Link: is the PAC still “Power 5”?
- Thread starter chipdouglas
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I think we are, because as a conference we're not appreciably worse than the ACC sans Clemson, and top to bottom still stronger than the Mountain West (just). But the talent drain and lack of exposure is going to become a hard cycle to break out of.
The notion that the Pac-12 isn't a Power 5 conference is absurd in my opinion. There is a real problem out there when it comes to money and there's no doubt that Larry Scott is an incompetent twit, but nobody in their right mind thinks that the Pac-12 is on par with the MWC, AAC, MAC, C-USA or Sun Belt. When you look at athletic budgets, there is still a distinct gap between the groups. WSU has the distinction of being the smallest budget in the Power 5 and we were behind one Group of 5 school (UConn) in the last USAToday report but the Huskies were allocated $39 million in university support to get ahead of us. They would have been $20 million behind once you take away university support.
When you look at on the field performance, the Pac-12 is clearly a step back, but everyone knows that the ACC is Clemson and the 13 dwarves and the Big 12 is Oklahoma and a bunch of "OK" teams. The B1G benefits from huge stadiums and a dense population base, but outside of Ohio State, they don't have any serious title contenders. A bunch of good teams that get too much love because of the media hype train, but generally a conference that isn't winning national championships.
And of couse, we have the SEC, which has mastered the art of promoting their brand and does have some great programs. The narrative is dangerous because sometimes that can drive reality, but right now, it's perception. The biggest problem that the Pac-12 has is the disaster that the Pac-12 network became. Misplaced pride and arrogance has left us out of major markets for so long that it's gotten to the point where it may not be resolvable without the conference begging ESPN to take us in.
Larry Scott is still an idiot though. Until he's gone, the Pac-12 will be the little brother of the Power 5.
Michael Scott has to go. It isnt all on him though. The schools have to do 3 things.
1) Coach better top to bottom. See those jacked up kids at Bama and Clemson? They lift weights and play hard. Those things arent exclusive to the SEC.
2) Put butts in seats.
3) Stop playing road non con games and 9 league games. The PAC 12 needs to put its thumb on the scale for scheduling. Just win. Never leave campus.
1) Coach better top to bottom. See those jacked up kids at Bama and Clemson? They lift weights and play hard. Those things arent exclusive to the SEC.
2) Put butts in seats.
3) Stop playing road non con games and 9 league games. The PAC 12 needs to put its thumb on the scale for scheduling. Just win. Never leave campus.
I agree with #3 and have been yelling that from the mountain tops, but apparently there are fans who believe that "a good game against a "good" team in which you lose>>>> beating the living tar out of a patsy but you have a W". And my guess is that that thinking has its roots in the old fashioned notion of "P12 exceptionalism", where we don't deign to lower ourselves to play the also-rans, we only play teams of the highest pedigree.
I've got two words for that : HORSE SHIT.
Another huge factor is gameday experience. I know that most of the Coug lot is friendly enough, but in the south everyone is your neighbor. Out west, we are uppity and standoff-ish, chosing to keep to ourselves. I know a lot of people talk about getting "go Cougs", but I have stopped saying it because I get snubbed so often. I mean, wtf people? We are a community, are we not? But I digress... my point is that, while I enjoy going to Pullman, the gameday experience is nowhere near anything east of the Mississippi, for reasons including what I stated above.
All this goes back to #2 - how, then, do you get butts in seats when people deem the product not good enough and the trip not worthy of their time because there is no personal pay off for them (their ego gets stroked because their team won/ beat a "good" team.) Answer that and I'll give you Limo Larry's job myself, because every team in the P12 suffers from it.
This all has to do with money, no doubt (go figure, as is Life). Then it goes to what is DONE with that money. Thus that attracts the right recruits.
But how far down that road of deficiencies is the question. And that goes to our Non-Con games. Our recruits battling other recruits, right?
Non_con schedule from last year:
UCLA. They lost to cincy, San Diego and Oklahoma
USC: Barely beat Fresno. Lost to BYU. Lost to Notre Dame, lost to Iowa in the Holiday.
Colorado: Beat CO state, Baaaarely beat Nebraska, Lost to, wait for it, Air Force.
Cal did alright. Beat US Davis (albeit not by the margin they should have). Beat N. Texas (again not by the margin they should have) and they beat Ol Miss.
I could keep going down the list but you get my point. The PAC is losing games they shouldn't or not winning by the margins they should. Like it or not, that last part matters. It's called "strength of schedule" and we are failing at that, as well. Point blank. Is all of that indicative of how far down we've gone on this "lack of money" road? I'd submit yes.
Random Soul has it right. We are now, as a conference, in a position of catch up... of digging ourselves out of a hole... we're in a hard cycle to break.
Larry Scott needs to leave ASAP and the conference needs to find someone that knows CPR. Not someone that has had projects in successful situations. A builder, a resuscitator. The longer we wait, the more we have to "catch up", "dig out more" or "use more muscle to break the cycle".
To answer the question, though. Are we still a P5 conference? Goes to money. Yes. We are 5th in conference money. But we are certainly 5th in that group of 5. And the financial gap is growing.
USC is responsible. UCLA to a lesser extent. Place blame where it belongs.
Agree 100% that we are clearly behind the game as far as Power 5 conferences go.
And agree that we can't have UCLA and USC sucking hind tit when it comes to OOC performance. The good news is that UCLA could be 3-0 in OOC games this year. They face a terrible New Mexico State team, a Hawaii team that is going to be trying to recover from a coaching change and an SDSU squad that graduated basically their entire offensive backfield. USC will probably get blasted by Alabama, but this is the most vulnerable that the Tide have looked in a long time. Notre Dame might suck...they lost 12 starters to graduation or the NFL. We need the LA schools to quit sucking and start finishing with 8+ wins every year if we want the media narrative to change. UCLA going 17-32 in the past four years borders on Wulffian levels of incompetence once you factor in the talent difference.
The bottom line is people on the west coast don’t care enough.
Lots of distractions on the west coast and things to do whether it is the Bay Area, Seattle, LA, Skiing in Colorado, Vegas etc.
Here is South Carolina. Not a dominant SEC team by any means and that’s the level on enthusiasm.
Here is the Pac 12 championship crowd this year
As to us personally I think we do a hell of a better job currently than most of the teams in the Pac in fan enthusiasm, but honestly the Pac 12 as a whole we are way way way behind other places.
In the Midwest / South football is a lifestyle.
it’s a huge part of their everyday lives to go to games, tailgate, be invested in the program.
In the Pac 12 it’s an afterthought.
Lots of distractions on the west coast and things to do whether it is the Bay Area, Seattle, LA, Skiing in Colorado, Vegas etc.
Here is South Carolina. Not a dominant SEC team by any means and that’s the level on enthusiasm.
Here is the Pac 12 championship crowd this year
As to us personally I think we do a hell of a better job currently than most of the teams in the Pac in fan enthusiasm, but honestly the Pac 12 as a whole we are way way way behind other places.
In the Midwest / South football is a lifestyle.
it’s a huge part of their everyday lives to go to games, tailgate, be invested in the program.
In the Pac 12 it’s an afterthought.
Is the Pac12 still power5? Absolutely but with a few caveats. Our football is generally mediocre with basketball not much better and those are the factors in determining the relative conference strengths. Other sports do quite well. Three out of the four semifinalists in the last women's soccer playoffs were Pac12 teams. We do well in women's volleyball and Oregon State has won the national title in baseball. Outside of the major two sports we do very well and in some instances are top notch nationally.
We Westerners lack the crazed fervor for football found in the South and I do not know how to overcome this on a regular basis. Basketball is another case though and with proper decisions the conference can regain its former respectability. If a small private school in Spokane can be nationally respected then why not us?
Football-wise we are certainly no worse than the ACC. The do have Clemson and...well, they have Clemson.
Financially, we suck. Jettison Limo Larry and things immediately improve. Can anyone tell me why this egocentric jerk was given an extension? No, don't. I don't want to know.
We Westerners lack the crazed fervor for football found in the South and I do not know how to overcome this on a regular basis. Basketball is another case though and with proper decisions the conference can regain its former respectability. If a small private school in Spokane can be nationally respected then why not us?
Football-wise we are certainly no worse than the ACC. The do have Clemson and...well, they have Clemson.
Financially, we suck. Jettison Limo Larry and things immediately improve. Can anyone tell me why this egocentric jerk was given an extension? No, don't. I don't want to know.
The idea that we're not Power 5 is clickbait. But it is true that we are at the bottom and it's not even close anymore (perception). Clemson shows how 1 team can buoy a conference. And let's not forget FSU won it all not long ago. They haven't had the drought of the PAC missing USC, UCLA and peak Oregon.
Some people have pointed out cultural differences. But that doesn't explain the growth of recruits fleeing the West to play out East, or the drought of any PAC team making any noise, or our terrible bowl record. The article points out what an issue retention is when an also-ran in a good conference (e.g., either MSU) is effortlessly able to poach our coaches, blow out their salaries, their assistants' salaries and their buyout. Depressing to think our staff get poached within a conference which is already a "harvest" conference for other conferences seeking coaching talent.
Some people have pointed out cultural differences. But that doesn't explain the growth of recruits fleeing the West to play out East, or the drought of any PAC team making any noise, or our terrible bowl record. The article points out what an issue retention is when an also-ran in a good conference (e.g., either MSU) is effortlessly able to poach our coaches, blow out their salaries, their assistants' salaries and their buyout. Depressing to think our staff get poached within a conference which is already a "harvest" conference for other conferences seeking coaching talent.
The ACC has a long history of one dominant football school and a bunch of also-rans. Florida St and now Clemson. The Pac-12, probably due in part to revenue sharing, has cannibalized itself. Utah had the opportunity to get us back to the playoff, but they got exposed. Had they gotten to play LSU in the semis, they would have gotten rolled but who would have cared? LSU was a juggernaut.
WSU needs to focus on its backyard. The reality is the stadium being so small should be easier to full than other schools.
They need to maximize the student body and the locals. Then Spokane. Then Tri Cities. Then Yakima.
The Puget Sound is fools gold. They have moved games there. They have scheduled events there. WSU has tried everything to get a turnout from the Puget Sound. It isnt gonna happen. The time, the $... it’s just too much to overcome.
Spokane, Tri Cities, Yakima. Inundate those cities with your Gospel of Coug.
Win the Apple Cup.
UCLA, SC, ASU have no excuse.
The PAC 12 has the weakest leagues in both football and basketball. Most of the teams are woefully weak and the recruiting hotbed of California has been just plain ugly for the Conference.The only strong teams are in women s basketball. I guess there are valid reasons for this but it will take a new commissioner and good coaching to correct this.Damn one can remember The John Wooden powerhouses and the glory years of USC football Those were the days when beating USC and UCLA really meant something.Hopefully this is a cycle which will end soon
Sacrificing home games and events to go to Seattle is an admission that the product isn't good enough to lure people to Pullman. Win, and they will come.
Most of Eugene, Stillwater, Norman, Athens, College Station, Clemson, Gainesville, Waco, Lubbock, Madison, East Lansing etc are not in the Top 3 (some not even Top 10) for population within their own states.
WSU has been winning. They still don’t come. Not even when the team needs a late season win to clinch a bowl.
Sorry, a single 10+ win season in the last 15 years is not what qualifies for most prospective fans as "winning."
Of those towns/colleges I listed, the average team had NINE 10+ win seasons in the last 20 years. We've had just 4, and many of today's fans and recruits were in diapers for 3 of them.
No, they won't come if you have 1 big season in their as-yet lifetimes.
Five bowl games in a row for the first time in school history says WSU has been winning. Even in 2018 the Arizona game was poorly attended. The 2019 season, the attendance for OSU was awful despite a bowl berth on the line. Getting home to mommy and daddy was more important to the students.
There is no end to the excuses for not attending games and not donating. Eventually you have to come to the conclusion that the WSU fan base as a whole just stinks. It’s a bitter pill, but the truth is the truth.
If the product isnt good enough for fans to go to Pullman, now that its closer to their home ~ the product doesnt get better.
WSU spent 100 years not giving a shit about football. Dont believe me? Loom at how much $ they spent. Bare minimum.
If WSU wants to put butts in seats theyre gonna have to do it the old fashioned way.
Win.
To continue using the WSU example, most students and prospective fans come from the northwest. If they're at all open to sports, they have the Seahawks, the Mariners, the Blazers, Husky football, Cougar football, Oregon football, OSU football, Boise State football, Husky basketball, Cougar basketball, Oregon basketball, OSU basketball, Gonzaga basketball, the Sounders, the Timbers, and a new hockey team, not to mention women's sports, sports at the lesser schools, and the lesser sports at any school. All are competing for those people's finite time and attention, so it's not whether you're doing well compared to your own average, but whether you're doing something more interesting than those other competitors.
Something really special has to be going on - and for quite awhile I would venture - to steal "share" away from the competitors above. You point out 5 bowl games, which is great for us - but not even remotely interesting to people who watch UW, Oregon and BSU go bowling every single year, not to mention the Seahawks, the Blazers, Sounders, Timbers and Zags, who make deep runs quite often. 80 out of 130 FBS teams go bowling every year. The fact that we were among them the last 5 years, and escaped with a 2-4 bowl record in games such as the Cheez-It Bowl vs opponents such as Air Force and Colorado State, is not enough to convince people in the northwest that WSU football is appointment viewing.
Nope - see above. I'm saying WSU isn't "winning" in any way that matters to the people they're hoping to reach, or that is more interesting than nearby teams. But the fact of it being done in non-metros from Waco to Madison to Gainesville shows that it is possible if the product is good enough for long enough.
By contrast, surely people must remember the Seahawks fan base doubling around XLVII...
I think your first line is more accurate than the rest of it--it's not like the only thing they've got in the south is football and tipping back beers on the porch in the south. There's warm sunny beaches and surfing/snorkeling/scuba diving, hunting, fishing, boating, wakeboarding/waterskiing, hiking, etc. Football is simply more important to the SEC footprint than it is elsewhere.
Excuses for not attending games, not donating and not supporting the program are endless. Not winning is a poor excuse.
To this point, the bottom half of the SEC and I would venture most of the B12/ B10 still fill their 60k seat stadiums weekly, regardless of record.
In 1999 Lou Holtz went 0-11 in his first year at South Carolina. The stadium was full every game.
This year, WSU is having homecoming and dads weekend back to back to boost attendance.
The couple of places that are probably more similar to WSU than SEC schools are Iowa State and Kansas Sate. Both of those schools have no problem drawing more than 50 K per game . Read somewhere that Iowa State has more than 40 K season ticket holders and would not doubt K State has similar numbers.
I said years ago that this question would get asked at least in a semi-serious manner before long, and now it's happening. The Pac-12 still clearly is Power 5, and we all know it, but this question even being asked in a serious way is damning, and the more it and similar things happen, the worse things will get in terms of perception, interest, and the ability to pull in recruits and TV viewers, which will compound matters. The Larry Scott problem has been bad enough to raise the potential, if not the likelihood, of serious long-term damage to the Pac-12 and its schools.
I've thought for a while now that his agenda really is just personal remuneration and aggrandizement, not a mutually aligned interest between him and the conference. That's long been the joke, but I think it's true. I increasingly think it's likely he knew pursuing the Pac-12 Network angle and eschewing a network partner was unlikely to be in the long-term benefit of the conference and its member institutions, but it was the way to let him be a TV network CEO, not "just" a conference president, with regard to his empire-building and compensation motives.
He surely will claim, and has been claiming, that he has to stay on through the 2024 negotiations (and thereafter) to see his vision from 2011 fulfilled. But he has to go. His mistake of incurring massive startup costs with the Pac-12 Network for an amateur-hour production quality, and then failing to get distribution, resulting in huge shortfalls from projections, has been horrendous. Even if his vision of guys in Pittsburgh paying $20 a month for a Pac-12 app comes to fruition and the Pac-12 somehow magically jumps a notch ahead of other conferences in revenues for a short period (which will never happen, BTW), the compounded financial shortfalls and reputational damage in the 13 years from 2011 through 2024 may be too great to overcome, and it certainly won't be enough to let the Pac-12 gain ground. Larry won't really care because he should have amassed a near-9 figure net worth if he invested decently over that period, and he'll have been living high on the hog on the Pac-12's dime that whole time. His ass should be kicked to the curb immediately.
I've thought for a while now that his agenda really is just personal remuneration and aggrandizement, not a mutually aligned interest between him and the conference. That's long been the joke, but I think it's true. I increasingly think it's likely he knew pursuing the Pac-12 Network angle and eschewing a network partner was unlikely to be in the long-term benefit of the conference and its member institutions, but it was the way to let him be a TV network CEO, not "just" a conference president, with regard to his empire-building and compensation motives.
He surely will claim, and has been claiming, that he has to stay on through the 2024 negotiations (and thereafter) to see his vision from 2011 fulfilled. But he has to go. His mistake of incurring massive startup costs with the Pac-12 Network for an amateur-hour production quality, and then failing to get distribution, resulting in huge shortfalls from projections, has been horrendous. Even if his vision of guys in Pittsburgh paying $20 a month for a Pac-12 app comes to fruition and the Pac-12 somehow magically jumps a notch ahead of other conferences in revenues for a short period (which will never happen, BTW), the compounded financial shortfalls and reputational damage in the 13 years from 2011 through 2024 may be too great to overcome, and it certainly won't be enough to let the Pac-12 gain ground. Larry won't really care because he should have amassed a near-9 figure net worth if he invested decently over that period, and he'll have been living high on the hog on the Pac-12's dime that whole time. His ass should be kicked to the curb immediately.
I’ve been trying to watch pac 12 football on direct tv for years
embarrassing
embarrassing
Yup. When UW is the elite team in the conference, the conference sucks. Full stop. USC in particular needs to get their shit together for this conference to get back on the map.
Since Larry Schoot has been commissioner, the Big 10 has averaged giving it's member schools about $10 million more per school than the Pac 12 has given their member schools. So, in the last 10 years, Big 12 schools have received 100 million more dollars than Pac 12 schools have received from the conference.
Yeah, exactly. Even if by some miracle the Pac-12 made it up later on a nominal basis (which, again, will never happen), that wouldn't fully account for the time value of money or the compounded losses in terms of facilities, conference and individual school prestige and credibility (or recruiting), etc. The Pac-12 should have gone with ESPN or Fox as a partner from the outset. They could bear, and leverage efficiencies to lessen, startup costs, produce a better product, cross-promote, get better distribution, and give the Pac-12 schools more money and exposure.
We're talking cross-purposes here.
It is undeniable that we have not had the success of programs for whom a sub-10-win season is a "down" year. You feel that fans should pony up no matter what, which I agree with in the case of WSU alums, but other than that, there is WAY too much competition for limited time and eyeballs to expect to attract eyeballs because you notched a mixed Tier-2 bowl record and a single 11-win season after a century of D1-basement football. Imagine asking non-alums in Everett to not only stay up until 11 PM watching our night games, but to also donate to the program and maybe drive 5 hours and get a hotel to catch a game. It takes so much to build the base once you move past alums, particularly when your closest metro is more than an hour away and #100 for population.
Others have pointed out the ISU/KSU examples which I think are apt up to a point: but what competition from pro sports do either of those states have? We're a small market college town school trying to attract big market eyeballs with a product that isn't even Top 10 in sports in our region over the last 20 years. We are right where I would expect us to be when you look at non-alums who must see history to sit up in their chair.