Stanford and Cal need to end this silly "We must play USC and UCLA every year!" deal. Hey, I get it. Some fans enjoy the weekender. But -- come closer, because I want to whisper to you an embarrassing truth -- IT"S STUPID TO INSIST ON PLAYING USC EVERY YEAR!

http://espn.go.com/blog/pac12/post/_/id/37627/opening-the-mailbag-ranting-about-schedules

My understanding is that USC and UCLA also insist on annual trips to their state's better half. Which makes sense because the Bay Area is awesome. And we all love going to LA every year draped in blue and gold and spend the next day at the beach. Why the hate, Ted?

Is winning the only important part of college football? Oh, wait, no, that would be money.

Ted does a decent job but I feel he overstepped here and he does not have a full understanding of the traditions here. He left out the fact that we already got hit pretty bad with the Big Game date moved. And we agreed to that in order to preserve our annual cross state trips. So I would say that here in California, there is more to college football than winning.

When he was there, Harbaugh was actually against playing UCLA/USC every year. My understanding is that Cal is the biggest supporter of this 'all california schools play each other' system.

BobbyGBear;739602 said:

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Stanford and Cal need to end this silly "We must play USC and UCLA every year!" deal. Hey, I get it. Some fans enjoy the weekender. But -- come closer, because I want to whisper to you an embarrassing truth -- IT"S STUPID TO INSIST ON PLAYING USC EVERY YEAR!

http://espn.go.com/blog/pac12/post/_/id/37627/opening-the-mailbag-ranting-about-schedules

My understanding is that USC and UCLA also insist on annual trips to their state's better half. Which makes sense because the Bay Area is awesome. And we all love going to LA every year draped in blue and gold and spend the next day at the beach. Why the hate, Ted?

Is winning the only important part of college football? Oh, wait, no, that would be money.

Ted does a decent job but I feel he overstepped here and he does not have a full understanding of the traditions here. He left out the fact that we already got hit pretty bad with the Big Game date moved. And we agreed to that in order to preserve our annual cross state trips. So I would say that here in California, there is more to college football than winning.

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BobbyGBear;739602 said:

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Stanford and Cal need to end this silly "We must play USC and UCLA every year!" deal. Hey, I get it. Some fans enjoy the weekender. But -- come closer, because I want to whisper to you an embarrassing truth -- IT"S STUPID TO INSIST ON PLAYING USC EVERY YEAR!

http://espn.go.com/blog/pac12/post/_/id/37627/opening-the-mailbag-ranting-about-schedules

My understanding is that USC and UCLA also insist on annual trips to their state's better half. Which makes sense because the Bay Area is awesome. And we all love going to LA every year draped in blue and gold and spend the next day at the beach. Why the hate, Ted?

Is winning the only important part of college football? Oh, wait, no, that would be money.

Ted does a decent job but I feel he overstepped here and he does not have a full understanding of the traditions here. He left out the fact that we already got hit pretty bad with the Big Game date moved. And we agreed to that in order to preserve our annual cross state trips. So I would say that here in California, there is more to college football than winning.

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It doesn't matter that much since we're in separate divisions anyway except for Pac-12 title homefield. Even if we win or lose to them, odds are if we took care of our business the rest of the way we'd meet in the conference championship.

Besides, winning a Pac-12 championship without beating those stupid Trojans wouldn't feel right.

If I'm not mistaken, one of the main reasons to support playing LA teams were to sell our program to the recruits who grew up in LA and/or with family in LA.

Miller conveniently ignores the fact that alums from all 4 schools are spread throughout the state.

hanky1;739606 said:

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When he was there, Harbaugh was actually against playing UCLA/USC every year. My understanding is that Cal is the biggest supporter of this 'all california schools play each other' system.

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All 4 schools were for it when Utah and Colorado were added and the conference was split into divisions. "Tradition".

If one were to pick one fanbase that was the most vociferously for it I'd say USC. They love their weekender.

hanky1;739606 said:

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When he was there, Harbaugh was actually against playing UCLA/USC every year. My understanding is that Cal is the biggest supporter of this 'all california schools play each other' system.

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I'm sure Harbaugh was against it. And I'd bet Tedford is against it as well. But their job is more about wins and losses than it is about preserving tradition.

SacCityBear;739612 said:

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Ted is essentially advocating that a key concession that allowed an agreement to be made in regards to divisional alignment and revenue sharing without any compensation.

I'd be ok with it, if:
1) The California schools get 20% more television revenue than the other schools. The 4 California schools are why the conference television agreement is what it is and why the Pac-12 network will be so profitable.
2) The California schools never have to play Thursday/Friday games, unless they so choose.
3) The Big Game and the UCLA/USC game never have their dates moved.

That's reasonable, right?

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Gotta add one more:

4) Institute a zipper alignment w/ 1 rivalry game. would preserve 3 of 4 yearly CA games but institute the need to split up the NW schools UW doesn't play UO and WSU doesn't play OSU every year. Yeah see how that goes over with them.

This idea that Cal and Stanford were the roadblocks to keeping the CA games together alone is hogwash. UCLA and USC held the power since they were the ones giving up their massively strong TV revenue position.

As for the Miller article, it was rather strange transition from the statement that some p12 schools are balking at the BT/P12 scheduling. Does he have any evidence Furd is the team balking? Or USC? I'm guessing that if it's USC/Stanford type schools balking, its not the strength of schedule that has them worried, but lack of control. And yes they have the most inflexibility due to ND. But has USC ever scheduled that weak? Cal has been rotating through the Big Ten schools anyways. The issue of 6 home games per year becomes more of an issue when 10 games are out of your control. There may be pressure to ditch the ND games, but again that has nothing to do with CA games. If the schedule were changed, they'd still be played 4 of 6 years. Which ruins the tradition, but competitively it doesn't matter 67% of the time. Top teams in the Pac might think they can schedule better without the alliance, while bottom teams might think it's a way to get games against bigger name opponents - not sure how they will match up teams, but for instance tOSU isn't doing a home and home on their own with WSU. Ever. Hell Colorado played a one off road game at tOSU last year for a payment of $1.5 mil. And they have hand some really decent scheduling in the past.

Simply put, any CA school get get a home and home very easily with a BT school on the CA recruiting ground exposure without the alliance. That doesn't have anything to do with strength of schedule and the CA guaranteed games.

elbarto83;739610 said:

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If I'm not mistaken, one of the main reasons to support playing LA teams were to sell our program to the recruits who grew up in LA and/or with family in LA.

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+1

"First, the Pac-12 needs to end the nine-game conference schedule. It might make athletic directors' lives easier in terms of scheduling and filling a stadium, but it hurts their teams and the conference as a whole. That's not an opinion. It's a mathematical fact."

Boy, do I ever hope we hurt the team, and the conference as a whole by filling our stadium.

But I do have to admit that's not a fact, just an opinion.

IT"S STUPID TO INSIST ON PLAYING USC EVERY YEAR!

I think he's right. Sticking to the rotation is not going to impact recruiting. It will only be the odd year we miss an LA swing. An occasional miss will not change a recruit's choice.

Do you really want to pass on our turn at a soft schedule? Everybody else will have one, one year or another. I want to head south for a game in LA - I just prefer going in January... I will take a Rose Bowl anyway it comes - beating $ to get there would be sweet, but I don't have that many years left - I can't be picky. :p

We've been playing the LA schools every year for a century.

But hey, if Miller thinks we shouldn't, maybe we should just stop.

And heck, USC currently has a higher ranked international business program than we do. Maybe we should stop competing in that category as well.

Of course, Cal outranks USC in almost every other academic department. So maybe USC should limit itself only to international business.

chitownbear;739647 said:

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I'm leaving the country at the end of October, for good. "

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As in a huff? Sorry to see you go. Where to?

We wouldn't be having this discussion had the Pac-12 expanded to 14 teams by adding Oklahoma & Oklahoma State, which would have allowed the old Pac-8 (plus either Utah or Colorado) to be in the same division and play each other every year.

ddc_Cal;739649 said:

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"First, the Pac-12 needs to end the nine-game conference schedule. It might make athletic directors' lives easier in terms of scheduling and filling a stadium, but it hurts their teams and the conference as a whole. That's not an opinion. It's a mathematical fact."

Boy, do I ever hope we hurt the team, and the conference as a whole by filling our stadium.

But I do have to admit that's not a fact, just an opinion.

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I think the conference is holding on to the 9-game schedule (5 divisional opponents + 4 from the other divisional) to make rescheduling easier if (and maybe when) the conference expands to 16 teams (where a 9-game schedule would mean 7 divisional and only 2 inter-divisional). It is cleaner to realign the conference games without having to have teams back out of non-conference commitments.

Rushinbear;739688 said:

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As in a huff? Sorry to see you go. Where to?

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Yeah, I'm not so interested in why he is leaving, but am very curious where he chose and why.

My other concern would be that if we drop the quad series, we'll prob add another game with average to low attendance. Don't know about SC, but UCLA, CAL, and FURD won't come anywhere near a sell out for another New Mexico type game. We are not the sec.

southseasbear;739693 said:

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We wouldn't be having this discussion had the Pac-12 expanded to 14 teams by adding Oklahoma & Oklahoma State, which would have allowed the old Pac-8 (plus either Utah or Colorado) to be in the same division and play each other every year.

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Agreed. The current North-South split is the real problem.

I think we should go to something based on the three natural 4 team pods (PNW, California, Southwest). 3 in pod games and 4 out of pod games (against 2 of each other pod). Then the final Pac-12 game of the season would be TBD and would match the 3 champions and one wildcard in the first round of a two-round playoff (the CCG as the second), with a preference for not duplicating previous games. All the other teams would be matched against one team they did not play earlier as well--so we don't need NCAA approval, it is a conference game for everyone. Every non-California team would play at least one game in California every year. With only 8 conference games the chances of being bowl eligible increase. The Pac-12 now has 3 "play-off/Championship" games to televise.

1BigTroyFan;739739 said:

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BOTH SERIES ARE OLDER THEN THE SERIES AGAINST UCLA, which started in 1929. UCLA and ND are our principle rivals but the North vs. South rivalry is just as important. The games against the original Pac8 teams are always the most important to me.

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I know SC would rather have both... but say the scheduling of the P12 (as dictated by Larry) means that you have to choose between:

A) yearly game with ND in the current format (thanksgiving/oct rotation), but no CA guaranteed games (still play Cal and Stanford 4 of 6 years though)

B) Guaranteed games with Cal/Furd, but ND has to be moved to preseason (or if ND won't agree, it's cancelled).

I know it's not a likely choice, but it does merit thinking about from a USC perspective because the yearly CA games AND the ND series do pose a bigger challenge to P12 scheduling that could be lessened by doing A or B.

That said, USC (and Stanford) are not hurting themselves with the ND and CA scheduling agreement - the pain is passed on to other P12 teams. In fact the teams most impacted by those scheduling choices will be Cal and UCLA. Because of that, I don't see why USC would just accept a change since the status quo is great for them. And agreed upon. Would think that the next real chance to change is the next TV contract (2023) or if ND is forced to join a conference.

SacCityBear;739718 said:

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People laud Larry Scott while completely ignoring how much he screwed up expansion. By not taking Oklahoma and OSU, he essentially permanently stuck the conference at 12 unless you think a group of UNLV, UNM, Houston, and UTEP for example are a great set of additions.

Larry Scott has also been trying to get the California games dropped since they were agreed upon. (He's been advocating for an 8-game conference schedule)

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Larry Scott put it up to a vote and the Pac 12 schools voted it down...not Larry Scott, and I for one was for the Oklahoma schools coming in. The blame lies on the conference and its Presidents/Chancellors or whomever votes on these things. I also don't care if we play USC/UCLA every year but saying that last year on this board would have brought howls of "tradition" and invoke all kinds of ire......

socaliganbear;739745 said:

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My other concern would be that if we drop the quad series, we'll prob add another game with average to low attendance. Don't know about SC, but UCLA, CAL, and FURD won't come anywhere near a sell out for another New Mexico type game. We are not the sec.

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Very true. Plus even if the PAC drops teh CA guaranteed games, ASU, Utah and AU are not that much better draws than a NM type team. CU might be a decent draw if they stop sucking. Dropping the CA games doesn't mean an 8 game conf schedule... so CU/UU/ASU/AU would essentially replace the USC/UCLA games 2 out of 6 years.

When it was first announced that we would be playing USC and UCLA every year, I supported it. Now that I reflect on it further, and with all the change going on in the conference, I would be fine getting rid of that demand. We would still play them most years, so I'd be fine skipping it occasionally. Plus, I'd imagine most years when we skip them we'd have a chance to play one of them in the CCG if we win the North.

Cal_Fan2;739754 said:

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Larry Scott put it up to a vote and the Pac 12 schools voted it down...not Larry Scott, and I for one was for the Oklahoma schools coming in. The blame lies on the conference and its Presidents/Chancellors or whomever votes on these things. I also don't care if we play USC/UCLA every year but saying that last year on this board would have brought howls of "tradition" and invoke all kinds of ire......

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There is no blame because OU wasn't coming with out Texas - whether the pac invited them to be 14 or not is a non issue.

And unless you get Texas, there is no way to revert to the old Pac 8 and have divisions remotely balanced power.

SacCityBear;739779 said:

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He got them to add Utah who does nothing but dilute the conference. If Larry had given them the hard sell, I suspect that the Presidents/Chancellors would have voted for adding Oklahoma/OSU.

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You might suspect it but that doesn't make it true....adding Utah and Colorado tripled our revenue plus adding a Conference Championship game...I'll take the 3x revenue any day.....again, I was for adding 2 other teams but I don't blame Larry Scott who has done more for this conference in 2 years than Hansen had in 20.

Cal_Fan2;739782 said:

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You might suspect it but that doesn't make it true....adding Utah and Colorado tripled our revenue plus adding a Conference Championship game...I'll take the 3x revenue any day.....again, I was for adding 2 other teams but I don't blame Larry Scott who has done more for this conference in 2 years than Hansen had in 20.

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CU and Utah didn't triple our revenue. Cable's monopoly power and their hard on for live sports tripled our TV revenue. I'm not 100% convinced that, outside of the CCG addition, the per school regular season payout wouldn't have been more with 10 teams. I think the championship game was valued at ~ $30 per year, so sure, that's not insignificant.

SacCityBear;739796 said:

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Renegotiating an extremely outdated television contract increased the revenue. Utah and Colorado were added right before, but that does not mean that everything afterwards was a result of their inclusion.

Wilner's television analyst contacts put the value of expansion at approximately $1 million per school which was solely a product of the addition of a CCG. The conference could have added UNLV and UNM and gotten the same money as it was not a product of the addition of the Utah and Colorado's television markets.

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I'll grant you adding 2 schools to get a conference Championship game was worth it but if you are going to use Wilner's argument, UNLV and UNM would not be the same value.....I'm not sure those 2 schools would be worth $18 million each....

Quote:

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That leaves $36 million as the value of Colorado and Utah themselves or about $18 million each.

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Quote:

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(Update/note: Utah and Colorado add about 12% to the population within the league's footprint, which was taken into account by the analysts. Should have mentioned that before.)

So if we use the $200 million figure for the 10-team conference, or $20 million per school per year, and compare it to the deal the Pac-12 struck, then expansion was worth an estimated $800,000 per school per year not because of Utah and Colorado themselves but because they allow the league to stage a lucrative championship game.

(Before fans other other schools start chirping: Utah and Colorado were, by far, the best expansion candidates from the Mountain and western regions, both because of their TV markets and their status as large research institutions.)

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Those are Wilner's words, not mine.....I"m just of the mind that Larry Scott did what was best for the conference at the time....we can nickle and dime this to death but I for one an glad we took them because considering geography, we are pretty limited in who we could take..at least we expanded eastward instead of getting even more landlocked.

Cal_Fan2;739800 said:

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I'll grant you adding 2 schools to get a conference Championship game was worth it but if you are going to use Wilner's argument, UNLV and UNM would not be the same value.....I'm not sure those 2 schools would be worth $18 million each....

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Wilner's argument is based strictly on population which is one of many factors, but sticking with straight population is only fair when the teams are NOT like Nebraska and Oklahoma... or ,on the other end, UNLV or San Jose State.

Cal_Fan2;739800 said:

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(Update/note: Utah and Colorado add about 12% to the population within the league’s footprint, which was taken into account by the analysts. Should have mentioned that before.)

So if we use the $200 million figure for the 10-team conference, or $20 million per school per year, and compare it to the deal the Pac-12 struck, then expansion was worth an estimated $800,000 per school per year — not because of Utah and Colorado themselves but because they allow the league to stage a lucrative championship game.

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If you go with Wilners' analysis, and value the title game at only $14 million, CU and UU on average $360k under the Pac 12 average value. But since Colorado has ~5 million to Utah's ~3 million residents, it might be more accurate to say CU is $5 million over the p12 average compared to utah at $5 million under. But that isn't even fair to current p12 teams since Colorado and Utah are split markets, where as AZ, OR, and WA have both teams. Straight population as wilner does it is key for p12 network sales, but the product quality is more important for ESPN/Fox contracts.

CU was attractive and coming no matter what, but say Utah were replaced my UNLV or UNM. In Wilner's anaysis, that would not have been a huge per school loss because Utah wasn't bring nearly as much as CU to start with.

Taking Utah was good for one thing that can't be measured in any of this.... it lead to the neutering of the MWC. And that helps the Pac to be the exclusive big football conference out west. No other school leaving the MWC would have had that effect.

Cal_Fan2;739800 said:

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Those are Wilner's words, not mine.....I"m just of the mind that Larry Scott did what was best for the conference at the time....we can nickle and dime this to death but I for one an glad we took them because considering geography, we are pretty limited in who we could take..at least we expanded eastward instead of getting even more landlocked.

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The question is where expansion is going. It's been rather haphazard and it's kind of sad because I think we'll end up with a less than optimal setup where if things were planned better, no one would end up worse off than they will end up in a few years. The problem is that some teams need to be told you don't get a seat at the final table... the way things are going they will just slowly die by being omitted.

The other issue is when will this cable $$ bubble burst, and if it does, will college sports (football) have damaged itself so much that it's irreparable. P12 has money until 2023. I don't see why a non-optimal expansion helps anything until then when terms my be completely different. They money won't get much better. If P12 stays loosely aligned with the BT, we will never be irrelavent.

And P12 Net can hopefully sell the crap out of non-rev sports and build an even better niche out here.

I just don't get one premise on which the "avoid UCLA/USC" argument is based - that USC will always be strong.

First, that's not necessarily true. Why make a scheduling decision (which could affect things many years into the future) based on how good the teams are now? That seems really shortsighted.

Second, avoiding USC based on how good we're afraid they might be is cowardly. We might increase our Rose Bowl odds based on that (or "schedule success" as Miller calls it), but doesn't the prize become less valuable as a result? Wouldn't we be no better than the SEC schools that play 4 cupcakes?

I can just picture the DVD of Cal's Rose Bowl season in 2019 if we went this route.
(announcer voice) The key moment of this season happened before a meeting between Cal's AD and the Pac-12.
(shot of Sandy walking through a corridor)

This doesn't mean you necessarily choose to schedule USC/UCLA every year, just that you take "expected program strength" out of the equation. We have another compelling reason to schedule them: tradition and LA recruiting exposure. Therefore, we should demand our annual games with them remain.

I think the problem isn't that we insist on playing UCLA and USC every season. The problem is that everyone else insists on playing in CA every season. If they drop that demand, we get a real north/south split, no problem.

Another point:

There is only one other non-traditional rivalry that compares with the Cal/Furd vs. ucla/u$c cross-state rivalries: Oregon vs. Washington. What would Oregon and Washington say if they were not allowed to play each other each year? They would push to preserve that rivalry just as the California schools have. Hypocrisy.

BobbyGBear;739942 said:

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Another point:

There is only one other non-traditional rivalry that compares with the Cal/Furd vs. ucla/u$c cross-state rivalries: Oregon vs. Washington. What would Oregon and Washington say if they were not allowed to play each other each year? They would push to preserve that rivalry just as the California schools have. Hypocrisy.

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All the teams are rivals per se, some just have more local focus, which has been preserved in the scheduling; ergo, I would argue that the Husky-Wazzu rivalry as more "important," locally, than OR v. WA.

I would like to see these "local" rivalries as the last game of the season. Period.

Why can't the schedulers make these last game, local rivals games as fixed points in each team's annual scheduling?

manus;739952 said:

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All the teams are rivals per se, some just have more local focus, which has been preserved in the scheduling; ergo, I would argue that the Husky-Wazzu rivalry as more "important," locally, than OR v. WA.

I would like to see these "local" rivalries as the last game of the season. Period.

Why can't the schedulers make these last game, local rivals games as fixed points in each team's annual scheduling?

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Notre Dame has contracts with USC and Stanf*rd that ensure that the Golden Domers will play a Thanksgiving Weekend game on the West Coast each year. In even-numbered years, ND visits USC. In odd-numbered years, the Fighting Irish visit Stanf*rd.

That means that for each year, there are an odd number of Pac-12 schools in action on Thanksgiving Weekend.

One Pac-12 school must have a bye week on Thanksgiving Weekend because of the ND contracts with USC and Stanf*rd.

ColoradoBear1;739817 said:

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Taking Utah was good for one thing that can't be measured in any of this.... it lead to the neutering of the MWC. And that helps the Pac to be the exclusive big football conference out west. No other school leaving the MWC would have had that effect.

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I'm not sure about the last sentence, but I agree with the tenor of the paragraph.

510Bear;739863 said:

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I just don't get one premise on which the "avoid UCLA/USC" argument is based - that USC will always be strong.

First, that's not necessarily true. Why make a scheduling decision (which could affect things many years into the future) based on how good the teams are now? That seems really shortsighted.

Second, avoiding USC based on how good we're afraid they might be is cowardly. We might increase our Rose Bowl odds based on that (or "schedule success" as Miller calls it), but doesn't the prize become less valuable as a result? Wouldn't we be no better than the SEC schools that play 4 cupcakes?

I can just picture the DVD of Cal's Rose Bowl season in 2019 if we went this route.
(announcer voice) The key moment of this season happened before a meeting between Cal's AD and the Pac-12.
(shot of Sandy walking through a corridor)

This doesn't mean you necessarily choose to schedule USC/UCLA every year, just that you take "expected program strength" out of the equation. We have another compelling reason to schedule them: tradition and LA recruiting exposure. Therefore, we should demand our annual games with them remain.

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I am concerned by the slow slide toward "win the championship at any cost" and away from maintaining "traditional rivalries" that I have seen on this board over the past few years.

Thanks for your post 510bear.

I have been watching Cal FB since 1959, the fun of long time traditional rivalries is a very big part of the enjoyment I get out of watching Cal FB.

But your post does not just rely on this sentimentality.

1. You correctly point out that Cal has beaten USC regularly in the past. There was a time when Cal had lost more regularly to ucla than to USC. Now for the past 10 years that has changed. But it could change again with changing coaches on either team. So why should we seek to avoid USC.

2. You also correctly point the BIG plus of playing in LA every year -- recruiting in SoCal. By playing every year Cal keeps itself in each recruit's mind in choosing which school to attend. There would be two games every year that would get big play in the SoCal papers and media.

3. Then there is the "respect" thing. Playing USC (and in at least part of the national media, ucla) adds to Cal's strength of schedule. Beating USC (and to a lesser extent ucla) gives Cal a major plus in the eyes of the national media. It would give Cal greater legitimacy to earn a spot in a BCS game. Look at what beating USC did to stanfurd's reputation.

4. Then there is the attendance aspect the LA games will bring in much needed revenue to Cal more than any possible replacement. Heck that game and stanfurd were the only really popular games some seasons in Cal's Dark Ages.

5. Finally there is the student interest aspect. So many Cal students are from SoCal. California is a single market economically and psychologically. IMO eliminating the LA Game in Berkeley or the Cal game in LA would weaken the connections between the two parts of the state. The heated rivalry between Cal USC stanfurd and ucla are tied to the fact that we play each other every year. If we were to miss a game with UW, UO, WSU, OSU, UU, Colo, ASU or UA
I doubt that most Cal students (or other people in the Bay Area) would even notice. Not so with a game vs USC, ucla or Stanfurd.

Cal should play the best local talent.....why give up such an opportunity to some eastern football factory and/or replacing such contest with san jose state?