PAC-12 Considering 9am Kickoffs
What school would ever approve of that?
Kegs and eggs anyone?
Mike Leach will have opinions. So will fan bases faced with the prospect of tailgating at 5:30 a.m. (wait...do Pac-12 fans tailgate?).
They do. Typically with White Claws out of the Prius. NTTAWWT
ain't no laws when you're drinkin' 'Claws
As a Prius driver that drank a White Claw yesterday, this hit close to home.
I have personally tailgated at U of O and let met tell you, The Boy Scouts of America keep that place sparkling clean.
Ehh...when I used to drive to Michigan from DC for games, I would arrive in AA around 5 or 6 am, and beer pong games were already going on at frat houses. I think they would manage!
Why? Just why?
Doesn’t he realize almost all west coast residents are Midwest transplants who enjoy watching Big 10 football at 9 AM?
I think it has less to do with the west coast residents, and more to do with getting an east coast audience.
You don’t need to kickoff at 9am PT to do that, just don’t kick off at 7pm PT or later... it’s really not that hard of a concept
It's a weather issue for some of the PAC. For example, you can't kick off a game in Tempe at noon in Aug/Sept at 115 degrees.
3:30 against ND was brutal.
Why not?
Here's my solution: don't live in places like Tempe.
Actually I think the west coast teams should kick off at 9-11 eastern. I only ever watch west coast games when all the real games are over.
I agree. The ONLY Pac-12 I watch is late Saturday nights. Granted, I don't have a playoff vote....
No way the PAC 10/12 can compete with Indiana vs Rutgers.
This a real take. My Seattle based roommate will go batshit if he has to watch WSU Cougars with his coffee instead of real football.
Watch the PAC 12 - where you can have beer with your breakfast!
The bar I sometimes went to to watch Michigan before our games became ubiquitous offered a brunch special with mimosas.
Or in some cases: "where you don't have to feel bad anymore about your beer with breakfast"
This is the dumbest thing ever!
What are the main arguments against this? As someone living one the west coast, I love 9am football.
You'll probably have a hard time filling up the stadium by kickoff. Students may decide not to show up at all. No tailgating before the game.
I think the pre-game logistics could get tricky as well. You would have a large number of people having to travel/work/set-up before it was light.
Tailgating maybe . . . But filling up the stadium by kickoff, students not showing up, this happens anytime.
PAC12 fandom is a fucking joke anyway.
Biggest issue is the student section would be empty at kickoff
I was going to bring this up regarding UCLA, where an early kickoff would make it impossible for students to get to Pasadena from Westwood in timely fashion, but UCLA already plays games without student attendance due to the late start of their fall quarter.
Seeing them play in the Rose Bowl with 25,000 fans in attendance would be a spectacle, though.
I went to a UCLA-Arizona game at the Rose Bowl a few years ago. It was half empty. UCLA is a basketball school. Football, especially after the Terry Donahue-era, is an afterthought.
It's not really a basketball school, either. This is not a Kansas/North Carolina type fanbase. This past January they hosted Stanford and Cal on January 3rd and 5th, a Thursday-Saturday combo. They couldn't draw 10,000 for either game in an arena that seats almost 13.
I mean, 8000 and 9000 fans isn't terrible. But it's not fantastic, either. It's LA, a front-running town. They'll show when they're a #1 seed type (as they were a few years ago), but millions of people will take a pass when the team isn't at the front of the headlines. Sports fandom is just different there.
Californians are largely indifferent to college sports. They think college football is for Southerners and Midwesterners. The fact that UCLA basketball has been wandering in the woods for nearly three decades may have done permanent damage to the popularity of Pac-12 basketball outside of Arizona.
There's a bit more enthusiasm for college sports in SoCal than in NorCal because UCLA and USC are a bigger draw than Cal and Stanford, but ultimately, college sports always take a back seat to pro sports in California.
Alcohol poisoning from trying to make it all the way through until Pac-12 After Dark.
Agreed, completely.
Yeah, it's nice to watch football at 9 am from your home. Who wants to go to a football game that early? Not me. Students have trouble making games at noon as it is (and before I get too "get off my lawn" - ish when I was that age I'd go to the noon games and get there early but I was dead-dog tired when I woke up early enough on Saturday to do that).
The arguments revolve around the needs of fans and players. The only reason to do this is to pander to people watching tv in the eastern half of the country, which is obviously not the PAC 12's important constituency.
There is a subset of people who like watching football at 9am on the west coast, but there's also a subset of people who like watching football at 10:30 pm on the east coast, and that group is probably a similar size. Why not enjoy the fact that you have the time slot owned? Why not lean into the 3/4 pm time slot that has been abandoned by "big games" and put your showcases there?
This will probably never happen, because it's a terrible idea.
Also, no one wants to watch Pac-12 football regardless of the time of day.
I live in Oregon and I get up at 8AM to get downtown Portland to the pub where the Michigan Alums meet to watch UofM games that start at noon ET, and I’m 85. I’m a UofM grad and have been Blue since I was 10. My friends who are UofO grads are fanatics for UofO football. Get off you snobbish high horse there are more people living in California, Oregon, and Washington than the combined populations of MI, OH, IN, Il, WI, IA, MN and NE, and millions of them follow college football.
You're 85 as in years old???
Awesome! I bet you have a lot of amazing stories about M Football that many of us don't know. Also, what pub in Portland do you watch the games at?
Lecture much? I understand there are fans of those teams, as I’m not a compete asshat. pac 12 football is and has been down as a whole for a couple years now from where it was a while back and the quality of those teams has not stacked up to their counterparts in other conferences. If the non-local/non-alumni were watching nationally i doubt that the commissioner would be considering this. I have friends who are fans of those teams and would say the same. You could characterize the B1G West the same way recently, though things seem to be improved there with frost, brown, and fleck joining the conference.
the drunken stupor of a subset of students who just stayed up drinking the night before? I mean if you're out at the bar till 2:30 am, and you gotta get up and tailgate at like 7:00 am, what's the incentive to "go to bed and quit drinking"?
Because Dave Brandon said so?
Hahaha what an absolutely terrible idea.
You have to wake up like 2 hours before physical competition to be in a relatively peak situation. Eat, tape, dress, and warm up by 9am? So he expected players to wake up at 6 or 7am at the latest?
I wish all Rutger games started at 9am ET. I think he's on to something.
Breakfast tailgating, out of the stadium before it gets blazing hot, a full weekend afternoon to do whatever.
I'm not opposed for the west coast.
TBH breakfast tailgating is already the way to go for noon games. You eat a brunch at 10 or 10:30 as it is; who wants hot dogs at 10 am?