<blockquote><div class="name-said">Looperbear;667597 said:</div><hr>Cal has made lots of demands. We wanted to play SC early. So we request to play SC early, not play Thursday games, insist on getting both LA schools every year and bong playing on Thanksgiving weekend. <hr></blockquote><br /><br />Stanford made essentially all the same demands (including CA games, no thursday HOME games, no BG over Thanksgiving - and it matters for them more I'd think, but they don't lose home gate this year) <i>plus</i> they have the added 'demand' of the ND issue - playing @ ND in October and having the home ND game after thanksgiving.<br /><br />In the future, if UCLA gets hosed as much as Cal in terms of byes, we'll know that Stanford and USC are the ones hosing us. If Cal gets hosed more than UCLA, it's the Pac 12 doing it.<br /><br />What really needs to be done is getting an additional OOC game set up for thanksgiving for one of the remaining pac teams each year. Az playing UL-Lafayette on Thanksgiving is why there was no weirdness last year. Problem with that is no FCS teams can play because of the 1st round of playoffs that week.

<blockquote><div class="name-said">ColoradoBear1;667635 said:</div><hr>What really needs to be done is getting an additional OOC game set up for thanksgiving for one of the remaining pac teams each year. Az playing UL-Lafayette on Thanksgiving is why there was no weirdness last year. Problem with that is no FCS teams can play because of the 1st round of playoffs that week.<hr></blockquote>I haven't worked out the details, but I think the best possibility would be to get BYU-Utah moved back to the end of the season on Thanksgiving weekend. Then that weekend could have 2 OOC games and 5 conference games.<br /><br />Also, unless there's been an NCAA rule change, there's an extra week to work with in years that Labor Day falls on Sept. 1 or 2, which will be the case in 2013 and 2014. So there's that.

<blockquote><div class="name-said">ColoradoBear1;667635 said:</div><hr>Stanford made essentially all the same demands (including CA games, no thursday HOME games, no BG over Thanksgiving - and it matters for them more I'd think, but they don't lose home gate this year) <i>plus</i> they have the added 'demand' of the ND issue - playing @ ND in October and having the home ND game after thanksgiving.<br /><br />In the future, if UCLA gets hosed as much as Cal in terms of byes, we'll know that Stanford and USC are the ones hosing us. If Cal gets hosed more than UCLA, it's the Pac 12 doing it.<br /><br />What really needs to be done is getting an additional OOC game set up for thanksgiving for one of the remaining pac teams each year. Az playing UL-Lafayette on Thanksgiving is why there was no weirdness last year. Problem with that is no FCS teams can play because of the 1st round of playoffs that week.<hr></blockquote><br /><br />UCLA and Stanford aren't making the must play SC early demand like we are. Stanford's game v. ND is a high profile one for the conference. Stanford's playing on Thursday, we're not. We had a bye this year and played on Thursday and we complained big time about it. With all of our self serving demands I just don't think we have much room to complain.

<blockquote><div class="name-said">Looperbear;667651 said:</div><hr>UCLA and Stanford aren't making the must play SC early demand like we are.<hr></blockquote>I don't know how much of a demand Cal made to play USC early, but Stanford plays them even earlier. This is pretty much a necessity--since those are the only two Pac-12 members that play OOC games outside the first 3 weeks, they end up needing to play each other in one of those first 3 weeks.

<blockquote><div class="name-said">Looperbear;667651 said:</div><hr>UCLA and Stanford aren't making the must play SC early demand like we are. Stanford's game v. ND is a high profile one for the conference. Stanford's playing on Thursday, we're not. We had a bye this year and played on Thursday and we complained big time about it. With all of our self serving demands I just don't think we have much room to complain.<hr></blockquote><br /><br /><br />That's a good point about the Thursday night games and byes that I hadn't quite realized fully. The Pac 12 must play 4 Thursday games for TV. If teams get byes the weekend before, that means those <b>8 teams cannot have a bye on the last weekend of the season</b> because they will have the bye earlier (could be less than 8 if a team gets two Thursday games in a row... like us last year). <br /><br />So in any given year, there are only <b>4-5 teams available</b> <b>to fill the necessary one required bye over thanksgiving weekend</b>. Stanford and USC play thursday games, so there was actually no way to give them a last week bye (despite the fact they are 'causing' the thanksgiving problem). Because Cal does not play a Thursday game this year, we had a <b>1 in 5 </b>chance, <b>not 1 in 12</b> chance. WSU, OSU, UCLA and AZ also had no thursday games, ASU has two.<br /><br />It's pretty apparent that the burden of the last week bye CANNOT be shared evenly due to the Thursday games. In fact, since Thursday games are primetime and national on ESPN, the MORE desirable teams are favorably chosen for Thursday night games.<br /><br />Cal is absolutely shooting ourselves in the foot if we are indeed against the Thursday night road game. We already agreed on no Thursday games at home, <b>so unless we play a Thursday night game on the road, we will be burdened with the increased frequency of Thanksgiving byes.</b> All other schedule requests are comparatively inconsequential in that matter.<br /><br />That said, the shifting of the Big Game (or any rivalry game) can be shared evenly across the conference and shouldn't happen more than 1 in 6 years.