will find themselves surrounded on all sides by P5 teams, all who will be heavily recruiting the LA area. Meanwhile, the NorCal recruiting landscape remains unchanged. Let's do it!
I know this sounds naive, and I know that not everybody wants this, but is there ANY scenario where Cal could thread the needle and achieve the following?
• Keep all 30 teams financially solvent and cover all expenses
• Schedule competitions with appropriate opponents for all 30 teams
• Make it possible to watch, via some medium, every event for all 30 teams
• Keep every opponent within an average distance of 1,000 miles, thereby preserving regionalism
• Not get involved in the big time college football NFL-lite money circus that would compromise any of the above (see "keep all 30 teams financially solvent" above)
"Cal cannot have it all anymore. The Bears are going to have to take the best of whatever bad options are presented to them." Ten will get you twenty if they don't fuck this up too...
Admin don't give a shit about football and money sports, except as much as they have to.
Perfunctory, blase admin compliance and academic pretensions of all academia and zero sports. A purposeful, passive denigration of football to create a culture where current students even shun their fellow students that play sports, especially football, as though such traditions are part of an evil collective past that must be erased and cancelled. Teaching students to hate traditions is the tell and it's been a long time cultivated. The product is a rarefied academic bubble where students, once turned out, crash and burn in the real world, with incomplete skills only suited to other academic bubbles, should they be lucky enough to find such.
Honestly, I think that is what has brought us to this brink.
I fantasize that some really rich people at Apple or elsewhere, who may be Cal or Furd alums, have the money and connections to say WTF! How hard would it be for them to spin off $40Million a year to subsidize us in a West Coast league with other teams? Do we have no executives at CBS or Fox or ESPN with West coast ties? It's like our damn Supreme Court and government being so heavily East Coast biased. Can we spend the next few years while life sucks in the WhatevertheFu&$ conference designing a plan to restore a West Coast league?
I agree. Find it ironic that we and Stanford supposedly have the “smart” alums and the others ran circles around us. Among all of the alums that are leaders in banking, govt, law, PE, consulting, etc. we couldn’t have leveraged some of that power?
For the Olympic sports what about something as simple as Save Our Sports (SOS) fund that funds all of the sports and investors receive a portion of future NIL earnings from the entire pool of athletes? Or instead of just going to Stanford endowment, each time a VC invests in a startup a tiny slice is allocated for the SOS Fund. After a while with future returns from AI startups the other conferences will be clamoring to join us 😀
Point is, are there not competitive advantages we can bring to “bear”
As rich as Apple is, they screwed themselves on any future streaming college football. Sometimes you have to buy your way into a business and pay more than you want, knowing you can grow that business. If I was Kliavkoff or any of the decision makers, I would have blown Apple off the moment they said the deal would get richer if the PAC12 increased their subscriptions. Fuck that, they need to figure out how to boost subscriptions when they add PAC12 football, like any other TV platform. What a joke.
Yeah I agree, had the same thought. There are a number of seemingly small decisions in how Apple would have marketed and sold the add on that would have had a bigger impact on subscriptions than the on field performance of any of the teams
ACC fans are not thrilled with the idea of adding Cal and Stanfurd. Still stuck on idea of a geographically sensible conference, which is hard to criticize. Though they don't see to get that it would not have much effect on each team (while the effect on the Bay Area schools would be a lot more drastic).
They better get on board, because they need to get ready for the eventual exodus that happens in 2035-2036. The near future ignores regionality, and trying to avoid that is going to be a problem unless you're like the SEC and 60% of your conference is Blue Bloods.
Oregon State is starting the football season ranked 18th in the coaches poll and yet their program is doomed.
I wish I didn’t care about college football.
It's rather peculiar that Oregon State is being overlooked despite its status as a top 25 team. The only reason that comes to mind for their absence from the radar of P5 conferences is their previous placement as last in TV ratings within the PAC 12. It's possible that the litmus test for TV networks revolves around the necessity of attracting viewers to tune in and watch the games. But then again there's Arizona which was ranked 11th in TV ratings and yet still got the bag.
The Big 14/12ths passed on the Bay Area schools, not the other way around.
Source?
https://twitter.com/Brett_McMurphy/status/1688657142486646784?s=19
Not exactly definitive but could be interpreted as such.
I think I saw that one. It still isn't clear whether we had expressed any interest to them (as we had to the B1G) before they admitted Arizona, ASU, and Utah. If we didn't, it was irresponsible.
It's been 10 hours. What a long meeting
If the ACC added Cal, Stanford, SMU and SDSU that would be a manageable western travel pod.
SMU is only being considered because they both increase carrier rates thanks to being in a new state, and they're willing to forgo media revenue for a good amount of time. They're basically willing to front the money for everything just to be in a P4.
SDSU can't afford that.
I'd thought a pod of the 4-Pac, SDSU, SMU would be good but that's probably too big a bite.
SMU is only being considered because they're openly saying they are rich and would pay for the honor. Maybe we'll see the scope grow, though.
This would be crazy! First the competitive disadvantage for the student athletes. Cal would have to go out on two 2 week road trips for Men’s and Women’s basketball if they went into the ACC to defray travel cost. Missing classes isn’t a big deal with technology as I’m guessing Cal records their classes for students but I could be wrong about.
The best path forward is to take SMU & Rice immediately, although they might not be interested in joining now, also take Idaho & Idaho State, that would bring them to 8 schools. Then next summer look to the MW when the exit fee is 17 million, which they can negotiate to pay in installments. Take Air Force, Colorado State, UNLV & San Diego State. They’re back to 12 teams
Tulane would make way more sense than Idaho or Idaho state. AAU member, preseason Top25 football team, New Orleans market.
People get all caught up in the AAU membership, you’re trying to save a conference not be valedictorian.
Montana, Montana State are all with 7 hours of Washington State, Idaho is 9 miles away. Think regional rivalries. Tulane is a great school and recently their football has been ok, but geographically it’s not a great fit, gotta remember in the short term if the Pac 12 stays together it’s not gonna get tremendous amount of revenue like the Big 12 ,Big 10 or the SEC so you have to be economical factoring in travel costs. The non-revenue sports at Washington State those are bus trips to Idaho, Montana and Montana State. Plus those schools probably have a minimal conference exit fee whereas Tulane would probably have to pony up at least $18 million. The remaining PAC12 members really have to be financially smart when adding members.
I just want Cal out of Pac 12 so I absolutely don't care which schools Pac12 gets. They can be all close to Washington State if that's what you want
You forgot to mention awesome away game town
Outside the French Quarter New Orleans is a dump.
Meh, booze, beads, boobs, and barf = French Quarter
Exactly, Ted would have been more apt to use "Inside" instead.
That said, I love that dump, and would be on the roadie in a heartbeat.
Can we just invite teams based on how cool a trip to the town is?
smoothen ... What? Have we become the Daily Bruin or something?
No updates from the Regents = good sign they are taking this seriously?
We could do this if it were football and basketball only. I wish they would keep the PAC-12 together on the Olympic sports, etc front and make all this alignment for football/basketball(which would be tough).
Except for $SC and UCLA. No former PAC team should ever schedule them in anything again. Let them pay to send water polo to Rutgers.
I am going to keep beating this drum, but we need to keep the Pac-12 going.
Another thought that recently occurred to me is regarding the "promotion" of G5 schools (or lack thereof). TCU was a G5 a little over a decade ago and last year they made it all the way to the national championship game. The reason they were able to make that climb is due to the instability of the conferences in their region.
But due to the stability (and lack of appetite for expansion) of the Pac-12, a lot of west coast teams have been locked out of making the jump to P5 play. And there are some very deserving teams.
The perception of west coast college football has been that we don't take it very seriously, but I wonder how much of that is due to our P5 monopoly? Other regions of the country have been dealing with conference turmoil and relegation for quite a while now, so it is no surprise that they take it more seriously. If they don't take it seriously they risk getting relegated (TCU is a good example here again, as they were previously P5, before going down to G5, before climbing back to P5).
I feel like this relegation business is an opportunity to reinvigorate the west coast football community. We can open the door for a number of very deserving G5 programs, and in return I suspect that they will bring a lot of excitement and energy to the conference. For example, I highly doubt that USC fans were tuning in to watch our games against teams like WSU. But Boise St., San Diego St., Fresno St., ... those fans are the type of fans to watch every game in the conference.
And my final thought for this post. My new goal in life is to will USC football into irrelevancy. If we promote San Diego St., Fresno St. and UNLV to P5, suddenly USC will find themselves surrounded on all sides by P5 teams, all who will be heavily recruiting the LA area. Meanwhile, the NorCal recruiting landscape remains unchanged. Let's do it!
What am I missing? What games in L.A.?
Someone proposed neutral site games in LA. Good for viewers and recruiting.
Has the Regents meeting ended yet?
I know this sounds naive, and I know that not everybody wants this, but is there ANY scenario where Cal could thread the needle and achieve the following?
• Keep all 30 teams financially solvent and cover all expenses
• Schedule competitions with appropriate opponents for all 30 teams
• Make it possible to watch, via some medium, every event for all 30 teams
• Keep every opponent within an average distance of 1,000 miles, thereby preserving regionalism
• Not get involved in the big time college football NFL-lite money circus that would compromise any of the above (see "keep all 30 teams financially solvent" above)
If we get $30M-$35M from the ACC and manage to keep Calimony, and Wilcox/Madsen turn things around in the ACC to get the fans buying tickets again?
Maybe with a/some superdonor(s)/whale(s).
*calls Elon.
"How about a deal with Twitter, er, X?'
If there's anyone who could F this up worse than the Pac-12 brass did, it's Musk.
How much cheaper would it be if football only was ACC and everything else remained west coast?
Maybe we will get $15 million from ACC and $20 million from Apple
No
I mean, it's not impossible. If you recall, once upon a time there used to be a Pac12 conference that achieved all of that.
Random thought - shouldn’t Cal Athletics be fundraising off all this? Like asking folks to show support, to arm them a bit in realignment talks?
When's the bake sale?
I like oatmeal cookies... just sayin.'
But, seriously, yeah, where's the whaling crews out seeking those super donors?
I assume that's coming, but we don't know who's going to need how much for how long yet.
"Cal cannot have it all anymore. The Bears are going to have to take the best of whatever bad options are presented to them." Ten will get you twenty if they don't fuck this up too...
Because Cal...
Admin don't give a shit about football and money sports, except as much as they have to.
Perfunctory, blase admin compliance and academic pretensions of all academia and zero sports. A purposeful, passive denigration of football to create a culture where current students even shun their fellow students that play sports, especially football, as though such traditions are part of an evil collective past that must be erased and cancelled. Teaching students to hate traditions is the tell and it's been a long time cultivated. The product is a rarefied academic bubble where students, once turned out, crash and burn in the real world, with incomplete skills only suited to other academic bubbles, should they be lucky enough to find such.
Honestly, I think that is what has brought us to this brink.
I fantasize that some really rich people at Apple or elsewhere, who may be Cal or Furd alums, have the money and connections to say WTF! How hard would it be for them to spin off $40Million a year to subsidize us in a West Coast league with other teams? Do we have no executives at CBS or Fox or ESPN with West coast ties? It's like our damn Supreme Court and government being so heavily East Coast biased. Can we spend the next few years while life sucks in the WhatevertheFu&$ conference designing a plan to restore a West Coast league?
I agree. Find it ironic that we and Stanford supposedly have the “smart” alums and the others ran circles around us. Among all of the alums that are leaders in banking, govt, law, PE, consulting, etc. we couldn’t have leveraged some of that power?
For the Olympic sports what about something as simple as Save Our Sports (SOS) fund that funds all of the sports and investors receive a portion of future NIL earnings from the entire pool of athletes? Or instead of just going to Stanford endowment, each time a VC invests in a startup a tiny slice is allocated for the SOS Fund. After a while with future returns from AI startups the other conferences will be clamoring to join us 😀
Point is, are there not competitive advantages we can bring to “bear”
So well said. That's more of what I was trying to say. Can we not with our alumni networks pull off some magic?
As rich as Apple is, they screwed themselves on any future streaming college football. Sometimes you have to buy your way into a business and pay more than you want, knowing you can grow that business. If I was Kliavkoff or any of the decision makers, I would have blown Apple off the moment they said the deal would get richer if the PAC12 increased their subscriptions. Fuck that, they need to figure out how to boost subscriptions when they add PAC12 football, like any other TV platform. What a joke.
Yeah I agree, had the same thought. There are a number of seemingly small decisions in how Apple would have marketed and sold the add on that would have had a bigger impact on subscriptions than the on field performance of any of the teams