With all the talk about potential Pac-10 expansion, Buster Sports’ Nick Daschel has an intriguing proposal:
Pac-16.
He proposes not simply adding 2 teams, but a whopping 6, and when you think about it, it’s a pretty great idea.
He advocates wooing Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Colorado and Baylor out of the Big 12, and Utah out of the Mountain West. Add Arizona and Arizona State to those 6 and you have an Eastern Division. The Western Division is made up of the original Pac-8 schools from Washington, Oregon and California (I think calling them Pacific and Mountain divisions would be more fun). Scheduling now becomes 7 games against your division opponents, 1-2 crossover games and 3-4 non-conf games.
The expansion would give the Pac-16 control over 8 of the top 25 TV markets, more than 1/5 of the country’s TV sets. And think about the bowl possibilities. You could end up with some great West Coast / East Coast matchups now that non-west coast bowls might have ties to the conference.
Personally I’d throw out Baylor and try and woo Nebraska instead, giving Colorado a better natural rival. BYU/Utah would be a good split except for the difficulties scheduling that BYU brings.
Worth thinking about at least.
[Bumped; original timestamp 2/18/10 @ 12:38 PM. -ed.]
Caveat: I haven’t read the linked article, just your post. That said… it seems to me that this would be great for the Pac-10, but I’m not sure why it would appeal to the Big 12 schools referenced. Take Colorado, for instance. The main perceived advantage of going to the Pac-10 is the recruiting boost of frequently traveling to California — at the very least, Southern California every other year and Northern California every other year (possibly more often, if Colorado somehow ends up in the same division with some of the California schools, and/or the league sticks with a 9-game schedule). This plan, by contrast, would have Colorado visiting California, at most, every other year (and each “half” of California, at most, every fourth year), assuming 2 cross-divisional games distributed evenly among the 8 cross-divisional foes. At 2 games per year, it would take four years to rotate through the entire division, and that’s just to get through one side of each home-and-home series. So Colorado would be at USC once every 8 years, at UCLA once every 8 years, at Cal once every 8 years, and at Stanford once every 8 years.
Basically, their primary geographic footprint, recruiting-wise, would remain what it is now: Texas. Granted, since they’d be in the same division as the Texas schools, they’d be going there more often, but still, I don’t see any big upside for the Buffs. As for the Texas schools, they’d lose the Oklahoma schools, which is a big deal, and maybe Nebraska too.
P.S. Also, USC would be at Colorado once every 8 years, which doesn’t meet the very important criteria of giving Brendan Loy the opportunity to see the Trojans play in Boulder with some frequency. 🙂
I feel compelled to respond to this topic, so I’m breaking two of my self-imposed blogging rules that have been in effect for the past year-plus (#1 No more wasting time and energy posting on any new iterations brendanloy.com blogs; #2 In the event I break Rule #1, refrain from responding to any posts or comments by David K.).
First off, expanding the Pac-10 to 14 or 16 teams has been my idea for quite some time. I have expounded on this subject every now and again over on the football message board at wearesc.com, and my guess is this Daschel character came across one of my posts and stole my idea. I will cut him some slack because he’s advocating on behalf of different teams, but I stand by the assertion that I came up with this idea all on my own, first. 😛
Second, the recruiting boost doesn’t come just from visiting the state, it also comes from away games, and from potential conference championship matchups. Remember this is also about TV markets, and if USC is at Colorado, California recruits are going to see that game. So long as the new schools coming into the conference face a California team every year, and visit the state once every two years, they should be happy, recruiting-wise.
Third, while bringing over the Texas schools makes great sense recruiting-wise and as a conference counterbalance to California, I just can’t see these teams leaving the Big 12 and their traditional Oklahoma and Oklahoma State rivalries. We’d be better off trying to add the entire Big 12 South. Sure we lose the Denver and SLC media markets, but Oklahoma is a program of regional and national stature, which more than outweighs not having those two medium-sized media markets.
Finally, while I would enjoy adding the Big 12 South to the Pac-10, what ultimately ails the Pac-10 is our schedule strength and round-robin schedule. I believe the whole angle of new additions needing to be research institutions with high academic standards is bunk, as evidenced by the current inclusion of Washington State, Oregon, Oregon State, Arizona, and Arizona State. And yes, money is a factor, but I think we’re fine as long as we pick up a couple of new markets like SLC and Denver. Instead, we should be pursuing the Big East model (non-football) and go to 14 or 16 teams, but my slight preference is for 14 teams. We dilute the Pac-10 with respectable, well-rounded mid-major programs like BYU, Utah, San Diego State, and Colorado. Boise State, Colorado State, Nevada, Fresno State, UNLV, and New Mexico are also candidates, but San Jose State and Hawaii are far too weak as overall athletic programs to be included in the Pac-10. This would provide better stratification for the conference and get the Pac-10 into more BCS matchups and better bowl games overall.
Aww, not ALL my comments/blog posts should be avoided Andrew, just look at this one!
Unfortunately for your last scenario, the Pac-10 bylaws require unanimous agreement for the inclusions of new schools. Stanford is goign to be hard to sell on some of these inclusions, even if we can soften them enough to include a school like Texas that they rejected in the past (or would have had it come to that after breaking up of the old Southwest Conference).
As for Academic Stanards, I think there is a difference between undergraduate degrees and their rankign as Research Institutions which is what the actual criterion used to be (and although not formalized, still is in practice). All of the Pac-10 schools but Oregon are ranked in the highest tier of Research Universities, Oregon is one step below. Utah is in the top tier as well (I imagine most if not all of the Big12 schools we are talking about would be too). Rankings are based, I believe not necessarilly on quality of research but research funding and output.
Anyway back to the unanimous requirement, I think you can sell the conference on adding big name BCS schools and succesful non-BCS schools like Utah that have both the athletic and academic levels to fit in. I don’t think you can sell all of the schools on including SDSU, Boise State, et. al.
You also likely need to structure the deal in a way that gets the four northwest schools atleast one game a year in SoCal, or at worst one game every other year with a game at home against an LA school in those intervening years.
The benefit of Daschel’s plan or one similar is that it allows the PNW schools continued access to competition in the LA area every year. If you can include Utah, Colorado and Texas markets, I think selling the Arizona schools on losing the LA market as a yearly game is definitely doable.
Also as Brendan has pointed out previously (and I didn’t realize) BYU is a hard sell both because of potential Bay Area anti-mormon snobery and BYU’s scheduling challenges with no playing on Sundays.
Another propsal I’ve seen is a 12 team conference with a zipper alignment, i.e natural rivals are in different divisions, with a gaurenteed rivalry game each year. Something like:
Washington
Oregon
Stanford
UCLA
ASU
Colorado
and
WSU
OSU
USC
Cal
Arizona
Utah
Five division games, 1 rivalry game, 2 cross-division games, 4 non-conf games.
This would be for football, you don’t need divisions for basketball and potentially for othe sports.
Still the 16 team layout is simpler because you keep the rivals together and its a natural East/West split.
Respectable, well-rounded mid-major programs like … Colorado
Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll give you a topic. Colorado is neither respectable, nor well-rounded, nor a mid-major.
🙂
Kidding, mostly, about the first two, despite the Buffs’ recent struggles in the revenue sports… but nevertheless they are not, in fact, a mid-major.
Oops on the Colorado typo — a result of copying and pasting and forgetting to re-write. I’d plead guilty of being fooled by Colorado playing like a mid-major these days, but that’d be a disservice to respectable mid-majors.
David, if I was being uber-realistic, I would have simply stated that the Pac-10 will never accept expansion, for reasons you’ve stated and more. But beyond that, I’ll address a couple of your points:
– The MWC schedules around BYU’s constraints, the Pac-10 could, too. Bay Area snobbery is not a valid reason for rejecting a school, though all would acknowledge BYU isn’t a “cultural fit”.
– Research institution status should have no bearing on conference affiliation and sports. Academics are only pertinent in so far as they affect entrance requirements, which reduces the amount of academically qualified recruits. If we’re going to set a minimum level, ASU, WSU, and other schools are already at or below that minimum level, so SDSU and Fresno State can’t be held out for that reason. I understand the argument the Pac-10 schools are making here, but it’s illogical and should have no bearing on sports. If Stanford wants to be all hoity-toity about this, they should join the I-AA Ivy League conference — Stanford and the Ivy schools, and their alumni, can certainly afford the travel costs.
If the Pac-10 adds the proposed five teams from the Big 12, the rump of that conference would have 6 remaining teams, after Missouri confirms the worst-kept secret in college sports and hops to the Big 10/11. Suppose Iowa State plays the Hawkeye card and jumps over to the Big 10/11/12 as well.
The remaining rump of the Big 12 would have five teams, two of whom are top two seeds in Lunardi’s latest bracketology, a third had the number 1 draft choice in the NBA last spring – and may have the #1 in the upcoming NFL draft, a fourth was a borderline BCS team last year with the most notable deep-pocketed booster in the NCAA, and the fifth is one of a handful of the most storied programs in NCAA football.
That’s a far different orphan scenario than SWC refugee Rice landing in C-USA. I imagine the NCAA would put pressure on the Big 10 to bloat to 16 teams as well, and then there could be a surreal coin flip between the Big 16, Pac 16 and SEC for who would take the unwanted, final, two orphan teams in the NCAAs:
Oklahoma and Oklahoma State. Odd.
Upon further reflection, I believe that Okla/Okla St would get into the SEC earlier in the process, with the two Kansases being the auctioned-off orphans. Because of the Missouri connection, the Kansases would probably end up in the Big 16.
This blog, and about a million others, have spilled a lot of type on how unsatisfying the BCS is to Joe Average fan. Its a near-consensus that some sort of playoff would be preferable. Unfortunately, its also a near-consensus that a school like Notre Dame’s fundraising ability would be a lot lower as the underdog entering a quarterfinal game, relative to the ton of dough they raise each time they get the rabid fans out to Glendale for a Fiesta Bowl game.
If people keep complaining about lack of playoff, the NCAA risks damaging their franchise enough that the greater revenues from the BCS system will be offset by diminished fan interest. The Pac 16/Big 16/SEC (14) is arguably an ideal solution.
In Pac 16/Big 16/SEC (14) world, you’ll have three championship games on championship Saturday, and two of those winners will play for the BCS title game. Given the strength of those three conferences, its vanishingly unlikely to have 3 undefeateds make it through. What will happen much more often is three champions with 1 or 2 losses, or – more likely – an undefeated champion and a couple of one-loss teams.
But even that probably wouldn’t cause the NCAA to lose sleep. In the “undefeated champion/2 1-loss champions” scenario, in many years the 1-loss teams wil be pairs like Florida and (Todd Reesing’s) Kansas. The NCAA can match Florida and the undefeated champion in a championship game with nary a peep from the fans. There will be relatively few years where the top 2 of the 3 champions isn’t obvious to fans, which is exactly what the NCAA wants.
Because the NCAA desperately wants to keep the BCS bowl system and also fan interest. Seems like the superconference system goes a long way toward that goal. It wouldn’t surprise me if the NCAA were partially driving this Pac 16 idea….
Something else to consider Jazz, with the theoretical potential demise of teh Big 12 here, I could think of two more possibilities rather than the Big 10 and SEC get too many new members, you could see the former Big 12 ransack some of the other non-BCS conferences for their top schools (BYU, Boise State) or the Mountain West could do the same and pick up former Big 12 schools to form the replacement conference.
Hey, I have an even better idea. The Pac-10 could gobble up every team in Division I-A college football, become the Pac-120, then split into twelve 10-team divisions, with each division’s winner advancing into a 12-team bracketed tournament to determine the conference champion.
See… it’s not a “playoff,” it’s just a conference championship round! 🙂
The Pac-10 could gobble up every team in Division I-A college football, become the Pac-120
Interestingly, this very idea has been floated, to quite a bit of general approval. Ultimately, however, Notre Dame exercised its Power of Universal Veto to knock it down, citing their trepidation at being buried in the Pac-Not-Quite-Midwest, which is apparently far less lucrative to them than being buried by Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl…