If this report is correct — and the sourcing sounds solid — we may soon be looking at a Pac-16 instead of a Pac-10:
According to “multiple sources close to the situation,” the Pac-10 plans to offer conference membership to six Big 12 teams at its conference meeting in San Francisco, forming a 16-team behemoth that spans the entire Western half of the country and encompasses seven of the nation’s top 20 television markets.
Those six teams: Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado.
The vastly restructured league will reportedly feature two eight-team divisions with an East-West divide: The newcomers would join Arizona and Arizona State in the “Inland” division, with the original “Pac-8” schools – California, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, Southern Cal, UCLA, Washington and Washington State – hold in the “Pacific” division.
Obviously, new commissioner Larry Scott is not playing around. A 16-team conference, as noted elsewhere in the hype over a massively inflated Big Ten, isn’t a single conference (at least not as it’s traditionally existed in college football) as much as it is two conferences with scheduling and revenue-sharing agreements. Even if the new “Pac-16” retained its current nine-game conference season, a seven-game divisional schedule in football means teams in opposite divisions would only see each other a couple times per decade.
Specifically, a “Pacific” division team like USC would play an “Inland” division team like, oh, just for example, Colorado, once every four years. So, for instance, the Trojans and Buffaloes would play each other in L.A. in 2012, Boulder in 2016, L.A. in 2020, Boulder in 2024, etc., etc.*
For me personally, this isn’t as exciting as a “Pac-12” that adds Colorado and somebody else, which would potentially bring USC to Boulder every 3 or 4 years. But I suppose, in the final analysis, this isn’t really about me. 🙂
On another note: “Inland” division? Really? That’s the best you could come up with? Not “Heartland” division or “Continental” division, or something more lyrical than “Inland”? Why not just call it the “Flyover” division and be done with it? Jeez.
*Of course, if they’re both division champions in the same year, they’d play in the conference title game. But that would presumably be held at a neutral site… like… hey wait a minute, how about Denver’s Invesco Field?!? It’s big and modern and NFL-y and kinda sorta centrally located! Then, assuming the Trojans continue to be one of the Pacific division’s top teams, I could see them in action way more often. MAKE THIS HAPPEN, LARRY SCOTT!!
P.S. If this happens: Nebraska, Missouri and perhaps Iowa State go to the Big Ten. Baylor goes to… the Mountain West? And then: whither Kansas and Kansas State?
I think this is simply be the Pac-10 wish list.and I would love to see it..but doubt it will happen. If the Big-12 is going belly-up then I would think Texas (and A&M too) would be able to go anywhere they want…and wouldn’t the Big 10 be a better place. As I understand it the Big-10 has lots more money to throw around than the Pac-10 and Texas with its following, its academic standards and its money should be in the driver’s seat to pick where to go. The fit with the Big-10 (as presumably expanded to 14-16 teams) would simply be easier for Texas and I would think mean lots more money too.
oh…and of course in addition to the Pac-10 meetings starting tomorrow….the NCAA penalties (or lack thereof) for USC are supposedly being released tomorrow too.
I really do wonder how this effects college basketball. After all, basketball is the reason the Big East will not survive the creation of the SUPER CONFERENCE!
The Big Ten is better academically but not by much. The Big Ten has so far expressed no interest In Texas and even if it does Texas might feel like opts a better fit with the Pac 10 East than a Big Sixteen South.
As a Big 12 and Iowa State person, what I want to say here, well, if I did commit to writing it would be a good thing the FCC doesn’t regulate the Internet.
Kansas, K-State, Baylor, and Iowa State are ****ed, no matter how you draw it, if this happens and the Big Televen steals Nebraska and Missouri. (Iowa State and Baylor get about the same amount of “You smell funny,” to borrow Brendan’s comment from the last thread. But I’m commenting in this one because it’s more recent.)
1. The Big Ten DOES NOT WANT Iowa State. Neither, for that matter, do Big Ten schools’ fans, alumni, and donors.
a) Iowa State already plays second fiddle in a B10 media market (Central Iowa) and third fiddle in the two markets on either side.
b) The B10 fancies itself as being associated with the “flagship” universities of their states, although there are exceptions (e.g. Michigan State). Outside Iowa, and even inside Iowa, no matter what the Board of Regents says, guess who gets associated with that designation? Not Ames.
c) ISU’s football stadium capacity is below that of all B10 schools, although basketball is comparable.
d) ISU is a member of the Association of American Universities, which is a “requirement” for B10 membership. But it doesn’t have a law school, although I don’t know if that’s a requirement.
e) That one “64 teams in 4 superconferences” article actually kicked Iowa State to the MAC based on revenue. Most Hawkeyes think it belongs there anyway.
2. Texas and A&M are joined at the hip. One won’t go anywhere without the other.
a) Baylor got in the Big 12 instead of TCU because alumni were in the right political positions in the mid-’90s. See Mandel’s “Bowls, Polls, and Tattered Souls.”
b) Oklahoma and Okie State probably aren’t going to go anywhere separately either. At one point they weren’t in the same league, literally or metaphorically, but that’s not the case anymore.
3. Why the **** isn’t the Big 12’s commissioner saying STAY AWAY FROM US!?!?!
a) Probably because Missouri, despite more than a century of association with ISU, Nebraska, Kansas, and K-State, is playing a role somewhere between Joe Lieberman and Benedict Arnold. The Insight Bowl passing over 8-4 Missouri for a 6-6 Iowa State team that Missouri beat really seems to be sticking in their craw, and they’re looking for more respect even if that means going to the British, er, Big Ten. And by respect, I also mean money, which leads me to…
b) The Big 12’s TV contracts are admittedly crap. No one who matters seems to care about the 15% of households with antenna TV only, and the Big Ten Network found it better to put 11 AM games there and let the local affiliates drown in infomercials.
4. We’ve seen a 16-team conference fall apart already when the Mountain West seceded from the WAC. On the other hand, that had its own unique factors (Hawaii, anyone?).
5. Having said all that, I still have no idea where the four schools mentioned at the beginning of the second paragraph would go. That is unsettling in itself. I would not be surprised (or necessarily opposed) if political officials got involved.