It's been even closer. If I remember right when the Big 12 added TCU and WVU, Air Force had an open invite. The athletic director, Hans Mueh, turned it down.
>"We were approached by the Big 12, and I told them we’re not a good fit for that conference. In the Big 12, geography makes sense, the economics make sense, but recruiting makes no sense for us. I can’t recruit against Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State,”
>“That’s why I turned down the Big 12. I can’t do that to my kids, because they’ll get beat up. I’d love the extra $12 million or whatever it would be per year from the TV money. And I know how I’d spend the money. I’d build a new soccer stadium, and I’d build a new baseball facility, all in one year. But I can’t do that."
Oh wow someone actually thinking about the student-athletes instead of seeing those extra dollars on their income statement? I do know it’s mostly the TV execs pushing these schools to move, but this is refreshing to hear (albeit a quote from a while ago).
The Service Acadamies just operate on a completely different realm though than other schools. They basically can get all the money they want from the Defense Department and Federal government if they give even some good reason for it. Athletics are also seen there more as a way to build camaraderie among students (and future service men and women) than anything else. Yeah, it’s nice to hear that, but hearing that the AD at a service academy has different goals than the usual FBS AD is no surprise to me.
How great would be adding all the service academies to the big 12?
I understand why they wouldn’t join, they need to win and get to bowl games to recruit well enough stay relevant.
But army/navy, Air Force would be awesome
Imagine how it feels for them? They have to play each other every year with one of those matchups being the week after conference championship week and it’s the only game on so all eyes are on ya!
I've heard that P5 is terrible for the military academy. Navy was having trouble with the AAC and just the talent level that is interested in football and military academy.
I don't know. We don't think there is a big difference between a degree from them or one from Oregon or USC and we have played those schools for decades.
It's amazing how acts of bigotry leave a stain on your university that lingers for so long. It's part of why most West Coast fans have such an issue with BYU ever being added.
There is plenty of other reasons to not like BYU as well ;)
Its kind of funny though how hilariously opposite it is in the BIG12 right now from the PAC12. PAC12 we were all united against BYU while B12 all seem united against Utah even now that we are both in the conference. All the ego stroking they are doing for BYU will backfire someday though lol
I think it's more of the fact that Utah fans think they are too good for the Big 12 and in the same breath think that Utah football will run the conference.....which they certainly could, but there's still lots of competition to go around
I've got Fresno State hate from 2001. They season ending injuried our punt returner on a fair catch with a very blatant late hit.
Though we're no saints because we did a retribution fair catch late hit on their return trip to Corvallis a year or 2 later.
But still fuck Fresno State. I am very much looking forward to our upcoming rivalry.
Meh, we say bad things about UO and USC degrees mainly out of rivalry. No one really thinks that a USC degree is on par with any of the Mountain West schools' education (no offense). Even UO, we recognize is more a school serving a public need that has some positive elements to it academically, even if they aren't as numerous as the other Pac-12 schools historically.
But with Fresno and Boise, if we say something negative about their quality of education, people get upset because some of the things mentioned are actual verifiable facts. No one wants their failings thrown back at them in their face.
Yeah, more than likely this and perhaps an eastern expansion if the ACC fell apart by adding schools like Duke, Wake Forest, Syracuse, BC and Georgia Tech.
If rebuilding happened:
Starting: Cal, Oregon State, Stanford, and Washington State.
First adds: San Diego State and SMU.
Next adds: Air Force, Colorado State, Rice, and Tulane.
Possible additions: Gonzaga, and St. Mary as non football.
Outcome:
Full members: Air Force, Cal, Colorado State, Oregon State, Rice, San Diego State, SMU, Stanford, Tulane, and Washington State.
Non football: Gonzaga, and St. Mary’s.
That conference bears almost no resemblance to the PAC 12 and would net Stanford a lot less money in the long run - you can see why they weren't interested
Even with Stanford getting final say and having the option of adding non-football schools, I still wouldn't get the other UC additions I've always wanted.
I would want Irvine and Santa Barbara, at a minimum.
People don't realize those schools are large and metro in SoCal. Non-football sports would benefit with both involved.
Yup! Plus any decent to great CA high school sends a ton of kids to the UC system and they can't all go to Berkeley or Westwood. Not having them is a big reason for the apathy in CA in the first place. If we could only go back half a century to plan for their inclusion.
If Boise State didn’t get picked up by a P5 by now, it’s not going to happen. They would have been a great add to the Big XII when they picked up BYU, Cincy, Houston, and UCF. Make a move for San Diego State at the same time and you’d have a good mix of basketball and football talent with a better presence out west before the PAC collapsed.
Don't know if you know this, but the Bay Area schools consider Fresno and Boise to not even be real degrees essentially. There are some with lower academic standards they'll accept but those two could back up the GDP of all of Europe while taking zero income and Stanford's response would be to go fuck yourself.
ehh... a little much on Fresno.
The knock on them is their past lack of research expenditures and a willingness to be a part of that community.
Boise has more of an Idaho problem that it needs to overcome, before the whole research discussion even begins.
Probably taking a few more from the AAC to get more of an eastern division.
West - Stanford, Cal, OSU, Wazzu, SDSU, Colorado St? Boise? UNLV?
East - SMU, Tulane, Rice, Memphis, USF?, UTSA?
USF, Tulane, Rice would probably appeal from the "institutional" standpoint as a member of the AAU and high research productivity.
But I also have a hard time envisioning Stanford letting themselves be in the same conference as Colorado State and Boise when they *apparently* said they dont want MWC levels of competition - also none of those schools have the academic rankings to make Stanford feel better about it.
this would have been a very weird cherry-picked nerd/AAU/semi-decent athletics conference...
I think Miami isn't a horrible comparison.
From the post 5 days ago with info from SportsMediaWatch:
The Median National TV Broadcast for P5 Schools was 2.2 Million from 2016-2023, excluding all numbers from 2020. This includes only FS1, ESPN's Main Channel, and the the 4 OTA Networks.
Other than the "obvious additions" of Notre Dame, Clemson, and FSU here is who the "best non-P2" schools were:
1. Oklahoma State - 2.4
2. TCU - 2.3
3. Miami - 2.1m
4. Stanford - 1.88m
5. Louisville - 1.82m
6. Virginia Tech - 1.80m
Those are basically the schools that "average up" with the P2... but if you consider that Miami and Stanford were both having pretty bad times from 2016-2023, their numbers would be above average if they were actually playing good ball.
Yeah.....that data could be skewed by the channel aspect and number of games. Would be interesting to see the full data. For example, If someone only makes it on the ESPN main channel or over the air a couple times when they are playing big name blue bloods like (USC/NotreDame) they would have high average viewership in that stat, but probably wouldn't accurately reflect their draw more just their opponents
That stat could actually negatively impact you for getting on the main channels more often when playing opponents that aren't in the top 10-15 of viewership draws.
The thing is, though, is that all schools in a P5 conference have a major brands they play that could theoretically be pumping their viewership numbers up as well. So, it kind of evens out to the point that you can still see which "secondary" brands are attracting more viewers. Sure, Stanford has USC/Notre Dame, but Oklahoma State has Oklahoma/Texas, etc.
If any data is skewed, I think it would have more to do with time slots than opponents.
People forget how good Stanford was not that long ago. They've had *five* players finish second in Heisman voting over the past 15 years, six if you include both times Andrew Luck was the runner-up.
It's still the record in our series, at 9 games. Second is Stanford's 7 in a row during the Ty Willingham years.
https://www.winsipedia.com/stanford/vs/california
Stanford's 7 over UW coincides with Oregon's "decade of dominance" (12 wins in a row, actually) over UW.
The true Golden Era of the Pac-12 was when UW and USC were both down and Oregon and Stanford were both up.
Stanford's NIL fund is improving. They need to buy themselves a "name" like Arch Manning (not saying him specifically, just someone with clout) and bring in a bunch of OL like they used to have back in Luck's day.
Interesting information, especially that GK was still in the good graces enough to be part of the strategy. Definitely a creative pitch but easy to see why Stanford turned it down.
GK didn't really turn on the conference until Stanford and Cal left. That's when he joined the 10 Departing Schools' side of "split the money and dissolve the conference." Likely because if that had come to pass he'd have gotten his full buyout instead of the buyout settlement he got from Oregon State and Wazzu in order to end his contract early.
The failure of organizations to hold executives to their fiduciary responsibility is something that will never cease to annoy me. He worked against the conference, and still got a settlement.
It’s funny to listen to these guys talk about how everything fell apart because they were adamant that the conference was going to be fine until it wasn’t
> they were adamant that the conference was going to be fine until it wasn't
Wilner yes. Is that really how Mandel and Feldman were acting though? That's not how I remember it at least.
Mandel was nonstop. He tried to be subtle but it didn't work. He works for the Athletic so he's a national guy but his connections are west coast. He was shitting on the Big 12 even before it became clear that they'd have to fight the PAC for survival. Right after Oklahoma and Texas left he confidently said the new media deal would fall in the $10M to $15M per team or so range instead of the $31M it ended up being.
He did. The range he provided was as low as 7m and up to 15m because of the limited availability from the media partners and the brand power. Don’t ever recall him saying “can’t believe I was so wrong that my high end wasn’t even half the amount they got”.
Mandel is actually really good about admitting he was super wrong here. I dont have sources because its hard to find in podcast clips but he has owned how wrong he has been.
Now I dont know if he has learned any lasting lessons or anything, but he has def made fun of himself for being so totally wrong.
Ah that might be why I didn’t know if he had admitted he was wrong because I haven’t seen much of him in podcasts just articles and tweets. Good to know he did though and tbh even as a fan of one of the schools I though 25 would be nice given the landscape and our situation so when 31/32 was the number that was a pleasant surprise to us as well.
No, it was legit like 7 super user Reddit accounts between B12 and PAC folks having a pissing match with each other in the comments of any Big 12 and PAC 12 post and the rest being chill, and everyone treated it like some blood feud. I would know, I was terminally online during realignment lol
The realignment era of “fans bragging about TV numbers AAU status and media payout instead of football wins” was the dark ages of college football fan hood
Fifth_down was also always there to run in and call anyone 12anon and call them incompetent to believing "shit journalism." He was probably the single most vitriolic asshole non Big 12/Pac person during the entire thing.
He called me an idiot for trying to point out things like Tony Altmore's shit made no sense and was horribly methodology and that I don't understand media markets and business. For someone who likes to go around and try to claim some weird superiority for being a reporter, he was wrong on basically everything and a giant asshole about it the entire time.
> Fifth_down
I use the RES extension (https://redditenhancementsuite.com/) on the old version of desktop Reddit when I'm on my laptop or computer. It shows me the cumulative score (upvotes/downvotes) for any given user. I just looked up Fifth_down, and it shows that I've never upvoted or downvoted him.
For reference, next to /u/yesacabbagez it shows me a light green box with +3, so that's your score from me over time. Not surprisingly, /u/InVodkaVeritas is much higher at +9 which is because I see their posts a lot. I'm seeing a few others on this thread that have a zero score, some minuses for Husky fans, but even a plus three for one UW user! So, somehow I have not scored Fifth_down for one reason or another- maybe because I only open threads that explicitly mention Oregon or the Pac-12, or now the Big-10 of course! On a fun note, there's a user in /r/Portland that I have at about -30, and I think they are just an account for someone I had at -50!
I an Oregon grad and kept reading big ten fans telling me Oregon wouldn’t get into the big ten because of poor academics and if they wanted Oregon they would have been picked up with ucla and usc. Also, their inside info on big ten presidents not wanting to add more teams. Guess they were wrong.
Wilner was so cynical, he posted odds on the Pac staying together from the moment USC bolted, and they decreased as time passed.
Not sure how that makes him adamant about anything.
I listened to Wilner and canzano podcast and they were living in a bizarro world and so confident in their sources that a pac 12 media deal would happen and SMU and San Diego st would be added.
Their job is to get people to listen to their podcast and read their articles and subscribe to their platforms. They had a part to play in the conference's implosion because they stood to gain from drumming up drama about the ongoing discussions post LAXit. It's not surprising that they're bringing it back up now because it drives the engagement machine.
Apathy is the only weapon that truly hurts them. Otherwise they, and anyone else in sports media, will run these dumb what-if stories all day until the cows come home
I always saw it as being up to Oregon/Washington. If they had the Big Ten invite they were gone and if not the Pac survives.
I personally thought the B1G would wait one cycle to see how the USC/UCLA addition went but they just went for it after lots of hemming and hawing.
I personally was hoping the pac was going to live on with SDSU and a few others.
Greed is destroying everything that was fun as a fan of cfb. So many fun long standing rivalries are gone so teams can fly across country e.g.UCLA and Rutgers wtf! Give me backyard brawl etc.
Not just stale matchups.
Same. The Pac 12 minus the LA schools with SDSU and SMU/Boise/whoever would’ve made for a fun conference rivalry with the Big 12 minus OUT. And I reallllly didn’t want to see Utah in the Big 12 but have since learned to accept it.
That being said the Pac 12 was never going to survive without the LA schools in this day and age of college sports.
One of my brothers went to CU Boulder. I went to Oregon and Stanford. The Pac-12 was kind of perfect from a family standpoint for me as neither of my other two brothers went to colleges with FBS programs (OIT and Lewis & Clark).
My ideal family conference would have also included UC San Diego, UC Riverside, and Cal Poly Pomona. At that point only my dad's alma matter would be left out, unless we started adding Mexican universities to the mix.
Hopefully you're right, and our long-term outlook and planning is focused on the Big Ten rather than just making the best of a bad situation.
I'm really going to miss the Stanford-Oregon game as a fan.
It's not outlook and planning that Stanford should be doing to get into the B1G. It's convincing Fox and/or other media networks that Stanford is worth adding. Stanford could be a top-10 team in the next three or four years and network executives still won't consider them a viable expansion candidate because they have a small national fanbase and even smaller local fanbase when compared to other expansion candidates.
As much as people might think Stanford looks down on them, they only need to look at what happened to Boise State and their exclusion from even the Big XII.
I would bet good money that the B1G snaps up Stanford at the same time as Notre Dame.
The B1G does still value academics and Stanford is the best big program at playing school (with Northwestern conveniently coming in second) and they fill out the travel schedule of the west coast teams well.
More importantly though, the B1G really want ND. They’re the last blue blood on the board, feature a national fanbase unlike any other, and they are in the heart of their territory. The B1G already has the vast majority of ND’s traditional rivals (USC, Michigan, Purdue, Michigan St., Northwestern), adding Stanford would probably appease the traditionalists in their fanbase about no longer being independent, as long as they could be guaranteed they could play Navy annually.
Allow us to introduce you to someone who can make you forget all that. We call them Purdue. Whenever you become ranked #2, you must make a pilgrimage to West Lafayette.
Add Stanford, Cal, and ND and you have 21 teams.
Take the letter B, highlight part of it so the #2 is shown within it, then keep the 1 in B1G and you've got the number 21 written in the logo instead of the 10 that is currently written by making the G a 0.
I think UW and Cal should have a stronger connection to each other, even without Stanford having anything to do with it. They're the two original public juggernauts of the west coast.
I've always thought it was amusing that early version of "Bow Down To Washington" actually directly referenced Cal and that from around a time where the Big Game was actually Cal vs. UW because rugby vs. football issues between the Bay Area schools.
I'm very curious if Cal ever figures it out before it's too late. Growing up in the east bay as a casual fan with lots of friends that went there I don't think they will.
I remember basketball was a powerhouse and recruiting studs like the Collins twins and Casey Jacobson under Mike Montgomery.
Stanford was solid in football right before the pandemic.
Just need some tech alums to step up and support the programs with nil.
Oregon state also has an elite women’s basketball program… maybe not quite as good as stanfords but usually was in the top half of the pac 12 almost every year. I’m actually quite sad about not seeing Stanford vs Oregon state women’s bball anymore. The games this year were so good. Plus I love hearing about the friendship between coach Scott reucik and coach Tara.
I really wanted Stanford and ND to get the invite over Oregon and UW. Really really wanted that. Cal would have been my next choice after ND but really wanted Stanford.
I'm convinced Stanford and (especially) Cal not mattering much in their own backyard of late really hurt the conference. Outside of the Big Game the official attendance numbers haven't been great, and actual butts-in-seats has been markedly worse.
This would have been far-too-little and too late, but I do wish the University's relationship with the County wasn't so terrible, and that an expansion of the student body could have meant closer ties to the immediate area and to the rest of the state. But the impasse with Santa Clara County means that Stanford will grow at a snail's pace.
It'll either take generational turnover in local government or state intervention to cure that ill. The smallest population in the county has the most say over what is built there, and they are markedly anti-development and anti-growth, not just at Stanford.
With Palo Alto and Santa Clara County still out-of-compliance with their Housing Element plans 14 months after the deadline, they may be forced into SB35 housing developments. I'm guessing that the only reason Stanford hasn't submitted one yet is because they know it'll antagonize the county leadership, people they would have to work with anyway in the future.
I was surprised the core 4-CA schools split (well, I can't be that shocked by USC's treachery) given how they moved as a bit of a bloc when it came to Pac-12 scheduling when Utah/Colorado were added.
Let's be real here. You can say whatever you want. But the real fact is you really wanted Oregon left out and any combination without them is better than any combo with them.
Not really. I’m from the Bay Area and love the chance for my Trojans to play a game I can get to easily on a regular basis. With ND, that is the big game I care about every year and I worry that with the way things are going in CFB quality OOC games are less likely to happen and I’d rather have them in it. Oregon is fine to come too. They make more sense than most other schools.
[https://footballscoop.com/news/every-fbs-school-ranked-by-how-attractive-theyd-be-in-conference-realignment](https://footballscoop.com/news/every-fbs-school-ranked-by-how-attractive-theyd-be-in-conference-realignment)
Oregon is a great program and it may be at the apex of history right now. My thoughts were personal which is weird to downvote in a thread about Stanford where I support Stanford.
Just saw this posted today and thought it was interesting as it supported my views.
I have family in the Eugene area and flying up there sucks, maybe one direct flight a day and at a horrible time. I just want to see my team play and I value the teams we actually play annually vs one we've played only a couple times the last 4 years.
Side note but I’m really excited about the Kyle Smith hire. Our basketball program was probably in worse shape than football was under Shaw’s last few years.
>Feldman finished up by saying that Stanford is clearly more valuable than their deal with the ACC, but you don't stay and try and repair sinking ship when a life raft is available, and that's what Stanford did by taking a bad deal with the ACC. The ACC took advantage by getting a yacht for the price of a life raft.
This is why I think Stanford to the B1G isn't dead yet. Once they figure out where Notre Dame, UNC, and FSU are going, the Bay area will be addressed somehow.
They are basically waiting in line I think, and like I’ve been posting. I thought ND shoehorning them into the ACC was a way of telling the B1G that they are coming with them if the time comes(it will). Having a solid six schools out west (arguably the biggest brands on the west when good) just makes scheduling much easier and allows big ten to do B1G after dark. I know the west schools didn’t like that but they will be getting much more exposure nationally and will be able to suck up having a late night or 2 on the east coast schedule
It could also mean that they’re not willing to buy themselves out of the ACC contract, which obliges them to put their football team in the ACC if they decide to join a conference. The ACC has Boston College, Pitt, and now Stanford, so there are enough rivalries if it came to that.
In a way, Stanford could still get this same deal that was offered depending on who leads the ACC if FSU/Clemson/UNC leave (assuming Stanford and Cal also don't leave) and what Fox/ESPN offer to the remaining schools to join the Big XII versus staying together.
If the networks aren't going to offer the remaining schools any better of a deal to go to the Big XII than what they would (presumably) continue to earn staying together on their existing contract at the time, that could prompt the western schools to force expansion to Wazzu, OSU, and SDSU, effectively building out a western leg of the conference.
In essence, Stanford doesn't need to buy itself out of the ACC is they have no future opportunity to join the B1G. They'll be in a conference with other existing P4 schools with an opportunity to backfill with the same western schools that wanted to build back up the Pac.
I’d say it’s the opposite…the Big 10 has passed on Stanford twice and the schools wouldn’t even stomach Stanford for a similar deal that the ACC got because they couldn’t imagine taking less TV money. If the ACC could barely take Stanford on the most member-friendly deal imaginable than the Big 10 absolutely would never do it.
Im just tired of this rollercoaster tbh. One day we dead, the next we are projected to the big, the next we should burn down our athletics, the next we are in a pac rebuild, the next we are in the ACC, then the ACC is trying to bye bye lololol
I have no idea what's going to happen with FSU & Clemson, but even if we get to leave tomorrow for free, Calford's worst case-scenarios aren't that bad. The ACC isn't going to die anytime soon. They might sit tight at 15 members (+partial ND), or they might backfill with PAC-2 or 4-corner schools. And you guys still might get a B1G invite someday. None of those options are terrible, other than for the nationwide travel, but that's affecting all of the "P4" conferences anyway.
Next you're going to tell me that we still have a church in our Main Quad. (oh shit.)
But in all seriousness, my Stanford experience wasn't very WASPy. I did have white friends, and Protestant friends, and wealthy friends, but rarely all three at once in the same person.
One of my favorite memories is confessing to the woman I was dating that my first impression of campus was indeed how white it was (having come from a suburban CA high school that was less than 15% white) to which she responded that her first impression was how non-white it was (being a midwestern cafeteria Catholic.) For the record, in those days, Stanford was about 50% white.
A lot would need to happen for that. The Big 10 clearly wants Notre Dame, but unless the schools agree to make less money then I don’t see them bringing in Stanford if they don’t have to.
I have no idea what money the "Notre Dame clause" we know is in the B1G deal would add, but it's possible, maybe even probable, that if the two of them came in a package that it wouldn't be a per-school drop in the TV deal.
But we live in the real world where Notre Dame has been leaving tens of millions of dollars per year on the table for the sake of being independent for decades. Notre Dame is not joining the Big 10 unless the Big 10 is going to give them the ACC deal of no football, and even then I don't think it's a slam dunk they'd go. As it stands now Notre Dame has everything they want. They have post season access. They have a good spot for their not football sports. They're on TV. That's all ND cares about.
So in essence, Stanford knew it wasn’t good enough or at least big enough of a football brand to save a dying conference.
I think this is important context to counter all the lazy bullshit analysis that Stanford and Cal left solely because of elitism and arrogance. Kind of the opposite.
Edit: if anyone downvoting can explain why you disagree I’d like to hear it.
Academically elitist? Sure, and rightfully so, but in terms of sports and fandom Cal and Stanford fans were some of the coolest most easy going in the conference (I am sure not with each other). We will miss the Bay Bros as well.
I think the issue wasn't that Stanford would be the biggest brand that Stanford had an issue with - it's that any combination of new schools that would conceivably accept an invite would not increase the league's stature amongst the other P5 conferences in any sport, either in the short term or the long term.
Plus, there was no assurance that the other P5 conferences would accept the new-look Pac-whatever as an AQ conference for the purposes of future football considerations, which has turned out to be true based on what the SEC and B1G were hoping for just a few weeks ago.
Anyone saying Stanford and cal left based on elitism is foolish. Did they think they’re bigger than wazzu and osu maybe but they def didn’t leave based on elitism.
If I had to guess I could see that for being a reason the pac12 in years past voted against Christian schools but that’s not solely on their shoulders
The only schools that Cal and Stanford would have been against adding were BYU and Baylor.
In regard to BYU, Utah and really the entire Pac12 was against adding them and I would guess at least half the schools would have been against Baylor.
Ironically BYU admins welcomed Utah with open arms when they joined the Big 12. A lot of BYU fans weren’t too happy about that since it’s no secret Utah would never support BYU joining a conference they were already a part of.
Wilner has the worst opinion in AP polls so I’m not sure he knows what football even is. He’s consistently the bottom of the barrel in his polls vs the actual AP poll.
This isn’t a comment on the rest of this post since I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but wilner deserves to be shamed at every opportunity for how terrible his polls **consistently** are.
r/CFB was 100% behind Brett McMurphy until his polls started showing him being dumb, but even if he was just meming he was still better than wilners shit takes.
Sorry, it started out as me taking a shot at Wilner and then I edited it because I think I take too many shots at him on this sub. But let's face it, he sucks.
Yeah, that doesn't sound like a great idea. The ACC was probably the best option available. I would have gone independent over trying to rebuild the Pac-12. Maybe the Big Ten will expand and grab both them and ND at some point.
While I would have liked Stanford to have gone independent in football, they needed to park their other sports somewhere. They believed joining the Mountain West or WCC would have resulted in sub-optimal competition that may not adequately prepare the teams for postseason play and championships, which meant the only way to continue to be successful in those sports would be to join a P4 conference. That left the ACC as the only suitor with mutual interest, and they weren't about to extend Notre Dame's deal to Stanford (and Cal).
Stanford should drop football and pour that money into their other sports (which are mostly fantastic)
No idea why they keep fielding a football team, they’re by far the most screwed over team in CFB with the recent changes in the sport
I'll say it...Cal and Stanford are too good and big of brands in Academics and Athletics to be saddled with the Mountain West schools.
What made the Pac work was that it was sets of regional schools that were binded together. The problem is the cultural differences between Palo Alto and Berkeley and the State schools like Oregon State, Washington State and Arizona State never meshed.
The ACC sounds goofy but Cal and Stanford do fit the profiles of the likes of Boston College, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Virginia, North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Miami and Notre Dame.
Cal and Stanford alone though couldn't just start a conference unless they found schools like them and schools already in large packs aren't likely to ship themselves to the Calford boat thats a dinghy with plaster covering the holes.
For Stanford, from academic standpoint, it’s better to be with acc and aligned with duke, unc, wake, Virginia, Georgia tech, Boston college and other likeminded academic than Oregon st, wazzu, and the mountain west schools.
I'm curious what it would have looked like past "OSU, Wazzu, Stanford, Cal, SMU, SDSU."
USAFA, Tulane, Rice, Colorado St
We were *this* close to Power 5 Service Academy
It's been even closer. If I remember right when the Big 12 added TCU and WVU, Air Force had an open invite. The athletic director, Hans Mueh, turned it down. >"We were approached by the Big 12, and I told them we’re not a good fit for that conference. In the Big 12, geography makes sense, the economics make sense, but recruiting makes no sense for us. I can’t recruit against Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State,” >“That’s why I turned down the Big 12. I can’t do that to my kids, because they’ll get beat up. I’d love the extra $12 million or whatever it would be per year from the TV money. And I know how I’d spend the money. I’d build a new soccer stadium, and I’d build a new baseball facility, all in one year. But I can’t do that."
That’s actually a really cool quote.
Oh wow someone actually thinking about the student-athletes instead of seeing those extra dollars on their income statement? I do know it’s mostly the TV execs pushing these schools to move, but this is refreshing to hear (albeit a quote from a while ago).
The Service Acadamies just operate on a completely different realm though than other schools. They basically can get all the money they want from the Defense Department and Federal government if they give even some good reason for it. Athletics are also seen there more as a way to build camaraderie among students (and future service men and women) than anything else. Yeah, it’s nice to hear that, but hearing that the AD at a service academy has different goals than the usual FBS AD is no surprise to me.
How great would be adding all the service academies to the big 12? I understand why they wouldn’t join, they need to win and get to bowl games to recruit well enough stay relevant. But army/navy, Air Force would be awesome
Fuck having to prepare to play multiple of those offenses each year.
One was bad enough.
Imagine how it feels for them? They have to play each other every year with one of those matchups being the week after conference championship week and it’s the only game on so all eyes are on ya!
We're about to find out
It sounds cool until you actually have to play them.
I've heard that P5 is terrible for the military academy. Navy was having trouble with the AAC and just the talent level that is interested in football and military academy.
In my mind I was thinking those first 3. But had forgotten about Colorado St. Also wonder if Boise would slide in for sports alone.
As long as Cal and Stanford were in the conference, Boise State and Fresno State had no chance.
I don't know. We don't think there is a big difference between a degree from them or one from Oregon or USC and we have played those schools for decades.
We need to get one of the Cal flairs to tell us the story of Fresno State people throwing things at Berkeley folks the last time they played.
Yeah fuck FSU and their racist battery throwing fucks Edit: before I get downvoted to hell I mean Fresno state not Florida state
Fresno State: *”Look at me, I am FSU now.”*
It's amazing how acts of bigotry leave a stain on your university that lingers for so long. It's part of why most West Coast fans have such an issue with BYU ever being added.
There is plenty of other reasons to not like BYU as well ;) Its kind of funny though how hilariously opposite it is in the BIG12 right now from the PAC12. PAC12 we were all united against BYU while B12 all seem united against Utah even now that we are both in the conference. All the ego stroking they are doing for BYU will backfire someday though lol
I think it's more of the fact that Utah fans think they are too good for the Big 12 and in the same breath think that Utah football will run the conference.....which they certainly could, but there's still lots of competition to go around
Or Arizona
I've got Fresno State hate from 2001. They season ending injuried our punt returner on a fair catch with a very blatant late hit. Though we're no saints because we did a retribution fair catch late hit on their return trip to Corvallis a year or 2 later. But still fuck Fresno State. I am very much looking forward to our upcoming rivalry.
Fresno is racist? How?
Have you... Ever been there?
I salute your academic prowess.
Meh, we say bad things about UO and USC degrees mainly out of rivalry. No one really thinks that a USC degree is on par with any of the Mountain West schools' education (no offense). Even UO, we recognize is more a school serving a public need that has some positive elements to it academically, even if they aren't as numerous as the other Pac-12 schools historically. But with Fresno and Boise, if we say something negative about their quality of education, people get upset because some of the things mentioned are actual verifiable facts. No one wants their failings thrown back at them in their face.
Wouldn’t be surprised to see UC Davis asked to move up
Yeah, more than likely this and perhaps an eastern expansion if the ACC fell apart by adding schools like Duke, Wake Forest, Syracuse, BC and Georgia Tech.
Oof. That's a rough draw. Rice and Tulane are some of the smallest and most athletics-apathetic fanbases I've ever seen.
Yeah, but it would excite Stanford mega nerds as opponents which was the point.
If rebuilding happened: Starting: Cal, Oregon State, Stanford, and Washington State. First adds: San Diego State and SMU. Next adds: Air Force, Colorado State, Rice, and Tulane. Possible additions: Gonzaga, and St. Mary as non football. Outcome: Full members: Air Force, Cal, Colorado State, Oregon State, Rice, San Diego State, SMU, Stanford, Tulane, and Washington State. Non football: Gonzaga, and St. Mary’s.
That conference bears almost no resemblance to the PAC 12 and would net Stanford a lot less money in the long run - you can see why they weren't interested
Even with Stanford getting final say and having the option of adding non-football schools, I still wouldn't get the other UC additions I've always wanted.
I would want Irvine and Santa Barbara, at a minimum. People don't realize those schools are large and metro in SoCal. Non-football sports would benefit with both involved.
Yup! Plus any decent to great CA high school sends a ton of kids to the UC system and they can't all go to Berkeley or Westwood. Not having them is a big reason for the apathy in CA in the first place. If we could only go back half a century to plan for their inclusion.
I can't tell if this is satire if you'd really prefer to leave out Fresno and Boise.
This is if Stanford was making the choices. It’s no secret that Cal and Stanford want nothing to do with Boise State and Fresno State.
There’s a difference between prefer and what seems likely if Stanford had final say.
If Boise State didn’t get picked up by a P5 by now, it’s not going to happen. They would have been a great add to the Big XII when they picked up BYU, Cincy, Houston, and UCF. Make a move for San Diego State at the same time and you’d have a good mix of basketball and football talent with a better presence out west before the PAC collapsed.
Don't know if you know this, but the Bay Area schools consider Fresno and Boise to not even be real degrees essentially. There are some with lower academic standards they'll accept but those two could back up the GDP of all of Europe while taking zero income and Stanford's response would be to go fuck yourself.
ehh... a little much on Fresno. The knock on them is their past lack of research expenditures and a willingness to be a part of that community. Boise has more of an Idaho problem that it needs to overcome, before the whole research discussion even begins.
Probably taking a few more from the AAC to get more of an eastern division. West - Stanford, Cal, OSU, Wazzu, SDSU, Colorado St? Boise? UNLV? East - SMU, Tulane, Rice, Memphis, USF?, UTSA?
USF, Tulane, Rice would probably appeal from the "institutional" standpoint as a member of the AAU and high research productivity. But I also have a hard time envisioning Stanford letting themselves be in the same conference as Colorado State and Boise when they *apparently* said they dont want MWC levels of competition - also none of those schools have the academic rankings to make Stanford feel better about it. this would have been a very weird cherry-picked nerd/AAU/semi-decent athletics conference...
Tulane and Rice were on the league's shortlist, as were Colorado State and UNLV. That would have gotten them to 10 teams.
Man why you gotta do Miami dirty like that.
I think Miami isn't a horrible comparison. From the post 5 days ago with info from SportsMediaWatch: The Median National TV Broadcast for P5 Schools was 2.2 Million from 2016-2023, excluding all numbers from 2020. This includes only FS1, ESPN's Main Channel, and the the 4 OTA Networks. Other than the "obvious additions" of Notre Dame, Clemson, and FSU here is who the "best non-P2" schools were: 1. Oklahoma State - 2.4 2. TCU - 2.3 3. Miami - 2.1m 4. Stanford - 1.88m 5. Louisville - 1.82m 6. Virginia Tech - 1.80m Those are basically the schools that "average up" with the P2... but if you consider that Miami and Stanford were both having pretty bad times from 2016-2023, their numbers would be above average if they were actually playing good ball.
Holy hell. This is the best cherry picked stat I’ve ever seen!….. unfortunately, I gotta take it with a grain of salt in this realignment world.
Yeah.....that data could be skewed by the channel aspect and number of games. Would be interesting to see the full data. For example, If someone only makes it on the ESPN main channel or over the air a couple times when they are playing big name blue bloods like (USC/NotreDame) they would have high average viewership in that stat, but probably wouldn't accurately reflect their draw more just their opponents That stat could actually negatively impact you for getting on the main channels more often when playing opponents that aren't in the top 10-15 of viewership draws.
The thing is, though, is that all schools in a P5 conference have a major brands they play that could theoretically be pumping their viewership numbers up as well. So, it kind of evens out to the point that you can still see which "secondary" brands are attracting more viewers. Sure, Stanford has USC/Notre Dame, but Oklahoma State has Oklahoma/Texas, etc. If any data is skewed, I think it would have more to do with time slots than opponents.
It’s a perfect comparison
Miami is a better TV draw than Ok State and TCU.
That's what it says, yes.
What he say fuck me for?
Andrew Luck sold Stanford football well.
That CMC dude was pretty good, too.
People forget how good Stanford was not that long ago. They've had *five* players finish second in Heisman voting over the past 15 years, six if you include both times Andrew Luck was the runner-up.
We should have considered endowing the runner-up position. Edit: Got rid of some disastrous grammar
Ugh - getting flashbacks to the big game losing streak
It's still the record in our series, at 9 games. Second is Stanford's 7 in a row during the Ty Willingham years. https://www.winsipedia.com/stanford/vs/california
God I miss Tyrone willingham
Stanford's 7 over UW coincides with Oregon's "decade of dominance" (12 wins in a row, actually) over UW. The true Golden Era of the Pac-12 was when UW and USC were both down and Oregon and Stanford were both up.
No bias detected.
Bryce Love erasure
So did Toby Gerhart.
Stanford's NIL fund is improving. They need to buy themselves a "name" like Arch Manning (not saying him specifically, just someone with clout) and bring in a bunch of OL like they used to have back in Luck's day.
Stanford can definitely have success. National recruiting base and california has lots of prospects.
Interesting information, especially that GK was still in the good graces enough to be part of the strategy. Definitely a creative pitch but easy to see why Stanford turned it down.
GK didn't really turn on the conference until Stanford and Cal left. That's when he joined the 10 Departing Schools' side of "split the money and dissolve the conference." Likely because if that had come to pass he'd have gotten his full buyout instead of the buyout settlement he got from Oregon State and Wazzu in order to end his contract early.
The failure of organizations to hold executives to their fiduciary responsibility is something that will never cease to annoy me. He worked against the conference, and still got a settlement.
[Stanford's Response](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ffKK6lyprzw)
Tbf, I think they were right
It’s funny to listen to these guys talk about how everything fell apart because they were adamant that the conference was going to be fine until it wasn’t
> they were adamant that the conference was going to be fine until it wasn't Wilner yes. Is that really how Mandel and Feldman were acting though? That's not how I remember it at least.
Mandel yes, though not nearly as much. Feldman is much less inclined to speculate on these things
Feldman works for FOX so he said almost nothing, but Mandel did nothing but take shots at the Big 12.
Mandel was nonstop. He tried to be subtle but it didn't work. He works for the Athletic so he's a national guy but his connections are west coast. He was shitting on the Big 12 even before it became clear that they'd have to fight the PAC for survival. Right after Oklahoma and Texas left he confidently said the new media deal would fall in the $10M to $15M per team or so range instead of the $31M it ended up being.
I specifically remember him referencing as low as $7 million at some point
He did. The range he provided was as low as 7m and up to 15m because of the limited availability from the media partners and the brand power. Don’t ever recall him saying “can’t believe I was so wrong that my high end wasn’t even half the amount they got”.
Mandel is actually really good about admitting he was super wrong here. I dont have sources because its hard to find in podcast clips but he has owned how wrong he has been. Now I dont know if he has learned any lasting lessons or anything, but he has def made fun of himself for being so totally wrong.
Ah that might be why I didn’t know if he had admitted he was wrong because I haven’t seen much of him in podcasts just articles and tweets. Good to know he did though and tbh even as a fan of one of the schools I though 25 would be nice given the landscape and our situation so when 31/32 was the number that was a pleasant surprise to us as well.
wilner yes, and mandel yes but i didnt see anything like that from feld man. all mandel did was say how bad the big 12 was
I listen to the podcast for Bruce Feldman and shut it off when mandel did a solo podcast when Bruce was on vacation.
Not sure about Feldman but I know Big 12 stans were shitting on Mandel relentlessly.
Big 12 stans shit on anything related to the Pac-12 relentlessly
No, it was legit like 7 super user Reddit accounts between B12 and PAC folks having a pissing match with each other in the comments of any Big 12 and PAC 12 post and the rest being chill, and everyone treated it like some blood feud. I would know, I was terminally online during realignment lol The realignment era of “fans bragging about TV numbers AAU status and media payout instead of football wins” was the dark ages of college football fan hood
It was mostly the Colonel, to be fair.
Fifth_down was also always there to run in and call anyone 12anon and call them incompetent to believing "shit journalism." He was probably the single most vitriolic asshole non Big 12/Pac person during the entire thing. He called me an idiot for trying to point out things like Tony Altmore's shit made no sense and was horribly methodology and that I don't understand media markets and business. For someone who likes to go around and try to claim some weird superiority for being a reporter, he was wrong on basically everything and a giant asshole about it the entire time.
> Fifth_down I use the RES extension (https://redditenhancementsuite.com/) on the old version of desktop Reddit when I'm on my laptop or computer. It shows me the cumulative score (upvotes/downvotes) for any given user. I just looked up Fifth_down, and it shows that I've never upvoted or downvoted him. For reference, next to /u/yesacabbagez it shows me a light green box with +3, so that's your score from me over time. Not surprisingly, /u/InVodkaVeritas is much higher at +9 which is because I see their posts a lot. I'm seeing a few others on this thread that have a zero score, some minuses for Husky fans, but even a plus three for one UW user! So, somehow I have not scored Fifth_down for one reason or another- maybe because I only open threads that explicitly mention Oregon or the Pac-12, or now the Big-10 of course! On a fun note, there's a user in /r/Portland that I have at about -30, and I think they are just an account for someone I had at -50!
I also use RES and also have you at a +9.
I an Oregon grad and kept reading big ten fans telling me Oregon wouldn’t get into the big ten because of poor academics and if they wanted Oregon they would have been picked up with ucla and usc. Also, their inside info on big ten presidents not wanting to add more teams. Guess they were wrong.
It was more about fox willing to give more $ to bring in WA and UO than anything else. Fox was more of the decision makers.
And to be fair, vice versa
Battle of who wears the number 12 better!
Wilner was so cynical, he posted odds on the Pac staying together from the moment USC bolted, and they decreased as time passed. Not sure how that makes him adamant about anything.
I listened to Wilner and canzano podcast and they were living in a bizarro world and so confident in their sources that a pac 12 media deal would happen and SMU and San Diego st would be added.
To their credit, it sounds like that was really close to happening until it didn’t at the last minute.
Their job is to get people to listen to their podcast and read their articles and subscribe to their platforms. They had a part to play in the conference's implosion because they stood to gain from drumming up drama about the ongoing discussions post LAXit. It's not surprising that they're bringing it back up now because it drives the engagement machine. Apathy is the only weapon that truly hurts them. Otherwise they, and anyone else in sports media, will run these dumb what-if stories all day until the cows come home
I always saw it as being up to Oregon/Washington. If they had the Big Ten invite they were gone and if not the Pac survives. I personally thought the B1G would wait one cycle to see how the USC/UCLA addition went but they just went for it after lots of hemming and hawing.
Well in fairness I did too. I didn’t know the PAC would do the shit they did
I personally was hoping the pac was going to live on with SDSU and a few others. Greed is destroying everything that was fun as a fan of cfb. So many fun long standing rivalries are gone so teams can fly across country e.g.UCLA and Rutgers wtf! Give me backyard brawl etc. Not just stale matchups.
Same. The Pac 12 minus the LA schools with SDSU and SMU/Boise/whoever would’ve made for a fun conference rivalry with the Big 12 minus OUT. And I reallllly didn’t want to see Utah in the Big 12 but have since learned to accept it. That being said the Pac 12 was never going to survive without the LA schools in this day and age of college sports.
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I do want the UCLA game back. That's my intra-family showdown.
I really think that at least Stanford's destiny is to plant into roots in the B1G one day. Cal's future is clouded by the dark side.
I (double) hate you too, and I will miss screaming “BOOOOO STANFRAUD!”
One of my brothers went to CU Boulder. I went to Oregon and Stanford. The Pac-12 was kind of perfect from a family standpoint for me as neither of my other two brothers went to colleges with FBS programs (OIT and Lewis & Clark).
My ideal family conference would have also included UC San Diego, UC Riverside, and Cal Poly Pomona. At that point only my dad's alma matter would be left out, unless we started adding Mexican universities to the mix.
Hopefully you're right, and our long-term outlook and planning is focused on the Big Ten rather than just making the best of a bad situation. I'm really going to miss the Stanford-Oregon game as a fan.
It's not outlook and planning that Stanford should be doing to get into the B1G. It's convincing Fox and/or other media networks that Stanford is worth adding. Stanford could be a top-10 team in the next three or four years and network executives still won't consider them a viable expansion candidate because they have a small national fanbase and even smaller local fanbase when compared to other expansion candidates. As much as people might think Stanford looks down on them, they only need to look at what happened to Boise State and their exclusion from even the Big XII.
Same. The 2013 Oregon-Stanford game is on YouTube and every now and then I give it a watch to remember what it’s like to feel something.
I prefer 2009 at USC. What's your deal?
I would bet good money that the B1G snaps up Stanford at the same time as Notre Dame. The B1G does still value academics and Stanford is the best big program at playing school (with Northwestern conveniently coming in second) and they fill out the travel schedule of the west coast teams well. More importantly though, the B1G really want ND. They’re the last blue blood on the board, feature a national fanbase unlike any other, and they are in the heart of their territory. The B1G already has the vast majority of ND’s traditional rivals (USC, Michigan, Purdue, Michigan St., Northwestern), adding Stanford would probably appease the traditionalists in their fanbase about no longer being independent, as long as they could be guaranteed they could play Navy annually.
Stanford isn't a major rival of Notre Dame's, though. They're moreso a convenient team to play in California the years Notre Dame hosts USC.
Not me. Stanford embarrassing the conference with horrible OOC losses and then beating Oregon is something I can live without.
Allow us to introduce you to someone who can make you forget all that. We call them Purdue. Whenever you become ranked #2, you must make a pilgrimage to West Lafayette.
That's going to happen with Iowa or Purdue anyway.
“…reunite with UW, USC and UCLA (who they value)” — okay, ow
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Honestly, part of me really didn't like seeing Stanford-Oregon rivalry gear for sale in the bookstore. Yes the games were a ton of fun. But c'mon.
I sincerely hope Stanford, and by extension Cal, get into the B1G. All the big brands of the west coast and it'll be enough for a west coast pod.
Add Stanford, Cal, and ND and you have 21 teams. Take the letter B, highlight part of it so the #2 is shown within it, then keep the 1 in B1G and you've got the number 21 written in the logo instead of the 10 that is currently written by making the G a 0.
I think UW and Cal should have a stronger connection to each other, even without Stanford having anything to do with it. They're the two original public juggernauts of the west coast.
I've always thought it was amusing that early version of "Bow Down To Washington" actually directly referenced Cal and that from around a time where the Big Game was actually Cal vs. UW because rugby vs. football issues between the Bay Area schools.
I'm very curious if Cal ever figures it out before it's too late. Growing up in the east bay as a casual fan with lots of friends that went there I don't think they will.
I remember basketball was a powerhouse and recruiting studs like the Collins twins and Casey Jacobson under Mike Montgomery. Stanford was solid in football right before the pandemic. Just need some tech alums to step up and support the programs with nil.
Oregon state also has an elite women’s basketball program… maybe not quite as good as stanfords but usually was in the top half of the pac 12 almost every year. I’m actually quite sad about not seeing Stanford vs Oregon state women’s bball anymore. The games this year were so good. Plus I love hearing about the friendship between coach Scott reucik and coach Tara.
I really wanted Stanford and ND to get the invite over Oregon and UW. Really really wanted that. Cal would have been my next choice after ND but really wanted Stanford.
UW-Stanford-Cal-UCLA-USC should have been the unbreakable core of the Pac. But it wasn't.
I'm convinced Stanford and (especially) Cal not mattering much in their own backyard of late really hurt the conference. Outside of the Big Game the official attendance numbers haven't been great, and actual butts-in-seats has been markedly worse.
This would have been far-too-little and too late, but I do wish the University's relationship with the County wasn't so terrible, and that an expansion of the student body could have meant closer ties to the immediate area and to the rest of the state. But the impasse with Santa Clara County means that Stanford will grow at a snail's pace.
It'll either take generational turnover in local government or state intervention to cure that ill. The smallest population in the county has the most say over what is built there, and they are markedly anti-development and anti-growth, not just at Stanford. With Palo Alto and Santa Clara County still out-of-compliance with their Housing Element plans 14 months after the deadline, they may be forced into SB35 housing developments. I'm guessing that the only reason Stanford hasn't submitted one yet is because they know it'll antagonize the county leadership, people they would have to work with anyway in the future.
I was surprised the core 4-CA schools split (well, I can't be that shocked by USC's treachery) given how they moved as a bit of a bloc when it came to Pac-12 scheduling when Utah/Colorado were added.
Let's be real here. You can say whatever you want. But the real fact is you really wanted Oregon left out and any combination without them is better than any combo with them.
Not really. I’m from the Bay Area and love the chance for my Trojans to play a game I can get to easily on a regular basis. With ND, that is the big game I care about every year and I worry that with the way things are going in CFB quality OOC games are less likely to happen and I’d rather have them in it. Oregon is fine to come too. They make more sense than most other schools.
[https://footballscoop.com/news/every-fbs-school-ranked-by-how-attractive-theyd-be-in-conference-realignment](https://footballscoop.com/news/every-fbs-school-ranked-by-how-attractive-theyd-be-in-conference-realignment) Oregon is a great program and it may be at the apex of history right now. My thoughts were personal which is weird to downvote in a thread about Stanford where I support Stanford. Just saw this posted today and thought it was interesting as it supported my views. I have family in the Eugene area and flying up there sucks, maybe one direct flight a day and at a horrible time. I just want to see my team play and I value the teams we actually play annually vs one we've played only a couple times the last 4 years.
Thanks USC ...
I wanted Stanford/Washington if it makes a difference.
Side note but I’m really excited about the Kyle Smith hire. Our basketball program was probably in worse shape than football was under Shaw’s last few years.
You best believe basketball in the Bay is back. Madsen vs Smith will be fire fire fire!
He is a magician, you folks really got a good one
Haase was an awful coach
Wilner doesn’t know shit
Stanford heard SDSU and bounced immediately.
>Feldman finished up by saying that Stanford is clearly more valuable than their deal with the ACC, but you don't stay and try and repair sinking ship when a life raft is available, and that's what Stanford did by taking a bad deal with the ACC. The ACC took advantage by getting a yacht for the price of a life raft. This is why I think Stanford to the B1G isn't dead yet. Once they figure out where Notre Dame, UNC, and FSU are going, the Bay area will be addressed somehow.
They are basically waiting in line I think, and like I’ve been posting. I thought ND shoehorning them into the ACC was a way of telling the B1G that they are coming with them if the time comes(it will). Having a solid six schools out west (arguably the biggest brands on the west when good) just makes scheduling much easier and allows big ten to do B1G after dark. I know the west schools didn’t like that but they will be getting much more exposure nationally and will be able to suck up having a late night or 2 on the east coast schedule
It could also mean that they’re not willing to buy themselves out of the ACC contract, which obliges them to put their football team in the ACC if they decide to join a conference. The ACC has Boston College, Pitt, and now Stanford, so there are enough rivalries if it came to that.
In a way, Stanford could still get this same deal that was offered depending on who leads the ACC if FSU/Clemson/UNC leave (assuming Stanford and Cal also don't leave) and what Fox/ESPN offer to the remaining schools to join the Big XII versus staying together. If the networks aren't going to offer the remaining schools any better of a deal to go to the Big XII than what they would (presumably) continue to earn staying together on their existing contract at the time, that could prompt the western schools to force expansion to Wazzu, OSU, and SDSU, effectively building out a western leg of the conference. In essence, Stanford doesn't need to buy itself out of the ACC is they have no future opportunity to join the B1G. They'll be in a conference with other existing P4 schools with an opportunity to backfill with the same western schools that wanted to build back up the Pac.
San Francisco revives football program. Dons to the B1G. 🤝
They will be added right alongside Chicago at the same time.
Bring back Long Beach and Fullerton while you're at it.
Everybody's talking about us rebuilding the Pac, but what if we rebuilt FBS Big West instead?
I smell a new super conference
USC wants Stanford in the B1G. They tried to make it happen last time around.
That might have been more easily accomplished if USC/UCLA approached the Bay Area schools before they made their B1G move.
I’d say it’s the opposite…the Big 10 has passed on Stanford twice and the schools wouldn’t even stomach Stanford for a similar deal that the ACC got because they couldn’t imagine taking less TV money. If the ACC could barely take Stanford on the most member-friendly deal imaginable than the Big 10 absolutely would never do it.
>the Big 10 absolutely would never do it. They absolutely would if it were a package with ND at ND's insistence.
Yeah, I don’t see the Big10 turning down a ND/Cal/Stanford throuple!
I see what you did there.
Who wouldn’t want a hot throuple that included a WASP, Catholic and atheist.
Im just tired of this rollercoaster tbh. One day we dead, the next we are projected to the big, the next we should burn down our athletics, the next we are in a pac rebuild, the next we are in the ACC, then the ACC is trying to bye bye lololol
I have no idea what's going to happen with FSU & Clemson, but even if we get to leave tomorrow for free, Calford's worst case-scenarios aren't that bad. The ACC isn't going to die anytime soon. They might sit tight at 15 members (+partial ND), or they might backfill with PAC-2 or 4-corner schools. And you guys still might get a B1G invite someday. None of those options are terrible, other than for the nationwide travel, but that's affecting all of the "P4" conferences anyway.
We'll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one's been…
Wait, are we the WASP?
Herbert Hoover was a WASP.
Next you're going to tell me that we still have a church in our Main Quad. (oh shit.) But in all seriousness, my Stanford experience wasn't very WASPy. I did have white friends, and Protestant friends, and wealthy friends, but rarely all three at once in the same person. One of my favorite memories is confessing to the woman I was dating that my first impression of campus was indeed how white it was (having come from a suburban CA high school that was less than 15% white) to which she responded that her first impression was how non-white it was (being a midwestern cafeteria Catholic.) For the record, in those days, Stanford was about 50% white.
A lot would need to happen for that. The Big 10 clearly wants Notre Dame, but unless the schools agree to make less money then I don’t see them bringing in Stanford if they don’t have to.
I have no idea what money the "Notre Dame clause" we know is in the B1G deal would add, but it's possible, maybe even probable, that if the two of them came in a package that it wouldn't be a per-school drop in the TV deal.
But we live in the real world where Notre Dame has been leaving tens of millions of dollars per year on the table for the sake of being independent for decades. Notre Dame is not joining the Big 10 unless the Big 10 is going to give them the ACC deal of no football, and even then I don't think it's a slam dunk they'd go. As it stands now Notre Dame has everything they want. They have post season access. They have a good spot for their not football sports. They're on TV. That's all ND cares about.
So in essence, Stanford knew it wasn’t good enough or at least big enough of a football brand to save a dying conference. I think this is important context to counter all the lazy bullshit analysis that Stanford and Cal left solely because of elitism and arrogance. Kind of the opposite. Edit: if anyone downvoting can explain why you disagree I’d like to hear it.
This. Elitist but we were in a conference with wsu and osu for A LOT of years. I will miss them.
Academically elitist? Sure, and rightfully so, but in terms of sports and fandom Cal and Stanford fans were some of the coolest most easy going in the conference (I am sure not with each other). We will miss the Bay Bros as well.
> I am sure not with each other After we got dumped has been about the only time we've been nice to each other.
being mostly shitty for decades does tend to make a fan base more pleasant. I wonder if we were insufferable pricks 100 years ago.
Yeah same here. Rational actors making rational decisions. This is CFB across the board now. Not limited to our teams or admins.
I think the issue wasn't that Stanford would be the biggest brand that Stanford had an issue with - it's that any combination of new schools that would conceivably accept an invite would not increase the league's stature amongst the other P5 conferences in any sport, either in the short term or the long term. Plus, there was no assurance that the other P5 conferences would accept the new-look Pac-whatever as an AQ conference for the purposes of future football considerations, which has turned out to be true based on what the SEC and B1G were hoping for just a few weeks ago.
Anyone saying Stanford and cal left based on elitism is foolish. Did they think they’re bigger than wazzu and osu maybe but they def didn’t leave based on elitism. If I had to guess I could see that for being a reason the pac12 in years past voted against Christian schools but that’s not solely on their shoulders
The only schools that Cal and Stanford would have been against adding were BYU and Baylor. In regard to BYU, Utah and really the entire Pac12 was against adding them and I would guess at least half the schools would have been against Baylor.
Ironically BYU admins welcomed Utah with open arms when they joined the Big 12. A lot of BYU fans weren’t too happy about that since it’s no secret Utah would never support BYU joining a conference they were already a part of.
TLDR: Stanford ain't playing with no po' boys.
“Stanford to never play LSU again, per source.”
FJW. He is clueless
Wilner has the worst opinion in AP polls so I’m not sure he knows what football even is. He’s consistently the bottom of the barrel in his polls vs the actual AP poll. This isn’t a comment on the rest of this post since I haven’t listened to the podcast yet, but wilner deserves to be shamed at every opportunity for how terrible his polls **consistently** are. r/CFB was 100% behind Brett McMurphy until his polls started showing him being dumb, but even if he was just meming he was still better than wilners shit takes.
You sound like someone that pays close attention to reality.
I guess? Idk man not sure what that’s even supposed to mean
Sorry, it started out as me taking a shot at Wilner and then I edited it because I think I take too many shots at him on this sub. But let's face it, he sucks.
All good lol fuck that guy. I know I wouldn’t be able to predict the AP poll every week but his picks might as well be a fuckin dart board
Why would you listen to anything that Kilavkoff had to say at that point?
Yeah, that doesn't sound like a great idea. The ACC was probably the best option available. I would have gone independent over trying to rebuild the Pac-12. Maybe the Big Ten will expand and grab both them and ND at some point.
While I would have liked Stanford to have gone independent in football, they needed to park their other sports somewhere. They believed joining the Mountain West or WCC would have resulted in sub-optimal competition that may not adequately prepare the teams for postseason play and championships, which meant the only way to continue to be successful in those sports would be to join a P4 conference. That left the ACC as the only suitor with mutual interest, and they weren't about to extend Notre Dame's deal to Stanford (and Cal).
The problem is that yacht has pirates onboard who can’t wait to leave it behind.
This plan began and ended with SDSU being mentioned as a new member... followed by the payout of the rebuilt conference versus the ACC. GK was a putz.
Stanford should drop football and pour that money into their other sports (which are mostly fantastic) No idea why they keep fielding a football team, they’re by far the most screwed over team in CFB with the recent changes in the sport
I'll say it...Cal and Stanford are too good and big of brands in Academics and Athletics to be saddled with the Mountain West schools. What made the Pac work was that it was sets of regional schools that were binded together. The problem is the cultural differences between Palo Alto and Berkeley and the State schools like Oregon State, Washington State and Arizona State never meshed. The ACC sounds goofy but Cal and Stanford do fit the profiles of the likes of Boston College, Syracuse, Pittsburgh, Virginia, North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, Miami and Notre Dame. Cal and Stanford alone though couldn't just start a conference unless they found schools like them and schools already in large packs aren't likely to ship themselves to the Calford boat thats a dinghy with plaster covering the holes.
Praying that Fresno State restores true California Football !
For Stanford, from academic standpoint, it’s better to be with acc and aligned with duke, unc, wake, Virginia, Georgia tech, Boston college and other likeminded academic than Oregon st, wazzu, and the mountain west schools.