Winners/Losers of Pac-12 Reallignment
Winner: Rivalries
With the stipulation that the California schools will maintain their existing rivalries, fans of those teams should be happy.
Loser: Washington/Oregon schools
There goes that vaunted Los Angeles recruiting base. Washington/WSU/Oregon/OSU will each travel to L.A. just once every two years, while hosting UCLA/USC every other year.
From my understanding, it'll look something like this for the Northwest schools:
Non-conference opponent
Non-conference opponent
Non-conference opponent
at Stanford
home Cal
at WSU
home Oregon
at OSU
home USC/UCLA
at Utah/Colo
home ASU/UofA
at Utah/Colo/ASU/UofA
For UCLA:
NC
NC
NC
Home Washington
at OSU
Home Colorado
at Utah
Home Cal
at Stanford
Home Arizona
at ASU
Home USC
Winner: Utah
With only USC among recent football powers in the Pac-12 South, Utah will immediately come in as one of the top three teams, if not top two.
Loser: Pac-12 pocketbooks
The decision to have Pac-12 championship at top-seed home field instead of neutral turf will ultimately cost the conference some big money. Of course, the ACC has a neutral-field championship game and that attracts no one, so maybe it's a draw.
Winner: Larry Scott
It might not have been the Pac-16 that he dreamed of, but the Commish comes out roses with this deal. The Pac-12 introduces two new HUGE markets in Salt Lake City and Denver, will make a boatload with the media rights, and with Utah in the mix, strengthens the case for BCS title-game contention. As Yahoo's Dan Wetzel said: "Best freshman year since Carmelo Anthony."
Loser: NW Reporters
Bob Condotta might be the best in the business, but I feel sorry for him. He still has to go to Pullman every other year, but now only gets Tempe/Phoenix, Salt Lake, Denver once every four years. On the flip side...
Winner: Me, Scott Wolf and the other UCLA/USC reporters
Now the UCLA/USC reporters only have to travel to Pullman and Corvallis once every four years, while adding Boulder (Denver) and Salt Lake City to the mix, too. WIN.
Don't forget the RIDICULOUS move to have the winner of the conference host the conference championship game. Pretty much every other conference has a neutral-site championship game.
IMHO, I think the only thing you "win" from this is not going to Pullman. You get to go through Portland to go to Corvallis. And if you get it on a nice day, it's such a fun quaint town!
curious, which neutral site would you choose for the championship game? Put it in Arizona every year?
I believe a lot of people are missing one benefit for the NW schools: Likely an easier path each year to the PAC 10 Championship Game.
Without having to play USC, and to a much lesser extent UCLA, every year the NW schools will have an advantage over Cal and Stanford on any given year to have a better division record. Hence the easier path to a PAC 10 Championship Game.
if it were up to me... i'd set it up on a rotational basis so each year a different school in a different state sets it up - regardless of record. so a fixed pattern so each year it is in a different "neutral" site.
yes, it could be possible that UCLA is set to host a pac10 championship game and UCLA makes it so they have home field advantage. this is no different than the cowboys this year making the superbowl at dallas stadium.
this way you get more exposure and you get to plan for a bigger "event" (i.e., superbowl).
FWIW, i also think they should do this with the pac10 basketball tourney. have the tourney rotate year to year in differnet pac10 cities and keep it in NBA arenas. LA (staples), arizona (us airways), norcal (oracle), oregon (rose garden), and seattle (old key arena). the expansion fcuks it up tho.
How about QualComm Stadium for the Championship Game? It doesn't get more neutral than that...
Scott Wolf will always be a loser!!!!!!