On the reddit\cfb board where I hang out, there’s sympathy for Oregon State and WSU but none for Cal and Stanford.
The commonly held belief is that the Texas schools were blackballed from joining the Pac back in 2010 by the snobbish elites of the Bay Area, due to academic, cultural and religious bigotry…that those schools weren’t up to snuff academically and god forbid we have a religious school in our group. Nobody can provide a cite; this is just something everybody knows is true. (I think the actual story as to why the Pac didn’t expand into Texas has more to do with money.)
So a lot of schadenfreude about what happened this week.
That’s a ridiculous story. It was money and probably geography, back when that still meant something. Besides, everyone in the Pac hates Texas, it’s not just the Bay Area.
But any schadenfreude will be short lived. Cal and Stanford will be in the Big 10 soon. Oregon State and Washington State deserve the pity. They’ll probably end up in the Mountain West.
On the bright side, Cal and Stanford are pretty much always gonna be conference champions. Puts a whole new spin on that game. Keep the band off the field!
While the time commitment to play NCAA football is significant, the additional hour or two on a plane to go to Madison instead of Seattle isn’t going to make a big difference. A travel day is a travel day.
Almost forgot…one of the new rules this year says that the teams cannot return to the field during halftime until the bands have left the field. (Insert appropriate lyrics from “American Pie” here.)
“The Big Ten” has now become, I think, the big eighteen. Even with two divisions, its very hard even to play all the other teams in your own division without having to eliminate almost all of your extended opponents from your scheduling.
So, with “The Big Ten” draining all of the noted teams from “The Pac-12”, what is to become of the latter conference? I’m hearing rumors that Cal and Stanford may join the ACC, so can it even be called a major conference anymore?
Oh, a question: why is the “Pac-12” being so ruthlessly cannibalized by other conferences? I’m assuming its money, but what are the exact circumstances?
It’s explained in the article in the OP. The Pac12’s media deal ends after this season. Negotiations for the new one were going poorly and they are going to get way more money in their new conference. After the first two teams left, the new media deal would get worse having lost the Los Angeles market so more teams jumped.
I don’t think they are going at all. They were allegedly close to something before the last group bailed, one guy said “hours away”. What an embarrassment.
Clearly the final four will be absorbed somewhere else or they’ll have a new P12 with a bunch of lesser teams like the chart a few posts up. I think the big reorg will continue for the next few years as other contracts end.
The end state will likely be that the two most powerful conferences the SEC and Big 10 (and they are by quite a bit) eventually spilt from the the rest. The scramble for teams like Oregon and Washington was to find a seat on that departing bus. Soon teams like Florida State and Clemson will fight for a spot too.
Teams in the Big 12 already know they’re going to be left behind, so they’re looking for the most stable position during and after this schism.
As noted, the leadership of the PAC was very dumb. Back when Texas and OU left the Big12 to join the SEC, the remaining major members basically begged the PAC to take them in. The PAC refused to do so, so after the Big12 schools regrouped and refocused, they ended up taking one of the PAC’s instead. In this stage of conference realignment, sitting tight means you are in danger of getting plucked. And we may not be done yet - FSU is apparently unhappy with the ACC (they were pushing the whole let’s add Stanford and Cal thing).
This is incorrect. FSU (along with Clemson, UNC, and NC State) was one of the schools that voted AGAINST adding Cal and Stanford. I think FSU’s concern is that adding anybody at this point potentially makes our buyout more expensive and we want out. Adding two West Coast schools (that were left out of the other Conferences) won’t come close to bring the ACC near parity with the revenue of the Bi$10 and SEC. The ACC did at least two major things wrong, IMHO:
They should have aggressively recruited big market schools prior to negotiating the last media deal. Imagine if we had added USC, UCLA, Oregon, and Washington instead. Our media deal would look considerably different.
They shouldn’t have signed a 10 year deal which locks the ACC into a long period of being a relatively low-paid conference.
At this point, if we could get an offer to the SEC or Big10, then the $120M ACC buyout has an ROI of less than 5 years.
They were allegedly close to something before the last group bailed, one guy said “hours away”. What an embarrassment.