Whenever a decision like expanding the PAC is made purely for profit motive, somebody is gonna suffer. That's basic economics. The expansion of the PAC was purely a financial decision - adding CO and Utah did not in any way benefit the Pac 10 schools (I mean, who wants to travel to Salt Lake City or Boulder for a game?). The argument for additional markets is a red herring (Utah and Colorado are not great additions to our TV market or recruiting). The move simply allowed for a championship game and the ensuing revenue. It just so happens that Cal and Stanford pulled the losing straws.

Dbearson;842557380 said:

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complaining about scheduling is the same as complaining about the heat or weather or whatever for a game.

Only affects bad teams.

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Agree.
Who knows which teams will be up when we play them. And which teams will be down. When someone can tell me that. Then I will tell them whether playing all California teams is good or bad.

68great;842557480 said:

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Right you are. When the PAC12 was created Utah, Colorado, ASU, UA, WSU, UW, UO and OSU [U]all complained [/U]that Cal and Stanfurd had an unfair advantage playing both SoCal schools each year since it guaranteed a game in SoCal each year for both Cal and Stanfurd. But Cal Stanfurd USC and UCLA said "no deal" to the PAC12 without an annual rivalry game with each of the California schools.

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Why did Utah and Colorado get what they wanted? Was our conference's position really that weak? Utah wasn't in a BCS conference and didn't to my recall have other suitors, and Colorado was way down at the time and was obviously expendable to the Big-12.

Don'tDance;842557613 said:

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Why did Utah and Colorado get what they wanted? Was our conference's position really that weak? Utah wasn't in a BCS conference and didn't to my recall have other suitors, and Colorado was way down at the time and was obviously expendable to the Big-12.

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The geographic nonsense of Cal and Stanford being "north" of Utah and Colorado is really head shaking for a conference the supposedly prides itself on academics.

beelzebear;842557556 said:

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This is basically the argument against. Cal, by choice, plays three of the more difficult schools yearly. When tradition starts to hurt you, re-evaluate.

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I disagree - completely. When tradition starts to hurt you - get better. Would you have us skip Furd? Or only play $C if they $uck?

NewYorkCityBear;842557600 said:

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Whenever a decision like expanding the PAC is made purely for profit motive, somebody is gonna suffer. That's basic economics. The expansion of the PAC was purely a financial decision - adding CO and Utah did not in any way benefit the Pac 10 schools (I mean, who wants to travel to Salt Lake City or Boulder for a game?). The argument for additional markets is a red herring (Utah and Colorado are not great additions to our TV market or recruiting). The move simply allowed for a championship game and the ensuing revenue. It just so happens that Cal and Stanford pulled the losing straws.

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And, actually, about the same argument was made when the AZ schools were added to the Pac-8. Who would go to Arizona? No big market there.

rathokan;842557382 said:

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how about we become a badass program, so those other schools start complaining about having to play CAL every year?

It's also a great opportunity to play a tough schedule. If Cal were to ever with the P12 championship, it would have a fantastic resume.

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Sure ... recruit thugs/punks like Victor? or Skov?
We're Cal, not $c or uDuh or furd.

OldenBear;842557677 said:

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And, actually, about the same argument was made when the AZ schools were added to the Pac-8. Who would go to Arizona? No big market there.

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At least when those schools were added it did not preclude a balanced schedule, but it clearly benefited UA and ASU more than the existing 8 PAC schools.

this topic only resurfaces when we're doing poorly with respect to the other California schools

Don'tDance;842557613 said:

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Why did Utah and Colorado get what they wanted? Was our conference's position really that weak? Utah wasn't in a BCS conference and didn't to my recall have other suitors, and Colorado was way down at the time and was obviously expendable to the Big-12.

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It wasn't that Utah and Colorado got what they wanted. It was that every team outside of California demanded 2 California schools in their division

Fyght4Cal;842557437 said:

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I warned about this the moment the P12 divisions were announced. The conference rewarded our stubborn insistence about playing all the California schools annually by putting us in the North, ensuring that we had the toughest confab schedule each year.

That being said, as a southern Californian, I'm not ready to give up the L.A.game yet. It's important for recruiting and alumni purposes. Of course, giving up The Big Game is out of the question.

Conference realignment presents the best chance for a fix. Putting the California schools in the same division will solve our problem.

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We wouldn't be giving up on the LA schools. We would merely play one or the other each year, home and home, instead of both each year. The point of my post was to say it would not affect recruiting. Cal is well known in SoCal and playing one of the LA schools each year regardless of whether it was in Berkeley or L.A. would make no difference in recruiting. Oregon and Washington have no trouble convincing kids from Santa Barbara to Chula Vista from enrolling in those schools and neither would Cal. In fact, we would have less difficulty.

Dropping the game would hurt revenue. The CA opponent games are the only consistent sellouts (or close to sellouts) that we have. Other schools when they're strong but we get big crowds even when the CA opponent is bad. Imagine the season ticket package for odd years if we lose USC from it.

It would also likely cost us some TV coverage by losing games against the most marketable opponents. Not sure how revenue sharing works for the tv deal and if that hurts revenue. Presumably having games on a channel people know of (ie not P12 Net) helps recruiting.

rathokan;842557382 said:

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how about we become a badass program, so those other schools start complaining about having to play CAL every year?

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yes indeed.

beelzebear;842557370 said:

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As you guys know, Cal faces both Utah and UCLA on the road after both teams have bye-weeks, while Cal gets half of a bye-week with a Thursday game. Meanwhile it's been pointed out by Wilner (LINK) that Furd has one hell of an easy schedule with their only road games left being WSU and Colo. And UCLA plays 2 games in 27-days because of scheduling.

I understand a lot of the difficulty of schedule can't be predicted due to rankings/how good or bad a team is during a season. That said, would killing the "California-schools-must-play-all-California" rule lightened the load for Cal and all the odd scheduling, and even allow for some flexibility on scheduling the Big Game? I'm all for tradition but it seems by demanding it, Cal gets shorted a bit. I'd also guess that killing the rule would avoid this stuff for UCLA and Furd. Or is it more complex than this rule?

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Playing USC and UCLA every year was stupid from the get go. It should never of happened and it needs to be scrapped immediately. No matter how good your team is, if you play more good teams you lose more. Simple. If you want Rose Bowls and National Championships let's rework the schedule and model ourselves after the SEC which build an empire on playing crappy competition combined with good PR.

Would it not be possible to have our cake and eat it too? Couldn't we have a "normal" Pac-12 schedule like all the other schools, a schedule that would from time to time skip one of the LA schools, and simply add that skipped school as an OOC game in those years? I thought we played Colorado a couple years ago in that form. We played them, but the game did not count in the conference standings.

This is exactly what's wrong with modern college football. Cal has been playing USC for 100 years (USC's oldest rivalry BTW) and UCLA for 80 years. I live in LA and these are always popular games among the locals, no matter where they're played and no matter how bad we are. But, because some people now care more about some stupid manufactured championship, the idea to throw away generations of tradition is floated. For those who want to "win" (rivalry, pageantry, and tradition be damned), there's already a league out there for that: the NFL. What good is a Rose Bowl berth if you don't beat your rivals to get there?

stivo;842557815 said:

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Playing USC and UCLA every year was stupid from the get go. It should never of happened and it needs to be scrapped immediately. No matter how good your team is, if you play more good teams you lose more. Simple. If you want Rose Bowls and National Championships let's rework the schedule and model ourselves after the SEC which build an empire on playing crappy competition combined with good PR.

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I disagree. If we have the type of team that can compete for Rose Bowls and National Championships, we shouldn't be afraid of playing teams like UCLA and USC. Instead, UCLA and USC should be complaining. Until we get that good, what are we complaining about? Going to the Holiday Bowl instead of the Alamo Bowl? I would rather play UCLA and USC and get more exposure to the Southern Cal recruits and maintain the tradition than avoid one of the better teams in our conference so that we can step up to Alamo Bowl.

The situation is based on competition. When we were at Haas, we wanted our competitors to fold regardless of the hand that we were holding. If the sample is depleted, we should prevail regardless of the third-party interpretations.

sketchy9;842557846 said:

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This is exactly what's wrong with modern college football. Cal has been playing USC for 100 years (USC's oldest rivalry BTW) and UCLA for 80 years. But, because some people now care more about some stupid manufactured championship, the idea to throw away generations of tradition is floated. For those who want to "win" (rivalry, pageantry, and tradition be damned), there's already a league out there for that: the NFL. What good is a Rose Bowl berth if you don't beat your rivals to get there?

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These are my thoughts exactly. What is college football without its traditions? If you want to ignore traditions, the NFL is just for that kind of fan.

sketchy9;842557846 said:

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This is exactly what's wrong with modern college football. Cal has been playing USC for 100 years (USC's oldest rivalry BTW) and UCLA for 80 years. I live in LA and these are always popular games among the locals, no matter where they're played and no matter how bad we are. But, because some people now care more about some stupid manufactured championship, the idea to throw away generations of tradition is floated. For those who want to "win" (rivalry, pageantry, and tradition be damned), there's already a league out there for that: the NFL. What good is a Rose Bowl berth if you don't beat your rivals to get there?

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Thank you Sketchy I totally agree.

If we were to get away from the playing of Cali schools we might as well just add the 4 Big12 teams and go to pods.

/commence conference realignment thread
/grabs popcorn.

It's unfortunate that the football landscape has changed, but if we want a better shot at championships, then we should use the same scheduling as the rest of the Pac. I'm for dropping either the Ucla or SC game on a rotating basis.

I feel most responses are a bit shortsighted here. College football is cyclical. USC may seem like an eternal juggernaut, but there was a time (when Paul Hackett was coach) when it looked like USC was on a decline. UCLA under Karl Dorrell and Rick Neuheisel was the same. Stanford under Teevans. In ten years, UCLA, Stanford, and USC might be the weakest teams in the Pac-12. It may not be likely, but it's possible, and I think to change something that would most certainly be permanent in exchange for short term gain can backfire easily.