PAC12 "Will have response" to SEC's moves / May impact CFP expansion

[crimsonaudio]

The SEC wasn’t out hunting teams down.

Maybe.

No way the SEC admits to tampering with other conferences, but if (big if) we see two or more other marquis-named schools joining soon I'll have serious doubts that this wasn't by some folks in Birmingham.

I don't care if they did, I'm just suggesting that Sankey and Co may well have seen an opportunity after speaking with a few select programs using back channels...

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Let me be blunt: the biggest problem for the Pac 12, well, there's two, and they can't do anything about either one:

1) Geography - which is never going to change
2) A lack of interest (generally speaking) on the West Coast in college football

People from the Great Plains eastward don't care about the Pac 12 simply because the games sometimes start - or we can't even turn over to watch them if our team's SEC/Big 12 game is running late - until 1030 or 11pm, by which time most of us old geezers have succumbed to the effects of whatever we brewed in the moonshine still that day.

I didn't even watch Pac 10 football in 2003-04, when I lived on the Left Coast. They understand this - or at least Larry Scott did - up to a point; that's why they went with those Thursday night games which, in my view, was a very smart strategy. Unfortunately for them, the NFL went the same route, so much for that idea. And with teams in Seattle, the Bay Area, and (once again) Los Angeles, that whole area is going to choose the NFL over CFB every single time.

The Pac 12 deals from a negotiating position of inherent weakness. This doesn't mean they're bad people or even bad negotiators. But CFB does NOT have the hold on the hearts and minds of people in that area like it does in Texas and the Southeastern USA and even the Midwest. Remember, most of those folks on the West Coast who haven't moved up from Mexico originally came from the East, usually the East Coast/New England areas looking for an alternative to January through March. Once the Ivy League de-emphasized athletics - and let's face it, 95% of folks living there have no tie to the Ivy League at all anyway - college football was never going to be a big thing up there. They already had baseball. Remember, the Patriots may be a powerhouse in recent years, but just 25 years ago they were about to move to St Louis. There wasn't even a lot of interest in them then, it's just that Bob Kraft owned the stadium lease and refused to let James Orthwein (who was an executive with Anheuser-Busch) out of it. (They're more into baseball and hockey up there; college football doesn't even register. I got a contact from a gal I knew up there in the hours after the 2013 IB, and she was telling how folks in the sports bars - the few watching it - thought it was the greatest game ever. I told her they must not watch much college ball then).

You can't create interest in an area that has shown resistance to interest for a century. Let's be honest and admit that other than USC, the only reason the Pac 12 showed up on anyone's radar in the late 60s and early 70s was because: 1) at a time of civil rights struggles, they had far more integrated teams without resistance; 2) they flung the ball all over creation like the old AFL back prior to the new passing rules of the late 70s.

Go look at the sizes of their stadiums and tell me there's any interest there at all.

Oregon St - 43,000
Wazzu - 33,000
Cal - 62,000 (It seated 76K in the 70s)
Stanford - 50,000 (in a stadium that once had 84K for a Super Bowl)
Utah - 46,000
Colorado - 50,000
Oregon - 60,000 (including standing room)
Arizona - 50,000
Arizona St - 56,000

That leaves Washington (70K), UCLA, and USC (in Los Angeles)

Bear in mind that if any of these schools joined the SEC, the only stadiums that would be smaller would be Vandy and the Little Rock stadium for Arky. Even Kentucky - bad as their history is in football - would have the fourth largest stadium in the Pac 12.

So you can't get teams to come play at your site because your stadium is small, can't get folks interested, and can't get TV.

Why should you even be permitted a seat at the table?

 

[selmaborntidefan]

The SEC wasn’t out hunting teams down. These teams inquired about membership because they were unhappy with their current arrangement enough to strongly desire to leave.

Michael Corleone also wasn't pulling the triggers on the guns, either.
In fact, he was "renouncing Satan" at his child's baptism.

Charles Manson wasn't killing any of those Tate or LaBianca folks, either, but he got done what he wanted.

 

[TideEngineer08]

Maybe.

No way the SEC admits to tampering with other conferences, but if (big if) we see two or more other marquis-named schools joining soon I'll have serious doubts that this wasn't by some folks in Birmingham.

I don't care if they did, I'm just suggesting that Sankey and Co may well have seen an opportunity after speaking with a few select programs using back channels...

But none of this starts by the SEC. And yes I realize all the back channel legal maneuvering that goes on. This starts with the teams being dissatisfied with their current arrangements.

The point being, both sides were doing this dance. I have very little patience for these admins whining over the big bad evil SEC. As it has been pointed out, the Pac 10 was doing everything it could to pull in 6 Big 12 teams just a decade ago. Texas and Texas A&M were both looking at the SEC in the late 1980s. None of this is new. None of this is because the SEC wants to destroy college football or even the Big 12. This happened because OU and Texas reached the end of their rope with the Big 12, and sought a way out. Sankey could either have taken the call, or sent them back on their way because that would have been the "right" thing to do and they would be going to the ACC or Big Ten now.

 

[TideEngineer08]

Michael Corleone also wasn't pulling the triggers on the guns, either.
In fact, he was "renouncing Satan" at his child's baptism.

Charles Manson wasn't killing any of those Tate or LaBianca folks, either, but he got done what he wanted.

Nah, I don't buy those comparisons.

Again, Texas and Oklahoma wanted this to happen.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Sankey:
"Smith, I want you to let Texas and OU know we're interested. Make sure you have another trusted associate between you and them. Everything is bigger in Texas, especially their mouths. Let them know that I can't make any overtures to them. They'll have to make the first move.

Anyone finds out and it fails, well, I hope you can swim wearing concrete sneakers."

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Nah, I don't buy those comparisons.

Again, Texas and Oklahoma wanted this to happen.

No doubt about that.

You do realize 90% of what I say IS sarcastic, I'm sure.....

 

[crimsonaudio]

But none of this starts by the SEC. And yes I realize all the back channel legal maneuvering that goes on. This starts with the teams being dissatisfied with their current arrangements.

Likely, but we'll never know. For all we know, Sankey started every one of these discussions. And for the most part, none of the teams being discussed won't benefit by leaving (the little12 or AAC ACC)...

I have very little patience for these admins whining over the big bad evil SEC.

Oh, I just laugh at them. Who cares if the SEC originated these discussions? We won, you lost. You were asleep at the wheel or were simply beaten by the better conference.

Screw the whiners, the SEC will continue dominating CFB while they ball up their little fists and shed tears about 'how unfair it all is'...

 

[selmaborntidefan]

And the other 10% is football history that bores the stew out of everyone.

 

[crimsonaudio]

Again, Texas and Oklahoma wanted this to happen.

I'd argue most teams in FBS want the same, even most in P5 conferences.

Especially now.

 

[TideEngineer08]

And the other 10% is football history that bores the stew out of everyone.

That's some of the best content on this site, which is full of the best content on the Internet.

 

[TideEngineer08]

I'd argue most teams in FBS want the same, even most in P5 conferences.

Especially now.

I think you are right and that is the funny part of all of this. While they are bemoaning the state of college football, behind the scenes they are angling for their spot at the table.

Ah well, as Coach says, it is what it is.

 

[CajunCrimson]

If they are smart. They merge with the B1G and create a 24 team Super Conference. They can have their P1G CG in the Rose Bowl. And be happy with USC vs tOSU or Oregon vs Michigan. And all is happy in their corner of the world.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

That's some of the best content on this site, which is full of the best content on the Internet.

Well, it's not just for me.

Years ago - before Satan invented the Internet - it was frustrating to WANT TO KNOW things and you were limited by what was in your local library, which in the Southern USA small towns was almost always woefully insufficient for my thirst for knowledge.

Combine that with my background as a lab analyst and all of a sudden I began to realize, "Wait a minute, almost every single criticism people fire at Alabama REALLY DOES stem from jealousy and NOT from any minimal acquaintance with objective fact. The average Tide fan, though, simply reflexively responds and is almost always wrong at some point. (And most of this centers around national championship count).

But I used to wonder, "Okay, Yale and Princeton used to win national titles all the time, what happened?" But that's not what REALLY happened. Most of those years the champion was whichever team won the most games among the now Ivy League schools, and in the early days few played football. Plus, it wasn't the game we know now, it was more like rugby.

I'm working on an outline of the entire history of CFB that I plan to put in one thread as multiple posts that will give an intelligent overview of how we got to where we are, including conferences and expansion. I keep having to cut and paste, and the best way to compile it chronologically is to read a chapter in each of my books each night. I've missed the last two nights due to exhaustion, but I went for walks to lower my stress, too.

The only thing that is going to be difficult is the SWC at this point. It's largely an in-state matter, and I haven't really found anything but the net that spells out much. The ACC, too, but the ACC was little more than a bunch of schools geographically close who couldn't get games with the Big Dawgs of the Eastern Independent scene (like Notre Dame and later, Penn St and Miami).

But it will cover the main points of the Ivy League, Big 8, SEC, Pac 10, and Big Ten.

Long story short: the Northeast began playing football less than 5 years after the conclusion of the Civil War. (Interesting to note that Princeton was the school with the most in common with "Southern culture" 'at the time). It moved West to the Midwest - the Yale machine taking jobs in what's now the Big 10. Some Big 10 coaches moved to the West Coast. (Wallace Wade was a Brown product, who played in the 1916 Rose Bowl and made it his mission to get back and win).

The key moment in history might well have been the President of Vanderbilt calling a meeting of the schools in 1894 when he got wind of the Big 10 formalizing a conference the next month. Without that there's no SIAA, no Southern Conference, no SEC.

And history is completely different.

 

[uafanataum]

Likely, but we'll never know. For all we know, Sankey started every one of these discussions. And for the most part, none of the teams being discussed won't benefit by leaving (the little12 or AAC ACC)...


Oh, I just laugh at them. Who cares if the SEC originated these discussions? We won, you lost. You were asleep at the wheel or were simply beaten by the better conference.

Screw the whiners, the SEC will continue dominating CFB while they ball up their little fists and shed tears about 'how unfair it all is'...

Sankey could have enticed them to join the SEC without asking them to.
Sankey " Did you hear about our new T.V. deal? Even the lowest member in the SEC will get more revenue than any school in the BigXII."
Texas " We have the LHN."
Sankey " How is that going for you?"
He walks off knowing he should expect a phone call in the near future.

 

[selmaborntidefan]

Sankey could have enticed them to join the SEC without asking them to.
Sankey " Did you hear about our new T.V. deal? Even the lowest member in the SEC will get more revenue than any school in the BigXII."
Texas " We have the LHN."
Sankey " How is that going for you?" (No, he went full Dr Phil - "how's that working for ya?")
He walks off knowing he should expect a phone call in the near future.

 

[Redwood Forrest]

Let me be blunt: the biggest problem for the Pac 12, well, there's two, and they can't do anything about either one:

1) Geography - which is never going to change
2) A lack of interest (generally speaking) on the West Coast in college football

People from the Great Plains eastward don't care about the Pac 12 simply because the games sometimes start - or we can't even turn over to watch them if our team's SEC/Big 12 game is running late - until 1030 or 11pm, by which time most of us old geezers have succumbed to the effects of whatever we brewed in the moonshine still that day.

I didn't even watch Pac 10 football in 2003-04, when I lived on the Left Coast. They understand this - or at least Larry Scott did - up to a point; that's why they went with those Thursday night games which, in my view, was a very smart strategy. Unfortunately for them, the NFL went the same route, so much for that idea. And with teams in Seattle, the Bay Area, and (once again) Los Angeles, that whole area is going to choose the NFL over CFB every single time.

The Pac 12 deals from a negotiating position of inherent weakness. This doesn't mean they're bad people or even bad negotiators. But CFB does NOT have the hold on the hearts and minds of people in that area like it does in Texas and the Southeastern USA and even the Midwest. Remember, most of those folks on the West Coast who haven't moved up from Mexico originally came from the East, usually the East Coast/New England areas looking for an alternative to January through March. Once the Ivy League de-emphasized athletics - and let's face it, 95% of folks living there have no tie to the Ivy League at all anyway - college football was never going to be a big thing up there. They already had baseball. Remember, the Patriots may be a powerhouse in recent years, but just 25 years ago they were about to move to St Louis. There wasn't even a lot of interest in them then, it's just that Bob Kraft owned the stadium lease and refused to let James Orthwein (who was an executive with Anheuser-Busch) out of it. (They're more into baseball and hockey up there; college football doesn't even register. I got a contact from a gal I knew up there in the hours after the 2013 IB, and she was telling how folks in the sports bars - the few watching it - thought it was the greatest game ever. I told her they must not watch much college ball then).

You can't create interest in an area that has shown resistance to interest for a century. Let's be honest and admit that other than USC, the only reason the Pac 12 showed up on anyone's radar in the late 60s and early 70s was because: 1) at a time of civil rights struggles, they had far more integrated teams without resistance; 2) they flung the ball all over creation like the old AFL back prior to the new passing rules of the late 70s.

Go look at the sizes of their stadiums and tell me there's any interest there at all.

Oregon St - 43,000
Wazzu - 33,000
Cal - 62,000 (It seated 76K in the 70s)
Stanford - 50,000 (in a stadium that once had 84K for a Super Bowl)
Utah - 46,000
Colorado - 50,000
Oregon - 60,000 (including standing room)
Arizona - 50,000
Arizona St - 56,000

That leaves Washington (70K), UCLA, and USC (in Los Angeles)

Bear in mind that if any of these schools joined the SEC, the only stadiums that would be smaller would be Vandy and the Little Rock stadium for Arky. Even Kentucky - bad as their history is in football - would have the fourth largest stadium in the Pac 12.

So you can't get teams to come play at your site because your stadium is small, can't get folks interested, and can't get TV.

Why should you even be permitted a seat at the table?

I suppose if you play a majority P5 schedule it give you a seat at the table. Which is why we are expanding the playoff -- so the mediocre can have a AT THAT table.





.

 

[KrAzY3]

Let me be blunt: the biggest problem for the Pac 12, well, there's two, and they can't do anything about either one:

1) Geography - which is never going to change
2) A lack of interest (generally speaking) on the West Coast in college football

They are protected by the same things that make strengthening their conference so difficult.

I really wanted the Pac-12 to add Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma St. (my hope all along was for A&M to join the SEC). I thought this would accomplish two things, A: The Pac-12 would have a fairly tough schedule, no easy paths to a championship. B: It would have split the region between the SEC (A&M, LSU, Arkansas, etc..) and Pac-12 (Texas, Oklahoma, etc..). We've already seen that play out somewhat, but my hope was that long-term people in the region would kind of give up on watching California teams play and choose instead to watch the SEC. I guess that's one reason Texas ended up in the SEC, they saw this start to happen anyway.

Furthermore, I thought you could have four (well 3 at least) relatively balanced conferences and if you go from 5 to 4 conferences ultimately the remaining parties get a bigger piece of the pie. It isn't going down like that now though, the SEC decided to add half the football powers in the country into one conference and now we have a hopelessly imbalanced situation.

I still think the Pac-12 should add Texas Tech and another school, Tech is a good fit geographically and in terms of value I'd say they rival a program like FSU. They're a top 25 program in terms of merch sales, and do hold a fair bit of territory on the west side of Texas. However, there just isn't anything else they can do.

They become a really curious case because due to geography you can't kill them (they could drop football and let Southern Cal and a couple others link up with another conference), but they also lost their one chance to be competitive with the other conferences.

 

[Redwood Forrest]

Well, it's not just for me.

Years ago - before Satan invented the Internet - it was frustrating to WANT TO KNOW things and you were limited by what was in your local library, which in the Southern USA small towns was almost always woefully insufficient for my thirst for knowledge.

Combine that with my background as a lab analyst and all of a sudden I began to realize, "Wait a minute, almost every single criticism people fire at Alabama REALLY DOES stem from jealousy and NOT from any minimal acquaintance with objective fact. The average Tide fan, though, simply reflexively responds and is almost always wrong at some point. (And most of this centers around national championship count).

But I used to wonder, "Okay, Yale and Princeton used to win national titles all the time, what happened?" But that's not what REALLY happened. Most of those years the champion was whichever team won the most games among the now Ivy League schools, and in the early days few played football. Plus, it wasn't the game we know now, it was more like rugby.

I'm working on an outline of the entire history of CFB that I plan to put in one thread as multiple posts that will give an intelligent overview of how we got to where we are, including conferences and expansion. I keep having to cut and paste, and the best way to compile it chronologically is to read a chapter in each of my books each night. I've missed the last two nights due to exhaustion, but I went for walks to lower my stress, too.

The only thing that is going to be difficult is the SWC at this point. It's largely an in-state matter, and I haven't really found anything but the net that spells out much. The ACC, too, but the ACC was little more than a bunch of schools geographically close who couldn't get games with the Big Dawgs of the Eastern Independent scene (like Notre Dame and later, Penn St and Miami).

But it will cover the main points of the Ivy League, Big 8, SEC, Pac 10, and Big Ten.

Long story short: the Northeast began playing football less than 5 years after the conclusion of the Civil War. (Interesting to note that Princeton was the school with the most in common with "Southern culture" 'at the time). It moved West to the Midwest - the Yale machine taking jobs in what's now the Big 10. Some Big 10 coaches moved to the West Coast. (Wallace Wade was a Brown product, who played in the 1916 Rose Bowl and made it his mission to get back and win).

The key moment in history might well have been the President of Vanderbilt calling a meeting of the schools in 1894 when he got wind of the Big 10 formalizing a conference the next month. Without that there's no SIAA, no Southern Conference, no SEC.

And history is completely different.

I used to call the library mu second home. In Football i would buy the NCAA yearbook each year. I devoured every magazine i could find and read the newspaper (they were massive papers by todays standard, the sports section was as large age the entire paper today) cover to cover. I miss those days. The net has changed. I hate searching for things now. Half the searches are redirected to an ad, or take me to some paid ad which is very misleading. I miss the library.

 

[TideEngineer08]

They are protected by the same things that make strengthening their conference so difficult.

I really wanted the Pac-12 to add Texas, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma St. (my hope all along was for A&M to join the SEC). I thought this would accomplish two things, A: The Pac-12 would have a fairly tough schedule, no easy paths to a championship. B: It would have split the region between the SEC (A&M, LSU, Arkansas, etc..) and Pac-12 (Texas, Oklahoma, etc..). We've already seen that play out somewhat, but my hope was that long-term people in the region would kind of give up on watching California teams play and choose instead to watch the SEC. I guess that's one reason Texas ended up in the SEC, they saw this start to happen anyway.

Furthermore, I thought you could have four (well 3 at least) relatively balanced conferences and if you go from 5 to 4 conferences ultimately the remaining parties get a bigger piece of the pie. It isn't going down like that now though, the SEC decided to add half the football powers in the country into one conference and now we have a hopelessly imbalanced situation.

I still think the Pac-12 should add Texas Tech and another school, Tech is a good fit geographically and in terms of value I'd say they rival a program like FSU. They're a top 25 program in terms of merch sales, and do hold a fair bit of territory on the west side of Texas. However, there just isn't anything else they can do.

They become a really curious case because due to geography you can't kill them (they could drop football and let Southern Cal and a couple others link up with another conference), but they also lost their one chance to be competitive with the other conferences.

How do you make people care? People on the West Coast just don't care in large enough numbers. Texas and Oklahoma would have been horrible fits. They would have run roughshod over that league, but due to the relative ease of it, their own programs would have atrophied to the point we see USC living at now.

I still think there is a slim chance at some balance, but this nonsense of the Pac 12 partnering with what's left of the Big 12 is not the way (I'm not talking about what you suggested with Texas Tech, I'm referring to all 8 Big 12 teams partnering in some way that's being bounced around). I think the balance is going to come from 4 to 6 Pac 12 teams joining up with the Big Ten, and Notre Dame and West Virginia going to the ACC.

That doesn't make the ACC on the SEC's level, but it adds balance to that league, adds some credibility, and interest. The Big Ten would rival the SEC at that point. It would be a little weird, yes, but if you add at least 4 Pac teams to the Big Ten, you can create a division of the western most Big Ten teams and those Pac teams. Dare I say it could really help bring back Nebraska, as it places them in California a lot and gives them recruiting opportunities that they haven't enjoyed since the 1990s.