Conventional Pac-12 Alignment: North-South Or Northwest-Southeast?

Each member of the Big Ten (yes, I know, they still have 11 and don’t play in divisions yet) has two guaranteed conference opponents each season (i.e.: Ohio State plays Penn State and Michigan, Wisconsin plays Minnesota and Iowa) to preserve rivalries. I know there’s someone out there on the board who has the combinatorial skills (or just plain logic) to see if something like that makes sense in the divisional format.

’Cause I do love that road trip to LA.

has there been discussion to scheduling (sort of like) how the SEC does it? 8 conference games every year (5 from your division, 3 from the other) with 4 non-conf .

use the North/South set up, then include one game from each state/area.

so we’d play USC, UCLA, ASU, Arizona, Furd + Ore/OSU, Colo/Utah, Wash/WSU

for the North schools, it guarantees 2 games in California every year by getting to play Cal/Furd and then USC/UCLA. Sure we don’t get to play near every team in the division, but that wasn’t going to happen either way with 12 teams. plus, we didn’t do that until recently either. As an added bonus, the SEC gets along just fine racking up wins with their 4 non-conf games which i’m sure everyone would love, making more pac12 teams bowl eligible and giving a greater chance for more than one pac12 team in the BCS

i dont know if there are scheduling logistics that prevent the idea above (one team from each state/area out of division), but if there aren’t, does anyone know if this is a current option?

Forget that Chip Brown says his “sources” say that it’ll be a North-South split: in the end, it’s all about visits to LA, and the pull of the network dollars.

The Pac-12 is being put together for reasons related to money and survival within the FBS landscape, not necessarily in that order. The Pac-10 must grow and add a conference championship game in order for its members to survive and thrive on the FBS landscape. Maintaining the Pac-10 status quo risks the conference future declining into irrelevance.

Having said that and keeping this salient point in mind, it becomes difficult to do anything but put the best foot of the Pac-12 forward. That means a North-South split. A Northwest-Southeast split would, by comparison, undercut the Pac-12 product that may bea realized with a North-South split.

Here are the essential parameters:

TV matchups involving UCLA or USC were broadcast 35 out of a possible 36 times from 2006-2009. The only matchup not televised? UCLA at Oregon State, Oct. 31, 2009. Each Pac-10 school averaged 2.6 appearances that were not televised in the same period; Washington State games were not televised 12 times in that same period.

Everyone wants to be in the same division as the LA schools. Why?
For two primary reasons: 1 TV exposure and 2 recruiting the LA Area is easier if you make frequent trips to the LA Area. TV exposure equals TV revenue and recruiting the LA area is easier if the recruits know they can visit home once every two years.

But realistically, in a traditional geographical line-up, and taking into account traditional rivalries, what does that mean? It means that the Oregon and Washington schools will never be in the same division as the LA schools. So the only remaining question is whether or not Colorado & Utah should be in the same (South) division with UCLA and USC (and the Arizona schools) or whether Cal & Stanf*rd should be in the same (South) division as UCLA and USC.

If Colorado and Utah are in the South division, then it probably also means that Cal and Stanf*rd will maintain a permanent cross-division rivalry with UCLA and USC. This will clearly relegate the Pacific Northwest schools (the Oregons and the Washingtons) to 2nd class status, with only half as many visits to the LA Area as any other Pac-12 school.

If Colorado and Utah are in the South and the Bay Area schools have no guaranteed annual cross-division rivalry with UCLA and USC, it will undercut the value of the Pac-12 TV package by removing those games from the conference slate 2 times in every 6 years and replace it with Colorado-UCLA, Colorado-USC, Utah-UCLA, and Utah-USC. From a TV executive’s perspective, this is clearly not nearly as valuable. Not now, and not in the future.

What are you left with? A North-South split with the 4 California schools and the 2 Arizona schools in the South; the 2 Oregon schools, the 2 Washington schools, Colorado, and Utah in the North. This ensures that the most valuable TV matchups are played annually, and that the Oregon schools and Washington schools make the most number of trips to the LA Area in every 6-year cycle.

If you use Interstate 80 as the demarcation for splitting the conference then Denver and by association Utah trumps the NorCal schools geographically. Just some other curious facts Portland, Oregon is further north than Portland, Maine and Salt Lake City is on the same latitude as New York City (and Rome); so compared with the Canadian border the latitudinal lines run at a slant. Which puts San Francisco less than 2 degrees south of Denver and less than 3 south of Salt Lake City.

Also, with Colorado entering in 2011, Utah’s 3 year play-for-free contract becomes a major trump card.

But the real reason that we will end up with a Nor’West / SouEast split is to split the television markets equitably between the two divisions. Putting the 2 California TV markets in the same division would just result in too much inequity.

Remember hearing Pat Haden, SC AD, on the radio down here in LA saying that he favored the North-South alignment, Cali schools + Zona.

I hate it, but we all know that SC is the big kid on the block and that, as AD and one of SoCal’s more influential persons, he’s going to have a lot of input on the matter. Hopefully, he can swing the North-South split, my favored division scenario.

But even if other scenarios play out, I’m pretty sure that our weekender series with UCLA/USC will continue. They’ll be coming up to Berkeley, and we’ll be going down to LA every year.

And I think, in the end, it will put the Pac-12 in a similar position as the Big 12 currently. But I’m guessing, since you’ll be stationed in the south, that won’t bother you much.

However, for a program like Utah, which has built a reputation as one of the most successful programs in the west, it is a bit disheartening because I think, in the end, it will have a massive negative impact on the football program.

My biggest concern continues to be the consolidation of power in the South. As this post illustrates, the more powerful schools will be all located in the same division. Over time, when deals are changed and rearranged, who’s going to bat for us in the North? Absolutely no one. We’ll be pushed aside because, as it is with the Big 12 North currently, there just isn’t enough power in the North to assure an equal voice at the table.

Sure, there will be concessions today. But that’s not always going to be the case. The power will, as it always does, win out in the end and I could see it where the North schools are essentially pushed aside to appease those in the South.

That, in the end, would push us toward a similar situation as the Big 12 where the North has little voice and because of that, over the years, struggled to stay relevant in the entire conference picture.

Remember, when the Big 12 formed by adding the former SWC teams, the northern part of the conference was actually better. Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas State were all well established and had strung together far more successful seasons in the 90s than Texas and Oklahoma.

Yet they weren’t bigwig schools. Once the conference formed, all the power shifted to the South and overtime, that took away from the North and the balance quickly switched to the South. It’s been like that since pretty much 2001 and pretty much drove Nebraska to the Big Ten.

Now that’s just one issue. My other major problem with this split comes down to exposure.

The North schools will not get near the exposure in the major California media markets as the South schools.

Yes, they’ll get games there – but they’re not inter-division games. The focus won’t be on contending for a spot in the conference championship, since the teams will be in separate divisions.

The North teams, for most of the season, now become an afterthought to the division race between the California schools and the Arizona schools. It’s similar to what you see in the Big 12. No one in the Big 12 South cares about the North teams. They never have. The markets in Texas don’t focus on a game between Kansas and Iowa State because it doesn’t impact any of the South teams.

However, they’ll focus a bit more on games between Texas Tech and Baylor because maybe Texas Tech and Texas are tied at the top and the Longhorns need the Red Raiders to lose.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking – but other South teams will be playing North teams and the losses will count in the standings. Sure. And that isn’t a major problem. However, again, the focus is going to be on a single game and not the entire divisional race.

Will South teams really care if Oregon is playing at Colorado?

No.

That exposure might not seem like a huge issue. But Utah recruits California more than any other state and over time, I fear recruits will start looking at the North as something less than the South.

If the California media markets are focusing more and more on just the South teams, the North will be an afterthought to many California kids and over time, I think that will impact recruiting.

Face it, California is the enchilada in the Pac-12. They’ll always dominate and keeping both major media markets in the same division (San Francisco and L.A.) will do nothing to benefit the North, which, unfortunately, can’t stack up to what California offers.

If you split the California schools, it balances the divisions out far more than what we’ll get with a North/South split that puts Utah and Colorado in the NW.

It equals out the power and keeps the conference from tilting heavily in one direction.

You put Utah and Colorado in the North and over time, the conference will essentially be the Pac-12 South and Those Other Guys.

You might not see a problem with that as a Cal fan, since either way, you’re golden. But as a Ute fan, I want what is best for my program and I know that while we should just be happy to be here, I still can’t help but think putting us in the North will ultimately hinder the growth of our program.

I don’t want that. I want what is best for us and ultimately, what is best for the entire conference. I think a balanced conference, with no power consolidated in one division, ultimately finds itself in a similar position as the SEC and not the Big 12 which, while successful in the South, was a flawed conference.

Another issue that has been raised as a concern, but doesn’t really bother me, is the implication of teams playing twice: once in conference play and once in the championship game. This can be particularly difficult if the first game is late in the season and it followed shortly by the conference championship game.

1. I don’t see you can avoid this, unless you add more schools and really segregate the conference.
2. Rematches can generate a lot of excitement (unless one team is clearly dominant.)

This was a public service announcement.

jh