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College Football News, Rumor & Humor
- Thread starter Darth Snow
- Start date
Agreed. Ideally we see a leadership change and the incoming administration understands the importance of competing with the other conferences on a national level. I also would like to see some actual PAC 12 marketing take place. When you look at the locations and academic prestige of more than half the league, you have a lot to sell and there hasn't been a huge push in that department.
I think the long term outlook it still decent but we are getting really close to that new tv deal being signed without seeing the conference put things together to maximize that leverage. The best program continues to employ clay Helton (thank god for us), ucla basically refuses to recruit with the big boys despite their built in advantages, Washington is going through a reset, Stanford has taken a step back from the early days of the pac 12 (although this might be a good thing for the conference as a whole) and ASU continues to be a mediocre program.
another thing that is disappointing is this conference continues to put out a ton of talent in the nba draft but doesn’t perform well in the NCAA tournament.
just need leadership to figure out what is really hampering the league and fix things but that isn’t going to happen until Scott is gone and by then it might be too late.
Take a look around at the elite programs in the country and tell me locations and academic prestige matter to blue chip recruits.
They don’t. But they matter to alumni who send checks. The move to the PAC 12 has done little for the success of the football program, but it has done wonders for alumni relations. If we truly feel that the athletic department is an extension of the school and a marketing tool, (which is what we all whine about every time we want to fire a coach), then we need to acknowledge the benefits the PAC 12 membership has provided the school itself.
Maybe not to some, and I don't see a whole sale change or immediate shift in power. What I'm suggesting is that the Pac could do a much better job marketing the fact that they have some of the best schools, in the best locations, to play Power 5 football. Market yourself to the kids who would normally jump on a B1G or Big 12 offer as a "cooler" alternative.
It should be easy to give a kid second thoughts about going to Michigan over USC. Or going to UT instead of Stanford. Spend 4 years in Lincoln and get a bad education at Nebraska, or get the opportunity to come to Westwood or Boulder?
Again, I'm not suggesting that we will overtake the SEC or B1G with this strategy, but I would like to see a push to at least help get us close to the same level.
If playing in LA or the Bay Area every other year is the only reason alumni are "sending checks", that's part of the bigger problem. I'd like to think winning is what inspires donations.
It may very well be a part of a bigger problem, but you don’t disassociate with the conference that facilitates those connections just because you have problems elsewhere.
I agree it's better than doing nothing
What about those connections are meaningful for CU? The alumni base has always been from the West coast, yet the only sustained success for CU football was when they weren't associated with a conference that facilitated those connections. While the alumni connections from moving to the Pac 12 have been good, they certainly haven't added enough value to make a meaningful difference in the competitive nature of the program.
If there were some big money donors in CA who were providing CU with the resources to put together more than a budget staff and recruiting infrastructure, then by all means, do everything you can not to disassociate with them. That's not happening, though.
You are continuing to look at this from a football perspective. My point is that the association with the PAC 12 provides benefits that go beyond the football field. Those benefits are more difficult to quantify, but are real and shouldn’t be disregarded.
What other perspective would you look at this from when talking about the success/failure of the athletic department?
I'm not sure if this is a salient counter to your point here, but I'd suggest that in this moment we have a more competitive football team than The University of Texas, The University of Michigan and The University of Tennessee.
I'm not going to argue against the season that CU football is having, but I'd counter that by suggesting that at this moment, Northwestern, Indiana, and Iowa State are all more nationally relevant/competitive than an undefeated CU team.
That's not even close. No one is talking about CU as anything more than a nice story. Indiana is the national darling, iowa state is the feel good story of the year since it's in the B12 championship game (I think Oklahoma is gonna wax um), and Northwestern has produced too many writers to be ignored whenever it is halfway decent.
I would say Florida is definitely in and ND is probably in unless they lose by a good margin. If Clemson beats them by more than a couple touchdowns I could see that as the way to get tOSU in.
The point in my response to Ken was that blue blood programs like Michigan, Texas and Tennessee are certainly not having seasons that are up to their traditional standards, but their competitive outlook on a national level going forward is certainly more optimistic than CU's, and programs that are more on CU's level in those better conferences are having pretty good seasons and are viewed as far more than a "nice story", which is no coincidence.
Fair point.
As I pointed out before, there is a cycle to this. 1995 wasn't that long ago (an eternity for current recruits, of course, but not so long in the modern football landscape).
That year the Big 8 placed four teams in the final AP Top 10 poll. All four of those teams became part of what was to be the Big 12 North the following season. It wasn't long after that the Big 12 North was a bit of a national joke as a football division. There is a cycle.
There have been several times in the past 20 years, that I'd argue the Pac was the dominant football conference of the season. I'm not suggesting that is the current situation.
Also, I acknowledge that ESPN's affiliation with the SEC Network allows for unusual control of the narrative, and that is having an unprecedented impact on the overall landscape.
There is a cycle.
The cool West Coast vibe has served the PAC in the past, and it will again. The footprint covers some important recruiting territory, and there are some storied programs in the conference and there are some nouveau riche splashy programs too.
There is a cycle. I feel that Colorado's culture fits most with the PAC, and while it's justified to be critical of the leadership that has impacted our current situation, this sorts itself out. Patience.
There is a cycle.
Responsibly handling the pandemic is not the same as inept handling. I happen to think that the PAC12 did it right.No doubt the culture fit is better in the PAC-12 but to continue down the road with them is football suicide.
In Pac-12 Football: Empty Seats, TV Woes and Recruiting Gaps (Published 2019)
The chasm is growing between the Pacific-12 Conference and its Power Five counterparts. And its rescue hopes are pinned on a new TV deal in 2024.www.google.com
There is simply no way to compete for talent (coaching and players) when we have to make up a $25 million deficit every single year. Don’t be surprised to see schools cozy up to HCKD in the future.
if the Big -12 will take us back, their deal gets closer. If the BIG takes us, all the better.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cb...etwork-with-football-title-games-on-espn/amp/
Sadly, the inept handling of the pandemic response has left the PAC-12 on even weaker footing. We need to get out ASAP
For some weird reason, I keep hearing a voice in my head saying over and over again, “there is a cycle.”
Don't be an idot.
I can agree with that from a moral perspective, but nobody is really sitting here anymore slamming the SEC, ACC and Big 12 for their handling of it, even the BIG, who handled it the same way the Pac 12 did, ended up starting two weeks earlier, which has allowed their middling programs the opportunity to be nationally relevant. In the context of big money college athletics, they did it wrong and the Pac 12 is once again irrelevant.
There is a cycle.
It seems like maybe Uncle Ken's significant other is cranky . . . there is a cycle.
Truly hope you're right. I just think we are getting closer and closer to a point of no return with the wealth gap between the Pac 12 and everyone else, which leads to recruits leaving the footprint, coaches being poached, etc. Of course, this is all based on the current system of P5 conferences remaining separate, not sharing revenue, having schedule imbalances, etc. Everything could certainly change with another round of realignment or the formation of a league, separate from NCAA.
Football fans don't get to make decisions about conferences and other things. University administrators do. You think CU's powers don't remember being in the same conference as Oklahoma State, who matriculated illiterate students as long as they could play football? It matters to them that they can claim to be the academic peer of Stanford, Cal, UCLA, Washington, etc.
This is correct.
These things with conferences run in cycles. It wasn't too many years back that the talk was that the Big 10 was obsolete and on the way out. A bunch of schools in states with declining populations and economies that couldn't recruit talent from warm weather states because of lousy climate. A list of the faster declining TV viewing markets included most of the Big 10 and the joke was how badly their teams were getting beaten in bowls against the SEC and the PAC.
In the long run nobody is going to compete even up with the SEC. The culture of the market and the schools is simply different than the rest of the country.
CU like the other PAC schools doesn't dominate the sports marketplace in the state and the region like SEC schools do. CU and the other PAC schools as well are not willing to sell their souls to a football culture in order to win like the SEC schools do.
The ACC has some schools that function in SEC manner, some others who don't, hence the conference with the largest gap between the top and bottom of the conference.
I know Sacky and some others don't like this idea but the college football is in an era of change and restructuring.
The PAC does dominate the geographic western 1/3 of the nation including many of the fastest growing and highest income metropolitan areas in the nation.
Where are the fastest growing markets not already in the PAC region of dominance? Mostly in Texas.
The B12 as it sits is not viable for the long term. UT and OU are powers both on the field and more importantly in terms of TV viewership. Okie Lite, and TTU have some strength and financial support. The rest are lower tier programs. Baylor only got included in the B12 because of politics, KU is a quality school and a top BB program but football is what drives finances and KU football has never been viable. Iowa State, KjSU, and the other Texas schools are only P5 now because of history and good fortune.
Eventually a financially viable PAC 12 will include UT, OU, Okie Lite and one other, most likely TTU. UT will have options but the Texans like the idea of being associated with a conference with the academic standing of the PAC. OU has put huge amounts of money into increasing their academic standing as well. The Longhorn Network is an obstacle but is also a financial failure and an early end could be negotiated to the benefit of ESPN and UT. The rest of the B12 will go into it's slide into G5 status.
We would all love to see CU at the top of the college football world but do we have the finances to go there? Not likely. We have a smallish stadium that we don't sell out, our donations are at best middle of the PAC, and our administration is not going to make the academic and other compromises needed to put us on a footing with the SEC mentality.
Some have talked about going to the B1G but are we willing and able to compete with tOSU, PSU, etc. to do what it takes to win. How did that work out for Nebraska and they spend the money and make the compromises.
Our fit is the PAC, our future though is in a different looking PAC.