Latest PAC/B12 merger article; on our home page

[cr8zyncalif]

This is a topic of endless speculation at this point, but (surprise, surprise!) I'll offer an opinion. Take it for what it is worth.

- No PAC teams are likely to bolt anywhere. Not impossible, but highly unlikely, and too many reasons to list here. That could be a separate thread, if you like. For the sake of this thread, I'm assuming all PAC schools remain.
- The choices seem to be a complete, "throw the cards in the air and reshuffle the divisions" approach, or just leave the leagues separate and do some interleague games with a playoff of some sort at the end.
- I can't look 10 years into the future, but for the immediate planning, it would clearly be easiest to simply keep both leagues, traditions, etc., intact and do the interleague + playoff approach. Plus dimwit Bowlsby will be trying to keep his job for a few more years, as well as wanting to not leave a totally bad legacy, so we are unlikely to merge the conference offices any time soon.
- If you are going to do some interleague games you pretty much have to do 2 (one home, one away) each season. More would not permit any OOC games to speak of in the PAC, and even with only 2, we may have to re-jigger how we approach quantity of games within the PAC. One interleague game is probably meaningless, and the idea of a home & away pair would seem to make sense.
- Since we have 12 teams and B12 has 10, they would have more OOC opportunities. Do we move Colorado back into the B12 schedule to put both at 11 and end up with the same OOC opportunities? A question to be sorted.
- The playoff would seem easy. One more game at the end of the season between PAC and B12 champs.

There are a couple of what would appear to be significant benefits. One, TV interest in both leagues would inevitably spread into the other league's footprint. I see that as win/win. Two, which ever network or platform ends up with our contract (Fox/Amazon? CBS/Apple? Or maybe one group takes the whole thing?), they will essentially lock up 2 leagues for the price of 1. Kliavkoff comes in at the right time and the right negotiating situation. Everybody except ESPN has been almost shut out of college football; now due to ESPN's semi-illegal brokering of TX/OU into the SEC, there are suddenly 2 leagues up for grabs from a media perspective, covering over half of the country, and where one deal will get both leagues. A true deal maker would be salivating. Our new commissioner will have some fun with this.

Thoughts?

 

[BleedCrimsonandGray]

This is a topic of endless speculation at this point, but (surprise, surprise!) I'll offer an opinion. Take it for what it is worth.

- No PAC teams are likely to bolt anywhere. Not impossible, but highly unlikely, and too many reasons to list here. That could be a separate thread, if you like. For the sake of this thread, I'm assuming all PAC schools remain.
- The choices seem to be a complete, "throw the cards in the air and reshuffle the divisions" approach, or just leave the leagues separate and do some interleague games with a playoff of some sort at the end.
- I can't look 10 years into the future, but for the immediate planning, it would clearly be easiest to simply keep both leagues, traditions, etc., intact and do the interleague + playoff approach. Plus dimwit Bowlsby will be trying to keep his job for a few more years, as well as wanting to not leave a totally bad legacy, so we are unlikely to merge the conference offices any time soon.
- If you are going to do some interleague games you pretty much have to do 2 (one home, one away) each season. More would not permit any OOC games to speak of in the PAC, and even with only 2, we may have to re-jigger how we approach quantity of games within the PAC. One interleague game is probably meaningless, and the idea of a home & away pair would seem to make sense.
- Since we have 12 teams and B12 has 10, they would have more OOC opportunities. Do we move Colorado back into the B12 schedule to put both at 11 and end up with the same OOC opportunities? A question to be sorted.
- The playoff would seem easy. One more game at the end of the season between PAC and B12 champs.

There are a couple of what would appear to be significant benefits. One, TV interest in both leagues would inevitably spread into the other league's footprint. I see that as win/win. Two, which ever network or platform ends up with our contract (Fox/Amazon? CBS/Apple? Or maybe one group takes the whole thing?), they will essentially lock up 2 leagues for the price of 1. Kliavkoff comes in at the right time and the right negotiating situation. Everybody except ESPN has been almost shut out of college football; now due to ESPN's semi-illegal brokering of TX/OU into the SEC, there are suddenly 2 leagues up for grabs from a media perspective, covering over half of the country, and where one deal will get both leagues. A true deal maker would be salivating. Our new commissioner will have some fun with this.

Thoughts?

One thought - we need young minds pushing our media rights into the future. Traditional cable is not the way forward; ESPN is dying, MNF viewership is way down, and the fact that the P12 doesn't have an ala cart streaming deal is mind boggling. I'd pay a decent sum for a 4 month P12N sub that showed ALL the games, like a couple of hundred dollars, AS LONG AS a portion of the money either went directly to our school or to a kitty to get divided up. However, as long as they continue to ask me to subscribe to a garbage network that does more political analysis of sports than actually showing sports, I will continue to pirate games. HEAR THAT COMMISH? GIMME SOMETHING OF VALUE TO BUY AND I'LL BUY IT!

 

[Flatlandcoug]

This is a topic of endless speculation at this point, but (surprise, surprise!) I'll offer an opinion. Take it for what it is worth.

- No PAC teams are likely to bolt anywhere. Not impossible, but highly unlikely, and too many reasons to list here. That could be a separate thread, if you like. For the sake of this thread, I'm assuming all PAC schools remain.
- The choices seem to be a complete, "throw the cards in the air and reshuffle the divisions" approach, or just leave the leagues separate and do some interleague games with a playoff of some sort at the end.
- I can't look 10 years into the future, but for the immediate planning, it would clearly be easiest to simply keep both leagues, traditions, etc., intact and do the interleague + playoff approach. Plus dimwit Bowlsby will be trying to keep his job for a few more years, as well as wanting to not leave a totally bad legacy, so we are unlikely to merge the conference offices any time soon.
- If you are going to do some interleague games you pretty much have to do 2 (one home, one away) each season. More would not permit any OOC games to speak of in the PAC, and even with only 2, we may have to re-jigger how we approach quantity of games within the PAC. One interleague game is probably meaningless, and the idea of a home & away pair would seem to make sense.
- Since we have 12 teams and B12 has 10, they would have more OOC opportunities. Do we move Colorado back into the B12 schedule to put both at 11 and end up with the same OOC opportunities? A question to be sorted.
- The playoff would seem easy. One more game at the end of the season between PAC and B12 champs.

There are a couple of what would appear to be significant benefits. One, TV interest in both leagues would inevitably spread into the other league's footprint. I see that as win/win. Two, which ever network or platform ends up with our contract (Fox/Amazon? CBS/Apple? Or maybe one group takes the whole thing?), they will essentially lock up 2 leagues for the price of 1. Kliavkoff comes in at the right time and the right negotiating situation. Everybody except ESPN has been almost shut out of college football; now due to ESPN's semi-illegal brokering of TX/OU into the SEC, there are suddenly 2 leagues up for grabs from a media perspective, covering over half of the country, and where one deal will get both leagues. A true deal maker would be salivating. Our new commissioner will have some fun with this.

Thoughts?

The Big-12 is down to 8 with the departure of Texas and OU, so moving Colorado and Utah to an "East" Division would be an easy move to make and end up with 10 in each group. That said, it would make a lot more sense to have four pods of five teams each. If you booted West Virginia and added in SDSU (just for the sake of argument), you'd have the following

Northwest
Oregon
OSU
UW
WSU
Utah

California
Stanford
Cal
UCLA
USC
SDSU

Southwest
Arizona
ASU
Baylor
TCU
Texas Tech

Midwest
Colorado
Iowa State
KU
KSU
O-State

You play the four teams from your group and a pair from each of the other groups for a total of 10 conference games. Baylor, TCU and Tech don't really have a "long term" relationship with the other remnants from the original Big 8 so moving them is less of a disruption than it might be otherwise.

I don't really like it, but I could learn to live with it.

 

[95coug]

The Big-12 is down to 8 with the departure of Texas and OU, so moving Colorado and Utah to an "East" Division would be an easy move to make and end up with 10 in each group. That said, it would make a lot more sense to have four pods of five teams each. If you booted West Virginia and added in SDSU (just for the sake of argument), you'd have the following

Northwest
Oregon
OSU
UW
WSU
Utah

California
Stanford
Cal
UCLA
USC
SDSU

Southwest
Arizona
ASU
Baylor
TCU
Texas Tech

Midwest
Colorado
Iowa State
KU
KSU
O-State

You play the four teams from your group and a pair from each of the other groups for a total of 10 conference games. Baylor, TCU and Tech don't really have a "long term" relationship with the other remnants from the original Big 8 so moving them is less of a disruption than it might be otherwise.

I don't really like it, but I could learn to live with it.

Nobody's going to agree to 10 conference games, and I'd bet that the northwest schools (at least) are going to continue to insist on playing in California annually. Your model might work with the above as subdivisions within an east and west division....so the northwest plays 4 against the other northwest schools, 2 against the California schools (1 home, 1 away, 1 NorCal, 1 SoCal), and 1 from each of the eastern subdivisions. That gives an 8-game conference schedule. Could also add a 9th game (if you wanted to) against one of the other subdivisions, but my guess is there'd be a preference to go to 8 conference games and play more OOC.

Frankly, I don't think 20 teams makes sense. SDSU is the obvious outlier in your list, but there's not really a good alternative to trade for them. There are also issues with Baylor and TCU, and I don't know that the Kansas schools really bring value (plus it sounds like KU is looking east, with their focus on hoops).

I still am not convinced expansion makes sense for the PAC-12, just because it's questionable whether any of the available partners expand revenue. I really don't see a group of 20 that doesn't water down the existing revenue sharing. 16 looks like the maximum, and that assumes that teams like Texas Tech, KSU, and ISU have more revenue base than I believe they do.

 

[SDCoug]

What ever happens… no pods please.