1881

South Carolina put together a nice recruiting class. Depending on where you look, Clemson’s class is ranked higher, but USC picked up more of the top players in state when compared to Clemson.

On the local front, UNLV’s recruiting class looks really good. They signed eight local players so the new HC is serious about keeping trying to keep local talent. They also added lots of players with size.

1882

You can’t trust Rivals’ rankings. They were good once, back before Yahoo! bought 'em. But they haven’t been good for a while. ESPN’s probably the new king of recruiting.

1883

Yeah, ESPN is pretty good these days (a LOT better than they used to be) except in those cases where, uh, one of their analyst’s kids is the recruit…

1884

Hahahahahha! Yeah. Odd that. :)

I actually subscribed to UT’s Rivals site for the longest time. Gerry Hamilton worked there for a long while, and was probably one of the hardest-working guys I’ve ever seen, constantly driving off to go watch HS kids play and writing up stories on 'em. Other Rivals sites would use his photos and information to print it up, he was so good. He eventually got an offer to take charge of Scout’s UT site; then that folded, and one guy went to Inside Texas, and Gerry is now covering recruiting for the entire Southwest region for ESPN.

It’s no coincidence that sometime around that point, ESPN’s Southwest recruiting coverage got MUCH better, and UT’s Rivals site’s coverage started to drop. The latter has basically become a festering cesspool of innuendo, and frequently gets scooped by ESPN, Inside Texas and the Austin American-Statesman. They’ve got some good guys covering basketball and baseball, and they managed to snag Chip Brown from the Dallas Morning News, but the recruiting coverage is shit. Worse, the owner is a complete douchebag about it; rather than seeing opportunities to improve, he just throws insults at former employees and anyone who dares to criticize him.

1885

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlDC/magazines/times_cover_revealed_robert_gates__151025.asp?c=rss

1886

Mack Brown nods his head knowingly and begins to clap his hands rapidly

1887

Hahahahahahaha!!!

Yeah, Mack’s a clapper, all right. :)

1888

So how about if Pac 10 gets 12 teams and a championship game? Get Big Ten to do the same and at least it will give some more consistency to the process among the big conferences.

1889

The Big 10 really needs a championship game. The end of the season goes out with a wimper, and then there is over a month and a half before the BCS bowls.

1890

If nothing else, if the Pac 10 decides to add, say, Utah, it might resolve certain issues that are troubling the BCS.

1891

That would make sense on a number of levels. I would love for them to impose a playoff but my guess is there will just be a bunch of dealmaking.

1892

Pac-10 expansion is going to be a nightmare, and I don’t think it happens.

The kicker is that all you need is a single school to vote no, and it’s not going to happen.

Right off the bat, there’s a problem. The entire reason to expand the conference is to have a conference championship game in football so it can get televised. But expanding the conference also means that the television contract revenue gets split 12 ways instead of 10, which means any newcomers would have to be worth it (ie, expand the television audience) significantly enough. That, right there, cuts off a ton of schools in the mountain time zone, because their populations are so small it’s a net loss.

The conference is also going to be big on academics/research. Every school in the Pac is a research institution in addition to academics. Cal/Stanford/UCLA/USC/and UW are either public ivies or very highly ranked private schools. They will have big issues with letting in, say, a Boise State. So any candidate would have to have both serious academic and research credentials.

BYU is a no-go. Stirke One: Not a significant research institution. Strike Two: The big problem is that they won’t play sports on Sundays, and a lot of non-football sports (which the Pac-10 excels in and love) do. And the third strike is another biggie: the entire Mormon religious affiliation will rub the liberal (in both the classical and literal sense) schools the wrong way. Again, you just need one Pac-10 school saying no, and it’s not going to happen.

When you get down to it, there are only two or three schools that would barely make the cut, and the problem with those schools is that they’re not natural rivals on one another. Each Pac-10 school has its natural pair (UW/WSU, OU/OSU, Cal/Stanford, UCLA/USC, UA/ASU), and that’s going to rub traditionalists the wrong way.

Finally, assuming you do find two schools, how you divide the conference is going to provoke a knife fight. Anyone who suggests a typical North/South split are idiots who don’t understand the West Coast. UW/Oregon/Oregon State/Washington State will vote no because that kind of split would cripple their presence and recruiting in Southern California, which has a larger population than Washington, Oregon, and Arizona. In other words: that’s where all the best talent is. Washington’s big recruiting class that was signed last week had 16 kids from California, most from SoCal. A North/South split would relegate the Pac-10 North into Big-12 North status, crippled from the main sources of talent and otherwise irrelevant.

That means an unorthodox split, which would be controversial. And everybody would be jockeying NOT to be in USC’s division. And, again, one school says no and it’s not happening, period.

The Pac-10 almost let Texas in, after the SEC formed up and sent Texas’ old conference into the dustbin. And Texas fits. Public ivy/massive research/huge TV audience. Stanford vetoed it and it was dead. So now you know why Pac-10 expansion is going to be a nightmare.

1893

Loved the analysis. I hope it works out anyway. :)

One nitpick, Nebraska is a premiere program and will be back, even without the benefit of heavily recruiting Texas. I think a Pac-10 North could survive just fine considering the cycles in CFB.

1894

Doesn’t matter. Washington and Oregon are pretty much on the record that they would vote no to a North, and you just need a single school saying nyet. WSU and OSU would vote no, as well, because they understand what that means, too. All the Northern schools in one division will never happen.

1895

Fair enough. I was just using your example. Money talks. If enough money is involved, they’ll figure out something.

1896

If money were the it factor, Texas would have been brought into the fold in the 90s. Seriously: USC and Texas going at it every year would be blockbuster ratings. But Stanford killed that.

There’s a certain amount of pride that everyone in the Pac plays each other in football season. That every school has its natural rival. The Pac-10 prides itself on its overall excellence, both athletically and academically. There are probably more Nobel Prizes in Pac-10 schools than any other conference. The Stanfords and Cals really really don’t like the thought of diluting the conference just for the sake of football.

The only candidate I could see being “worthy”/“palatable” enough would be Colorado, (excellent school, research, and Colorado is a good TV market) but the problem there is you’d have to convince Colorado to leave the Big 12, and you also have to find its pair. CSU is not going to happen. Utah would be a possible (barely), but then Colorado and Utah aren’t traditional rivals.

1897

From the article:

“To me, the logic if the Pac-10 is going to think about expanding, now is our window,” Scott said. “The reason being if you’re going to consider a reconstruction of the conference, there’s a value proposition associated with that. Given that we’re about to have negotiations regarding our media rights, it makes sense that if you’re going to do it, to do it when you can monetize it and get value from it commercially.”

Looks like the Pac-10 commish has money on his mind.

1898

Is there some sort of requirement to have 12 teams in order to do a playoff?

1899

He’s not the one who says it happens. The presidents of the universities do.

1900

Yes, if by “playoff” you mean a conference championship game.