Spaulding Roundup: Palcic’s Emergence As A Recruiting Ace & Other UCLA Football Notes

If UCLA won’t get the play all three California schools every year (whether by being in the same division or with pre-decided games). That to me would seem to be the core concern.

I don’t think the zipper plan (splitting up the rivals between divisions, but making sure they still play) would work, because you don’t want the possibility of the teams having the rivalry game to end the season and then both winning their divisions and ending up in the championship game.

The whole expansion thing is starting to look dumber and dumber. The Pac-16 with Big 12 schools would’ve worked well, but taking Colorado without Texas was a mistake.

So who dictates to whom? Do the new guys, who bring bupkes to the table, tell the rest of the league what’s going to happen?

Shouldn’t this issue have been thought through just a tad before the brain surgeon rocket scientists who frantically got the expansion that they ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY OMG had to have? What’s the difference between this expansion idea and the decision by the mayor of Troy who thought “Hey, there’s this neat wooden horse outside. Let’s bring it inside the gates!”

I guess that was more than two questions.

In the SEC everyone plays the five members of their division, plus one permanent rival from the other division every season. The other five rotate on every third year changing one opponent every year. It has worked out well, a couple of times teams face a team they played in the regular season in the Championship game. It might turn out to be a problem this year as Florida rotated onto Bamas regular season. Depending on how well the teams do if they were to meet in the championship game they could knock each other out of a possible BCSNC game. But winning all your games will take care of that problem. I wasn’t fond of it in the beginning when we added two teams but the PAC 10 or 12 should be able to make it work, and have an exciting Championship game. U$C probably won’t like having to play another game that matters but the Championship will get great ratings, I know I will be watching unless some nimrod scheduled it at the same time as the SEC Championship.

How about a schedule in which every team played every other team? It doesn’t take a great deal of smarts to figure out that having every team play every other team would be a pretty fair way to decide the championship. That was the way things worked in baseball. Every team played every other team the same number of games: 11 at home and 11 on the road for a nice, tidy, 154 game schedule, and then there was a World Series. Why can’t that happen in the New, Improved Pac 10?

Oh, wait. We no longer have that ever team plays every other team the same number of game. We have expansion in baseball, and every team plays every other team, but a different number of games. That’s OK, though, because every team in your division plays the teams you play the same number of times that you play them.

Oh, wait. We now have interleague play. So now some teams from the American League get to play the Pirates a bunch of times, while other teams get to play the Phillies a bunch of times. Yeah. That’s fair.

But that has nothing to do with the New, Improved Pac 10 (which 9 out of 10 dentists recommend). We play a 12 game schedule, so we could still play every other team in the conference. Oh, wait. We can’t do that, because we want to have lots of teams go to lots of bowls, and that means we can’t make the obvious and simplest choice, which it to play every other team in the conference.

I guess I’m just not smart enough to make it in the modern era. I thought we were trying to win the conference championship and go to a post season bowl and incidentally to go undefeated and be national champions. I forgot that we are trying to enhance revenue first and foremost. Life really gets complicated when maximizing revenue is the foremost goal for all decision-making. I can see it now: “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’m Professor Allen, and this is Econ 1, brought to you by Geico. Can 15 minutes really save you 15% on car insurance? Just look at the monitors for the next minute, and then I’ll start the lecture.” Increase the revenue on national TV? No problem – just more cleavage by the dance team.

Is there a point at which we just say that we are not going to do something just to increase revenue? And Bruins, if you say, “Well, we have to do what all the other conferences are dioing,” ask yourself if that doesn’t sound just a bit like the trOJie’s main argument about sanctions/

We wish there was a little more transparency from the UCLA administration giving us a little more information on exactly what precise criterias they are using to determine the academic qualifications for these recruits.

I would leave it alone. I really don’t think it’s helpful to print that “Recruit X had less than a 2.0” or whatever the bottom is. And I think it is lower than you think, even at UCLA. I know a little bit about athletics and admissions, and it would amaze many people how low the bar is for academic standing to be admitted as a “5-star athlete” at many schools.

I don’t think these young men need their lack of academic prowess to be aired publicly. Let’s just trust the UCLA administrators to do their jobs.

Based on some observations of athletes on the sidelines at Stanford recently, they have definitely lowered their standards for admission for football. I don’t view that as a positive. A young man who is not academically suited for a UCLA, Stanford, Cal, etc. should not be there, even as a athlete (remember Billy Don Jackson, who was called a “functional illiterate” by a judge?). There are plenty of other lower tier schools where they would be a better fit. It may bother some that we don’t get a recruit because his/her grades and scores are too low, but it certainly doesn’t bother me one bit. Let them be Trogans!

…I admire student/athletes more than athlete/students. I’d rather we fielded a team of academically-prepared students than top-flight athletes who happen to have a 2.0 in high school. We’re no better than the Trogans if we do that. I understand your consternation when we lose a player to Cal because of academics, because it seems to make no sense. But if they are basing their decisions solely on the academic integrity of the school, then I am with them. Perhaps you are right that some transparency is in order – -meaning that we don’t necessarily trust them on this. Honestly though, I am way old school. I’d rather get the stuffing pounded out of us if we field a bunch of academics and “they” field a bunch of athletes. We’re an academic university, not just a farm team for the NFL. I wish there really was a farm system for football, like baseball (and to a lesser extend, the D League in basketball). I’d be prouder if a fellow academic could line up and play on Fall Saturdays, rather than a bunch of athletes who just want to go to the NFL, and consider the academic aspect of being a Bruin a nuisance.