Larry Scott Feels The Heat From Pac-10 Athletic Directors Re. North-South Realignment

Coach continues to tell us things even after he has left us.

In terms of competition, division imbalances are going to be inherent in any sort of division setup, regardless of sport. The power of teams ebb and flow every few years. Nebraska and Colorado had just come off national championships when the Big 12 was formed, and at the time, Texas and Oklahoma were the weaker teams. Things can change awfully quickly – and this is true in all sports. The NFC East was once a ridiculous division with 3 legit NFC champion contenders at the top. Or the AL East, where today we see the two best teams in baseball, and two other teams that would be running away with any other division if they were placed there.

Now in terms of market reach, the Pac-10 does have an advantage over the Big 12. While both conferences have a major state as its anchor, CA vs. TX, UT dominates the entire state of TX in such a greater proportion than any CA school dominates CA. Texas dominates the states market in a much larger way compared to A&M, Tech, to say nothing of Baylor, than any of the CA schools could ever dream of. The Big 12 was thus always doomed to be unbalanced once it was realized in the late 1990’s what the potential power of market size and $$$ was in collegiate athletics, especially when it was all centered on one team in the division. This past week should have made it crystal clear
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Shifting gears now….

I hear this all the time. That we should have just “waited for the right team or teams” to want to join.

The problem with this statement, is what would be the right team or teams? Part of the problem is that we’re no longer in 1990, when Notre Dame wasn’t the only power team that was independent. You had Penn State and many other schools playing independent football. Since then, every school (that is a candidate for the Pac-10 anyways) has been snatched up by a conference (some are BCS schools too), sans Notre Dame.

When you look at the geography too, there’s nothing left on the west coast that fits that isn’t already in the Pac-10. We’d have to go out east to Texas as the next school, as we did try for with the Pac-16. However, the issue with Texas is complicated. Beyond their own issues of arrogance and demands for their own network, we also have the Texas state legislature – the same ones that got Baylor packaged into the Big 12. Yep, that’s where the “Tech problem” originated – Texas wasn’t going anywhere without Tech. That was why the Big 10 didn’t take them, and Texas not wanting to go to the SEC, it was Pac-10 or stay with the Big-12/10.

And with OU going to wherever UT was going (not to mention OSU and Pickens various donations to ensure they’re together), bringing Texas is going to start a super conference no matter what conference picks up Texas in the future, and we’re back to where we were a week ago. Now though, Texas is going to start their own TV network, and if it is successful, I wouldn’t be surprised if Texas goes independent with the inevitable death of the Big12-2 in a few years. Either way you look at it though, any expansion to our conference that included Texas would have most likely required us expanding far beyond 12.

The other issue with the comparison to the Big Televen is that they’ve always had Notre Dame as their big prize. They wanted to force the issue with Nebraska, thinking the Big 12 would collapse, superconferences would form, and ND would be forced to go with the conference they fit best in. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Big Ten had that idea all along – get Nebraska, force Notre Dame to come in, and fill out the 3 remaining slots with Missouri or some Big East schools since they would probably collapse next. However, if that didn’t work, they’d still get Nebraska as their 12th school and play to see what happens next. Basically, they hedged their bets.

Now if Colorado had all along been our plans for team #11, then our move to bring ‘em in early was our version of hedging the bet. Problem is, our bigger prize isn’t a single school like Notre Dame – it would have been a huge collection of them, which apparently upset the checkbooks of TV networks.

So in sum, 11 would never have worked for us. That the Big Ten stuck at 11 for 20 years was more a product of them holding out hope ND would turn, but when the Big 12 teetered, they thought they would force the issue. Now they’ll just make do with 12, go to divisions and a CCG etc., and be done until the next round of talks comes up in 3-6 years.

And if the Pac-10 and the schools had indeed talked about numerous scenarios, as sources have alluded to, then I’d hope that going to 12 was the contingency for a failure of going to 16. What supports that argument of course is that they picked up CU early, in the hopes that it would force the creation of 16, but the contingency of 12 had CU already present so it was a win-win. Of course, that question then beckons… in the list of plans presented to the conference, where did staying at 10 rank compared to everything else, from an overall perspective?

A lot of the Texas people believe they got used by the networks in an attempt to preserve their monopoly over CFB and their hold on the SEC/ACC so go figure. If there were really were more powerful forces at work, then frankly I don’t think any expansion beyond 12 would have worked

As for holding out a year or two later… what schools would we be talking about a year or two down the road? And where does our contract negotiation next year fit into all this?

I ask these questions because the same points get brought up every time

1) We’re not sure if we’re sticking with 9 or going to 8 conference games. There’s pros and cons of both – an obvious pro is that we can schedule more OOC games and we aren’t as likely to screw ourselves when it comes to BCS time – an obvious con is that we won’t face every school every year.

Your geographical idea has some merit… since all our rivals are geographic, it guarantees your rival game. However, a question off the bat with the geographical issue is… why not just split into pods based on geography? Also, that “schedule nearest 5” or 7 or whatever has a matching issue… for instance, CU is the farthest out. Lets say its nearest 5 are Utah, AZ, ASU, USC, and UCLA. However, for UCLA… but our nearest 5 might be USC, AZ, ASU, Cal and Stanford… so how would that work out?

2) The name was posted in one of these threads

3) Jerryworld? I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic here, but I’m not sure how you can be worried about Bruins attending NorCal games and keeping our presence in the Bay and then advocate sending a CCG off to Jerryworld… which, by the way, both Texas and Oklahoma fans absolutely loathe the idea of moving their rivalry game to (which is what the Big12-2 is thinking of doing to replace the lack of a conference title game now)

If we want to keep a presence in Texas, schedule home and homes with Texas and A&M and so on