please wrap this up as a letter and send to every single to every single leader involved in cal athletics. They need someone to summarize all that has happened. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them go "oh hmm... i see, yeah I see how that happened..."
Everyone in the Cal athletic department leadership gets all the WFC (and Bear Insider and Rivals) articles sent to them daily or weekly. It doesn't need to be re-sent to them - someone in the PR department has already clipped this.
As someone who was living in China during the entire Pac-12 era. . . why did the conference spend so much money and time on trying to sell itself in China? I was able to watch 4 Pac-12 basketball teams plus an all-star team travel through Shanghai - and Larry Scott was there every year and the Pac-12 hired several Mandarin speaking executives. It's mind boggling why they thought they should be trying to open up a new market when they couldn't even get their home market right.
In the grand scheme of things it probably wasn't that much money - maybe a million a year - but why?
If you remember the Liangelo Ball sunglass stealing incident - that was in Hangzhou because the UCLA team was there for the Pac-12 pre-season games. Cal played Princeton in a game (and lost!). Arizona State and Colorado played a pre-season game.
I saw Bill Walton all around Shanghai - and he went to Shanghai Disney Resort! It was all a lot of fun and as a resident of Shanghai, I personally benefitted, but no one in China cared.
I hope to live long enough to see the return of the West Coast teams playing one another in a conference. I also hope I live long enough to see peace in the Middle East and equal rights for all. I'll keep hoping.
Once again my friend you nailed it. The original sin was the Pac 12 Network and all its machinations under Scott. It doomed the conference, and it was clear even without the benefit of hindsight.
Auwe. (Hawaiian for "alas")A new conference, new exposure. This could be good. Can Cal make it work? In the words of Al "Darth Vader" Davis, "just win, baby". This is the challenge. I'll be waiting and watching for next fall.
It's going to be a tough road. And things are going to get wild again after 2030. No one knows what college football will look like but I hope it's a damn sight better than it is now.
However, the biggest lesson is that ignoring money issues doesn't make the need disappear. The Pac whistled past the graveyard without considering we were burying ourselves within it.
Pac 12 After Dark, was never fun. It made us carry the pain of losing, to bed. It meant getting home after midnight from a home game. It made the pain that Cal football can be, even worse.
In forty of the fifty states, the highest paid state employee is a college football coach. (Source: Openthebooks.com.) In thirty-one states, the second-highest paid state employee is a football coach, basketball coach, or athletic director. In eighteen states, all three of the highest paid state employees are football coaches, basketball coaches, or athletic directors.
Culture. The west coast simply does not live & die with football as the south does. It's not a religion here. West coast moms pull their kids out of Pop Warner for fear of concussions while southern parents go the extra mile to get their kids into the best developmental programs, leading to the west coast talent drain.
USC hasn't been relevant on the national stage since it was the PAC-10. The perennial east of the Mississippi powerhouses sucked up all of the prime time tv slots, leaving the 11PM EST slot wide open for west coast teams, yea. Barring a unicorn (U of O being the most likely candidate) that somehow, with less TV revenue, managed to win out, reload, and win out again, it was always a low percentage play for our side of the country to be a national player (UW will definitely be in rebuild, not reload mode next year). USC should have moved to the SEC to lure the top linemen to tinseltown. Instead, they'll maximally achieve Wisconsin status in the B1G. UCLA should have said no. They will regret this decision right up until they are left out of the inevitable super conference.
PAC football has been on a death spiral for ~15 years due to a lack of interest. See: half empty stadiums. Would the University of Alabama allowed the city of Tuscaloosa dictate *anything* related to how & when their team could play or practice in the covid years? Did the SEC decipher the code to arrange schedules to give their teams the best chance to reach the finals over all else? Football rules all.
In order to compete with them, we'd have to become them, and that just won't happen.
Yep, after 50 years of following the PAC even before I went to Cal, it's a truly sad day. I blame the media (Fox and ESPN) and corp. interests (Nike, Adidas, etc.) for creating this new world. On a different topic, I think I've come up with how to resolve our naming issue: add "THE" to our name, as in "The University of California." As much as I despise this in general, I think it may be the fix to distinguish ourselves from every other branch campus.
"...given how things have gone on that side and how things unfolded, I wouldn’t be surprised if our main sin was absence or indifference." - It is apparent that was the case to dangerous levels at most or all of the institutions until the severity of the situation finally forced them individually and in small groups into some sort of reactive action.
"Of all the strange situations awaiting the Pac-12 refugees, Cal’s is by far the least ideal." - This is not true, given especially the situations at Oregon State and Washington State, but it is exemplary of the Pac-12's mismanagement to be in a position of comparing numerous highly suboptimal circumstances to determine which one is the worst.
These AI pictures are making me nostalgic for The Oracle.
What were those magic words, again?
@oracle gif me x
https://www.sbnation.com/2013/7/23/4549340/the-gif-oracle
Ah, yes, now I remember.
Good times.
please wrap this up as a letter and send to every single to every single leader involved in cal athletics. They need someone to summarize all that has happened. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them go "oh hmm... i see, yeah I see how that happened..."
Everyone in the Cal athletic department leadership gets all the WFC (and Bear Insider and Rivals) articles sent to them daily or weekly. It doesn't need to be re-sent to them - someone in the PR department has already clipped this.
As someone who was living in China during the entire Pac-12 era. . . why did the conference spend so much money and time on trying to sell itself in China? I was able to watch 4 Pac-12 basketball teams plus an all-star team travel through Shanghai - and Larry Scott was there every year and the Pac-12 hired several Mandarin speaking executives. It's mind boggling why they thought they should be trying to open up a new market when they couldn't even get their home market right.
Interesting, I didn’t know there was that much China marketing going on.
In the grand scheme of things it probably wasn't that much money - maybe a million a year - but why?
If you remember the Liangelo Ball sunglass stealing incident - that was in Hangzhou because the UCLA team was there for the Pac-12 pre-season games. Cal played Princeton in a game (and lost!). Arizona State and Colorado played a pre-season game.
I saw Bill Walton all around Shanghai - and he went to Shanghai Disney Resort! It was all a lot of fun and as a resident of Shanghai, I personally benefitted, but no one in China cared.
“Should” have never died? It died because, like E.F. Hutton, it earned it's death, plain and simple.
I hope to live long enough to see the return of the West Coast teams playing one another in a conference. I also hope I live long enough to see peace in the Middle East and equal rights for all. I'll keep hoping.
“Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
Excellent summary, Avi. I follow the PAC12 WAY too much for a (marginally) mature adult and your article perfectly summarizes what happened.
The good ol’ days truly were PAC-10. PAC-12 had the writing already on the wall about the decline, I was just too stubborn to acknowledge it.
Once again my friend you nailed it. The original sin was the Pac 12 Network and all its machinations under Scott. It doomed the conference, and it was clear even without the benefit of hindsight.
Auwe. (Hawaiian for "alas")A new conference, new exposure. This could be good. Can Cal make it work? In the words of Al "Darth Vader" Davis, "just win, baby". This is the challenge. I'll be waiting and watching for next fall.
It's going to be a tough road. And things are going to get wild again after 2030. No one knows what college football will look like but I hope it's a damn sight better than it is now.
However, the biggest lesson is that ignoring money issues doesn't make the need disappear. The Pac whistled past the graveyard without considering we were burying ourselves within it.
Pac 12 After Dark, was never fun. It made us carry the pain of losing, to bed. It meant getting home after midnight from a home game. It made the pain that Cal football can be, even worse.
Good riddance.
How many Pac-12 opponents are going to be missed? IMO ...2 overall ...UCLA and USC and also AZ in basketball.
The writeup pointed out how poorly Cal football and basketball functioned historically as part of the Pac-12 .
I'm looking forward to seeing different teams .
WSU, OSU, Colo, Utah, ASU and even Wash and Ore ... who cares? obviously not Cal fans, as attendance is weak across the board.
The Pac-12 was bleak for Cal... moving to the ACC could be a plus.
Moneyball.
In forty of the fifty states, the highest paid state employee is a college football coach. (Source: Openthebooks.com.) In thirty-one states, the second-highest paid state employee is a football coach, basketball coach, or athletic director. In eighteen states, all three of the highest paid state employees are football coaches, basketball coaches, or athletic directors.
Culture. The west coast simply does not live & die with football as the south does. It's not a religion here. West coast moms pull their kids out of Pop Warner for fear of concussions while southern parents go the extra mile to get their kids into the best developmental programs, leading to the west coast talent drain.
USC hasn't been relevant on the national stage since it was the PAC-10. The perennial east of the Mississippi powerhouses sucked up all of the prime time tv slots, leaving the 11PM EST slot wide open for west coast teams, yea. Barring a unicorn (U of O being the most likely candidate) that somehow, with less TV revenue, managed to win out, reload, and win out again, it was always a low percentage play for our side of the country to be a national player (UW will definitely be in rebuild, not reload mode next year). USC should have moved to the SEC to lure the top linemen to tinseltown. Instead, they'll maximally achieve Wisconsin status in the B1G. UCLA should have said no. They will regret this decision right up until they are left out of the inevitable super conference.
PAC football has been on a death spiral for ~15 years due to a lack of interest. See: half empty stadiums. Would the University of Alabama allowed the city of Tuscaloosa dictate *anything* related to how & when their team could play or practice in the covid years? Did the SEC decipher the code to arrange schedules to give their teams the best chance to reach the finals over all else? Football rules all.
In order to compete with them, we'd have to become them, and that just won't happen.
Yep, after 50 years of following the PAC even before I went to Cal, it's a truly sad day. I blame the media (Fox and ESPN) and corp. interests (Nike, Adidas, etc.) for creating this new world. On a different topic, I think I've come up with how to resolve our naming issue: add "THE" to our name, as in "The University of California." As much as I despise this in general, I think it may be the fix to distinguish ourselves from every other branch campus.
"...given how things have gone on that side and how things unfolded, I wouldn’t be surprised if our main sin was absence or indifference." - It is apparent that was the case to dangerous levels at most or all of the institutions until the severity of the situation finally forced them individually and in small groups into some sort of reactive action.
"Of all the strange situations awaiting the Pac-12 refugees, Cal’s is by far the least ideal." - This is not true, given especially the situations at Oregon State and Washington State, but it is exemplary of the Pac-12's mismanagement to be in a position of comparing numerous highly suboptimal circumstances to determine which one is the worst.
I'd noticed that too. I guess they're technically not refugees, though, since they're still inside the smoldering ruin.
A technical difference without a meaningful distinction in this case. But so on-brand for this mess.