If we are so sure that the PAC-12 has greater parity than the SEC or the ACC, we should replace that 9th conference game with one against a bottom half SEC or ACC team every year for every PAC-12 team. If our lower tier teams are truly stronger, we should pick up wins in 75% of those games, counting as power-5 wins, and burnishing the PAC-12's rep and enhancing bowl/playoff chances. Oregon St-Syracuse! WSU-Duke! UCLA-South Carolina! Stanford should replace Notre Dame on their yearly schedule with Vanderbilt. Imagine all those wins...
A watershed moment in the history of Pac 12 football happened a little more than a year ago. One of the best California high school quarterbacks of the last decade - Bryce Young - broke his commitment to USC and decided to go to Alabama. His cross town rival - D.J. Uiagelelei - also one of the best quarterbacks of the last decade - never even sniffed a team from the Pac 12 and went straight to Clemson.
If those young men from the Southland had played 15 years earlier, Pete Carroll most certainly would have nabbed one of them, and the other one would have headed for Seattle or Eugene. There may be no going back to the glory days of the conference, and I am okay with that. It means that teams in the middle like Cal have a chance to steal a win or two from the tog dogs, as happened in 2018. It makes you appreciate how that 2003 win that Can got against Pete Carroll was more of a fluke than anything. And the presence of Tedford at this best, how big of a fluke was that?
I think the 2003 win was a huge fluke when you consider that Aaron Rodgers was not quite a star yet and had to be replaced by journeyman Reggie Robertson late in the game. It was the second time in that 2003 season that Rodgers was pulled in a game. Remember Oregon State? And what are the odds that your second string qb is going to come through against the best team in the land, or that USC's star field goal kicker would miss a chip shot 39-yarder to win the game before Cal's walk-on kicker sealed it?
And I contend that Tedford in his best years was a total fluke in Cal's long history. Here was a guy who was so committed to success that he lived in a cot in the stadium. Who else did that or would do that now?
Couldn't you say that about any young QB? I think what we've learned over his tenure is that Tedford needs to pull his starters less, not that they can't be trusted. Also, name a better duo than CFB and missed field goals? FGs aren't gimmes, especially considering college ball has wider angles than the NFL in addition to having worse kickers. You can only win close games like that when you put yourself in a position to win them.
In general I'd say they weren't flukes because he managed to stay really competitive with USC for the next few years before his roster started falling apart. And re: his living conditions...agreed but that doesn't make the games flukes. It just means they're not sustainable. You can't really compare what coaches did then to today because there's so much more money in CFB and the coaching staffs have gotten so much larger. Just look at Saban's army of coaches and assistants. No shit he doesn't sleep at the school, he's literally got someone for everything.
2008 was the last season in which it looked as if they could beat USC for quite some time. Believe they lost a touchdown due to how a flanker lined up, which could have tied the game early in the second half, but you are right about how things started to fall off soon thereafter.
That's the exact play I mentioned. Can't recall whether it was Jeremy Ross trying to wave the flanker off the line or somebody trying to wave Jeremy Ross off the line. Think it may have been the latter.
Speaking solely for myself . . . I'm not going to say I don't care what the playoff structure is, because I still have some level of interest and investment in college football nationally. But in reality what I care about is Cal winning the Pac-12, and any reward that Cal gets as a result of winning the conference is just gravy on top
All good points Nick. And there are a few more: 1. PAC12 teams play 9 games against other conference opponents. That means they play 1 more game against conference opponents than the SEC does. (Alabama is famous for scheduling a weak outside team later in the season. It's almost like a second 'bye' for them). What does this one game mean? It means half of the PAC12 teams will lose an additional conference game which can YUGELY impact rankings and the outcome of a season. A one loss USC, UW, OR, Utah, Stanfurd or any other PAC12 team that in the running for a playoff spot, that loses a second conference game, is out of the playoffs. So when OR plays UW late in the season, one team is out of playoff contention. When USC plays Stanfurd late in the season, one will be out of contention. When Utah plays USC late in the season, one will be out of contention. Same for Oregon and Stanfurd. Hell, CAL, UCLA, UW, OSU, CO and ASU can wreck any PAC12 team's playoff hopes. That's how good our teams are across the board. And then you get Alabama going to the playoffs after they lose the SEC Championship? Yeah, that's fair. I call bullshit. It's all about TV revenue and it fucks every other team trying to recruit against them. And, it's why we need a 16 team playoff. You'll see some Cinderella teams every year like UCF knock off some the best teams the way they did Auburn. Until the playoffs are fixed BIG MONEY will control who gets to the playoffs which will impact recruiting. Second, tell me one school in the SEC or ACC that has the same academic admission requirements as CAL, Stanfurd, UCLA, UW, & USC? Maybe Vanderbilt? Right now college football conferences are not equal and they probably never will be. Btw, we have plenty of potential fans in the Bay area or LA area or any of the other PAC12 team locations. But we have more pro sports and college teams our big cities than Tuscaloosa or Clemson or most of the SEC and ACC teams. Is there any SEC city that has 2 P5 college programs 30 miles apart with 5 pro sports teams, surfing and sailing in your back yard and skiing 4 hours away? But, even with all that, fans love a winner. If CAL becomes a winner, we'll pack the stadium again. And I'd dare to say the same for any PAC12 team. A 16 team playoff would change recruiting forever and change the face of college football as a result.
I agree 100% about scheduling and playoff, but the whole there is no competition and people have more to do in Cali is ignorant.
First, where I live in the southeast is at the crossroads of FSU, UF, UGA, and Auburn; GT is sort of the odd ball like a Pac-12 where mainly only alumni root for them . There are also two NFL teams not too far away (and one MLB and MLS). I would argue that there is less market share to be had per square mile than anywhere in California. The main difference is that people in the stage who are not alums will root for the big land grant U, fervently...and the state university systems are much more unbalanced (the historic land grant holds most of the power). Not all places in the SE USA have this sort of sports density, bug things in the SE are closer together than in the west, in general.
Youth sports are also much bigger and more intense out there. Theg start tackle football in the second grade and the play a very physical brand football.. they will fill a large high School stadium to almost near capacity to watch second third graders money; it's freaking nuts. High School football is even crazier.
Lastly the idea that everybody is skiing and surfing California sort of b*******. Most people in California are sitting in their cars in traffic or locked up in The burbs isolated near Vons or Safeway. Honestly bro there's a lot less to do in the grid of Southern California. Lot of people here play golf, or are into boating, or waking. Heck maybe they hang it on their property and shoot doves and ski with their friends.
Re: admissions, per USA News (eyeroll, I know), Northwestern, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame are the only other P5 schools that rank above UCLA and Cal, though below Furd. Michigan, UVa, Wake Forest, and UNC are all near or just below USC. The Pac-12 easily has the most elite top academic tier though the Big 10 tends to have better depth.
Don't come at me with your righteous anger over those schools ranked over Cal, we all feel it!
Agreed Rugbear. The top one (or two) Pac-12 teams should get an automatic shot to the national playoffs, hence expansion. I'm tired of watching (and hardly do) College Football Live on ESPN dissing the Pac-12 each opportunity they get. The only team they seem to respect year after year is USC, but then they inevitably write them off after their first loss of the season which happens every year because of the competitiveness of the Conference.
I agree that I don't need the Pac12 to be a football factory. I don't want only SC to win each year. I don't want the loss of scholar athleticism. I don't want or expect our schools to become even more hostage to football. Give me a top tier university, with a good and competitive team, any day. I myself don't need anything more than a great Cal-UCLA game. I don't need more than seeing Cal beat UW again and again. I honestly don't give a crap about Alabama or Ohio State or Clemson. The South has done and continues to do it's sins and outrages against their black and brown citizens and yet boasts their talent on their football teams without so much as a guilt trip. Not that the Pac12 schools aren't without a troubled history, but it is far easier for me to root for Oregon or WA or of course Cal than it is for an SEC school. I'm biased for academic excellence, quality of life, social and political and environmental justice, and so on, which is generally easier to get out West than among the schools were football is everything. Give me the Pac12, with all it's warts, any day. And let those other schools be football factories and deny their citizens the right to vote or protest.
The one major point I do agree with is that the Pac-12 should campaign to get automatic bids to the playoff for all major conferences. The truth is that with so few non-conference games in college football, you don't really know which conference was the strongest in any given year. Fairness would seem to demand that every conference should get a shot at the big prize.
I agree. Looks at March Madness this year. Who knew the Pac12 would be so competitive? We were playing ball with the best in the country, but due to normal bias against West Coast teams, weren't ranked highly.
And college basketball last season had exactly that problem: because of COVID there was much less travel and many fewer non-conference games to serve as comparison points. They really just didn't know how good the teams were.
But because basketball has a much larger tournament field, the Pac-12 teams were still able to get in and take down the higher seeds.
Nice article, Nick. You made some good points that I hadnt really thought much about (I grew up with an east coast bias before Cal, and some of that is still engrained in me), i.e. when you take those several few blue bloods out of the mix it's an entirely different story than the dominant media narrative. Don't these people know about truncated mean?
I would probably include Florida State (and maybe Miami), without knowing their budgets or revenue offhand, among the ACC not named.
An interesting caveat to that exercise is to see which teams replace those removed teams. If removing Alabama just results in Georgia taking their place, then that would still suggest football just means more in the SEC.
I love the article. I don't necessarily agree that one can take those few blue bloods out of the mix (when counting CFP appearances). They stand in the way of other teams in their conferences and provide something to shoot for (and a reason to fire otherwise excellent coaches). Maybe the SEC would still regularly send some team...? Don't know, don't really care. One common trope (in this case listing the LA schools) is the P-12 needs one/two teams at the top to dominate in order to get one into the CFP and thereby make the whole conference relevant. There is a certain PR halo for the whole conference when that happens. Count me double, though, with everyone who says they appreciate our conference more because there is real competition!
Yeah, but the problem with that kind of dominance is that it means all the blue chip recruits in a region are going to one school and you lose conference parity over time. PAC-12 unfortunately needs to either lose the parity and just hope USC/Oregon dominate or just enjoy the great football we get every season and forget the playoffs. I'm partial to the 2nd, the playoffs don't really mean anything to me. Even if Cal made it, I'd prefer the Rose Bowl haha.
Terence's 1 point plan for ending these articles for the next ten years: Anyone who writes one, gets sent to live in Bill Walton's teepee for a week while he pours special dirt from Temecula over them and plays the glockenspiel and tells them about the time the Dead played the Greek and Jerry went for a 26 minute solo on Dark Star. CONFERENCE OF CHAMPIONS.
If we are so sure that the PAC-12 has greater parity than the SEC or the ACC, we should replace that 9th conference game with one against a bottom half SEC or ACC team every year for every PAC-12 team. If our lower tier teams are truly stronger, we should pick up wins in 75% of those games, counting as power-5 wins, and burnishing the PAC-12's rep and enhancing bowl/playoff chances. Oregon St-Syracuse! WSU-Duke! UCLA-South Carolina! Stanford should replace Notre Dame on their yearly schedule with Vanderbilt. Imagine all those wins...
A watershed moment in the history of Pac 12 football happened a little more than a year ago. One of the best California high school quarterbacks of the last decade - Bryce Young - broke his commitment to USC and decided to go to Alabama. His cross town rival - D.J. Uiagelelei - also one of the best quarterbacks of the last decade - never even sniffed a team from the Pac 12 and went straight to Clemson.
If those young men from the Southland had played 15 years earlier, Pete Carroll most certainly would have nabbed one of them, and the other one would have headed for Seattle or Eugene. There may be no going back to the glory days of the conference, and I am okay with that. It means that teams in the middle like Cal have a chance to steal a win or two from the tog dogs, as happened in 2018. It makes you appreciate how that 2003 win that Can got against Pete Carroll was more of a fluke than anything. And the presence of Tedford at this best, how big of a fluke was that?
It wasn't a fluke though, Tedford got really close to beating USC a few times until he started falling off around 2008.
I think the 2003 win was a huge fluke when you consider that Aaron Rodgers was not quite a star yet and had to be replaced by journeyman Reggie Robertson late in the game. It was the second time in that 2003 season that Rodgers was pulled in a game. Remember Oregon State? And what are the odds that your second string qb is going to come through against the best team in the land, or that USC's star field goal kicker would miss a chip shot 39-yarder to win the game before Cal's walk-on kicker sealed it?
And I contend that Tedford in his best years was a total fluke in Cal's long history. Here was a guy who was so committed to success that he lived in a cot in the stadium. Who else did that or would do that now?
Couldn't you say that about any young QB? I think what we've learned over his tenure is that Tedford needs to pull his starters less, not that they can't be trusted. Also, name a better duo than CFB and missed field goals? FGs aren't gimmes, especially considering college ball has wider angles than the NFL in addition to having worse kickers. You can only win close games like that when you put yourself in a position to win them.
In general I'd say they weren't flukes because he managed to stay really competitive with USC for the next few years before his roster started falling apart. And re: his living conditions...agreed but that doesn't make the games flukes. It just means they're not sustainable. You can't really compare what coaches did then to today because there's so much more money in CFB and the coaching staffs have gotten so much larger. Just look at Saban's army of coaches and assistants. No shit he doesn't sleep at the school, he's literally got someone for everything.
2008 was the last season in which it looked as if they could beat USC for quite some time. Believe they lost a touchdown due to how a flanker lined up, which could have tied the game early in the second half, but you are right about how things started to fall off soon thereafter.
Was that the game where Vereen had a really good wheel route catch(es) brought back for penalty?
That's the exact play I mentioned. Can't recall whether it was Jeremy Ross trying to wave the flanker off the line or somebody trying to wave Jeremy Ross off the line. Think it may have been the latter.
You should be against expanding the playoffs.
Speaking solely for myself . . . I'm not going to say I don't care what the playoff structure is, because I still have some level of interest and investment in college football nationally. But in reality what I care about is Cal winning the Pac-12, and any reward that Cal gets as a result of winning the conference is just gravy on top
Why?
All good points Nick. And there are a few more: 1. PAC12 teams play 9 games against other conference opponents. That means they play 1 more game against conference opponents than the SEC does. (Alabama is famous for scheduling a weak outside team later in the season. It's almost like a second 'bye' for them). What does this one game mean? It means half of the PAC12 teams will lose an additional conference game which can YUGELY impact rankings and the outcome of a season. A one loss USC, UW, OR, Utah, Stanfurd or any other PAC12 team that in the running for a playoff spot, that loses a second conference game, is out of the playoffs. So when OR plays UW late in the season, one team is out of playoff contention. When USC plays Stanfurd late in the season, one will be out of contention. When Utah plays USC late in the season, one will be out of contention. Same for Oregon and Stanfurd. Hell, CAL, UCLA, UW, OSU, CO and ASU can wreck any PAC12 team's playoff hopes. That's how good our teams are across the board. And then you get Alabama going to the playoffs after they lose the SEC Championship? Yeah, that's fair. I call bullshit. It's all about TV revenue and it fucks every other team trying to recruit against them. And, it's why we need a 16 team playoff. You'll see some Cinderella teams every year like UCF knock off some the best teams the way they did Auburn. Until the playoffs are fixed BIG MONEY will control who gets to the playoffs which will impact recruiting. Second, tell me one school in the SEC or ACC that has the same academic admission requirements as CAL, Stanfurd, UCLA, UW, & USC? Maybe Vanderbilt? Right now college football conferences are not equal and they probably never will be. Btw, we have plenty of potential fans in the Bay area or LA area or any of the other PAC12 team locations. But we have more pro sports and college teams our big cities than Tuscaloosa or Clemson or most of the SEC and ACC teams. Is there any SEC city that has 2 P5 college programs 30 miles apart with 5 pro sports teams, surfing and sailing in your back yard and skiing 4 hours away? But, even with all that, fans love a winner. If CAL becomes a winner, we'll pack the stadium again. And I'd dare to say the same for any PAC12 team. A 16 team playoff would change recruiting forever and change the face of college football as a result.
I agree 100% about scheduling and playoff, but the whole there is no competition and people have more to do in Cali is ignorant.
First, where I live in the southeast is at the crossroads of FSU, UF, UGA, and Auburn; GT is sort of the odd ball like a Pac-12 where mainly only alumni root for them . There are also two NFL teams not too far away (and one MLB and MLS). I would argue that there is less market share to be had per square mile than anywhere in California. The main difference is that people in the stage who are not alums will root for the big land grant U, fervently...and the state university systems are much more unbalanced (the historic land grant holds most of the power). Not all places in the SE USA have this sort of sports density, bug things in the SE are closer together than in the west, in general.
Youth sports are also much bigger and more intense out there. Theg start tackle football in the second grade and the play a very physical brand football.. they will fill a large high School stadium to almost near capacity to watch second third graders money; it's freaking nuts. High School football is even crazier.
Lastly the idea that everybody is skiing and surfing California sort of b*******. Most people in California are sitting in their cars in traffic or locked up in The burbs isolated near Vons or Safeway. Honestly bro there's a lot less to do in the grid of Southern California. Lot of people here play golf, or are into boating, or waking. Heck maybe they hang it on their property and shoot doves and ski with their friends.
Sorry for the typos. My touch pad is wonky and I hit enter, on accident, before I could proof.
stage:state
bug:but
the:they
money:play (don't ask)
Lot: Lots
ski:skeet
it (delete)
You guys think everybody here is dumb anyway, so maybe it does not matter.
Re: admissions, per USA News (eyeroll, I know), Northwestern, Vanderbilt, and Notre Dame are the only other P5 schools that rank above UCLA and Cal, though below Furd. Michigan, UVa, Wake Forest, and UNC are all near or just below USC. The Pac-12 easily has the most elite top academic tier though the Big 10 tends to have better depth.
Don't come at me with your righteous anger over those schools ranked over Cal, we all feel it!
Agreed Rugbear. The top one (or two) Pac-12 teams should get an automatic shot to the national playoffs, hence expansion. I'm tired of watching (and hardly do) College Football Live on ESPN dissing the Pac-12 each opportunity they get. The only team they seem to respect year after year is USC, but then they inevitably write them off after their first loss of the season which happens every year because of the competitiveness of the Conference.
Nice article. I was with you all the way up to Pac 12 "after dark". I hate late college games.
I agree that I don't need the Pac12 to be a football factory. I don't want only SC to win each year. I don't want the loss of scholar athleticism. I don't want or expect our schools to become even more hostage to football. Give me a top tier university, with a good and competitive team, any day. I myself don't need anything more than a great Cal-UCLA game. I don't need more than seeing Cal beat UW again and again. I honestly don't give a crap about Alabama or Ohio State or Clemson. The South has done and continues to do it's sins and outrages against their black and brown citizens and yet boasts their talent on their football teams without so much as a guilt trip. Not that the Pac12 schools aren't without a troubled history, but it is far easier for me to root for Oregon or WA or of course Cal than it is for an SEC school. I'm biased for academic excellence, quality of life, social and political and environmental justice, and so on, which is generally easier to get out West than among the schools were football is everything. Give me the Pac12, with all it's warts, any day. And let those other schools be football factories and deny their citizens the right to vote or protest.
Amen Nick.
The one major point I do agree with is that the Pac-12 should campaign to get automatic bids to the playoff for all major conferences. The truth is that with so few non-conference games in college football, you don't really know which conference was the strongest in any given year. Fairness would seem to demand that every conference should get a shot at the big prize.
I agree. Looks at March Madness this year. Who knew the Pac12 would be so competitive? We were playing ball with the best in the country, but due to normal bias against West Coast teams, weren't ranked highly.
And college basketball last season had exactly that problem: because of COVID there was much less travel and many fewer non-conference games to serve as comparison points. They really just didn't know how good the teams were.
But because basketball has a much larger tournament field, the Pac-12 teams were still able to get in and take down the higher seeds.
Nice article, Nick. You made some good points that I hadnt really thought much about (I grew up with an east coast bias before Cal, and some of that is still engrained in me), i.e. when you take those several few blue bloods out of the mix it's an entirely different story than the dominant media narrative. Don't these people know about truncated mean?
I would probably include Florida State (and maybe Miami), without knowing their budgets or revenue offhand, among the ACC not named.
An interesting caveat to that exercise is to see which teams replace those removed teams. If removing Alabama just results in Georgia taking their place, then that would still suggest football just means more in the SEC.
I love the article. I don't necessarily agree that one can take those few blue bloods out of the mix (when counting CFP appearances). They stand in the way of other teams in their conferences and provide something to shoot for (and a reason to fire otherwise excellent coaches). Maybe the SEC would still regularly send some team...? Don't know, don't really care. One common trope (in this case listing the LA schools) is the P-12 needs one/two teams at the top to dominate in order to get one into the CFP and thereby make the whole conference relevant. There is a certain PR halo for the whole conference when that happens. Count me double, though, with everyone who says they appreciate our conference more because there is real competition!
Yeah, but the problem with that kind of dominance is that it means all the blue chip recruits in a region are going to one school and you lose conference parity over time. PAC-12 unfortunately needs to either lose the parity and just hope USC/Oregon dominate or just enjoy the great football we get every season and forget the playoffs. I'm partial to the 2nd, the playoffs don't really mean anything to me. Even if Cal made it, I'd prefer the Rose Bowl haha.
Dykes' quote is ridiculous. Couldn't play/coach defense to save his life.
Dykes should be fired
I officially dislike him now. Before it wasn't official.
Terence's 1 point plan for ending these articles for the next ten years: Anyone who writes one, gets sent to live in Bill Walton's teepee for a week while he pours special dirt from Temecula over them and plays the glockenspiel and tells them about the time the Dead played the Greek and Jerry went for a 26 minute solo on Dark Star. CONFERENCE OF CHAMPIONS.
This is my personal hell.
don't write an article about saving the Pac-12