> a conference with a vastly different cultural and political profile ... you have to imagine Cal and Stanford administrators are not too keen.
> There is definite donor concerns as a result
This is a bizarre line of thinking. It's Internet message board memery metastasizing into the real world. I swear, nobody even considered the "culture…
> a conference with a vastly different cultural and political profile ... you have to imagine Cal and Stanford administrators are not too keen.
> There is definite donor concerns as a result
This is a bizarre line of thinking. It's Internet message board memery metastasizing into the real world. I swear, nobody even considered the "culture" of a football conference a few years ago, let alone made important, program-saving decisions based on hypothetical intra-conference culture clashes.
An athletics conference is the collection of teams you play against. It's not a declaration of love or a celebration of everything (anything?) else about those schools. They used to be bound by geography and history, but that ship has sailed too.
Yes, Lubbock is pretty different from Berkeley. It does not matter, not one iota, on the football field or in the scheduling of conference play. Not to mention, the ways in which Berkeley the place is culturally different from Lubbock are least exemplified in Memorial Stadium. On Saturdays in the fall, we're powerfully connected to a strangers in college towns across the country, often moreso than we are to the people we'd otherwise feel kin to at the local gourmet grocery.
Of course there's a limit, but let's call that what it is. BYU's and Baylor's anti-LGBTQ policies are bigotry. If they were asking to join the Pac-12 it would be a moral exercise of our power and authority to demand they modernize, or face rejection. Alas, we have no such power and authority. We have nothing to withhold to influence them. To refuse to join the Big 12 for that reason would be to cut off our nose to spite their faces.
Let me say it plainly: if we fail(ed) to pursue a $30M+ / year spot in a conference with more of our traditional rivals and better travel distances, just so we could be in the AAC and feel culturally/politically superior on 6-12 Saturdays each year, that is as colossal a mistake as any made by Christ, Knowlton, et al in the past few years. To be angry at them while advocating to eschew the B12 is hypocrisy of a ludicrous degree.
I agree with you, but some think the Big-12 is middling (because it lacks star power) and playing the ACC schools will give us more visibility.
I think it's partly b/c the snooty administrators much rather hob knob with the likes of UNC, Duke, UVA, and GTech than hang out with the unlikes of Okie State and Baylor...but that's just my own speculation.
> a conference with a vastly different cultural and political profile ... you have to imagine Cal and Stanford administrators are not too keen.
> There is definite donor concerns as a result
This is a bizarre line of thinking. It's Internet message board memery metastasizing into the real world. I swear, nobody even considered the "culture" of a football conference a few years ago, let alone made important, program-saving decisions based on hypothetical intra-conference culture clashes.
An athletics conference is the collection of teams you play against. It's not a declaration of love or a celebration of everything (anything?) else about those schools. They used to be bound by geography and history, but that ship has sailed too.
Yes, Lubbock is pretty different from Berkeley. It does not matter, not one iota, on the football field or in the scheduling of conference play. Not to mention, the ways in which Berkeley the place is culturally different from Lubbock are least exemplified in Memorial Stadium. On Saturdays in the fall, we're powerfully connected to a strangers in college towns across the country, often moreso than we are to the people we'd otherwise feel kin to at the local gourmet grocery.
Of course there's a limit, but let's call that what it is. BYU's and Baylor's anti-LGBTQ policies are bigotry. If they were asking to join the Pac-12 it would be a moral exercise of our power and authority to demand they modernize, or face rejection. Alas, we have no such power and authority. We have nothing to withhold to influence them. To refuse to join the Big 12 for that reason would be to cut off our nose to spite their faces.
Let me say it plainly: if we fail(ed) to pursue a $30M+ / year spot in a conference with more of our traditional rivals and better travel distances, just so we could be in the AAC and feel culturally/politically superior on 6-12 Saturdays each year, that is as colossal a mistake as any made by Christ, Knowlton, et al in the past few years. To be angry at them while advocating to eschew the B12 is hypocrisy of a ludicrous degree.
I agree with you, but some think the Big-12 is middling (because it lacks star power) and playing the ACC schools will give us more visibility.
I think it's partly b/c the snooty administrators much rather hob knob with the likes of UNC, Duke, UVA, and GTech than hang out with the unlikes of Okie State and Baylor...but that's just my own speculation.