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UCLA-Stanford Gametime Set: A Pac-12 Power Play Leveraging Network Options?

UCLA-Stanford’s game on October 19th gets a primo slot in ABC/ESPN’s Saturday line up, thanks to what appears to be strategic moves by the Pac-12 conference officials.

By Nestor
US PRESSWIRE

So it's official. Our game against Stanford is going to kickoff at 12:30 pm PST on ABC/ESPN (thanks Odysseus for the heads-up earlier today):

Seems simple. This could (emphasis on could b/c one should never discount an opponent no matter who they are playing) be the conference's biggest matchup of the season to date, if Stanford and UCLA remain undefeated through this weekend.

Stanford is going to have a stiff test v. a scrappy and well coached Utah team and our Bruins are going to take on a desperate team from Berkeley, which will most likely play for its season (this game is that meaningful to them). But if the Bruins and Cardinal emerge from this weekend undefeated, the October 19th matchup is going to massive.

A game like that deserves to be on national TV at a time so that it's showcased to the entire country, not just West Coast viewers. So it was puzzling earlier in the week, when we saw this:

Now if this was the old Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen (who was "Dan Guerrero" of major conference commissioners - in other words an incompetent buffoon), the conference would be just okay with the time slot and wouldn't put up a fight.

But not surprisingly it looks like Larry Scott's folks probably made some firm demands in the backend and didn't relent to this game being relegated to a late night EST time slot. Apparently the hold up was over baseball playoffs:

But the conference probably ultimately got its way by leveraging ESPN as an option.

Let's get back to focusing on this week's game, but I think it's certainly worth taking note of this and appreciating what I suspect was a solid effort by the conference officials in securing a this time slot for such a huge game.

Good on Commissioner Scott, now only if he could do something about our incompetent game-officials, we'd be in fantastic shape.

GO BRUINS.

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