OT: why is the PAC-12 so lame lately?
I mean seriously they don't even perform like a major conference anymore in football and basketball. Could likely be a one bid league this year. Has lost countless bowl games of late. Nobody is separating from the PAC to make the Playoff. Is this mostly only a recruiting issue or is it something else?
January 4th, 2019 at 11:05 PM ^
It was 7 years too late honestly when it came to Chip Kelly. The guy was a massive fail in the NFL, and in the meantime college football had evolved to where the flashy extreme tempo and outrageous uniform days of Oregon were nothing new anymore. Chip was an innovator no doubt, but he was arrogant. He seemed to assume that no one would be able to catch up with his style, or god forbid, supersede it. He was wrong.
January 4th, 2019 at 11:09 PM ^
It seems tough for these innovative offensive coaches to keep innovating once they get some success. Look at RR. He was ahead of the game with his use of the spread, but now he's not even at the forefront of the movement that he started.
January 5th, 2019 at 12:23 AM ^
You have a short shelf life if you are just a system guy and everybody catches up to that system. I'm old enough to remember when the wishbone was a unique thing. Nothing just stays still.
Even Urban Meyer's system is being ditched at Ohio State. Didn't think that would happen that quickly.
January 4th, 2019 at 11:07 PM ^
Oregon will be a player here again with Chrstobal. They have a great class coming in next Fall.
January 4th, 2019 at 9:45 PM ^
About the only thing I like about them is the Pac12 After Dark; Not in like a serious football way, just like to have a game on while I post in Snowflakes threads after our game.
January 4th, 2019 at 10:34 PM ^
Me too. I love it.
I don't stare at it for 3 hours like a Michigan game, but I focus on key portions of it here and there.
There are some fun games, even of they don't mean anything in the bigger picture of college football.
The Cal - USC game this year reminded me why I love college football, even though both teams were unranked.
January 4th, 2019 at 9:45 PM ^
How did you figure this out? They play after dark so less people can see how bad they are, unless you live on the west cost. They keep yelling “East coast bias!” hoping no one actually watched. Or “The conference is so deep we beat each other up”. But then Seattle, Princeton, Santa Clara, and Liberty won on the same day, and their cover is blown!
“Worst power conference ever” is thrown around with legitimate stats to support it, and they’re not even close to being second worst.
I guess the better question is how long has it been since the pac12 was good at either sport? Aside for a “1 elite team” scenario...
oh and the board says bowl games are meaningless (until we lose and everyone gets upset and acts like it was important again) so leave that out of your argument /s
January 5th, 2019 at 10:17 AM ^
But the fact they play so many games starting at 10pm or later in the eastern and central time zones also makes them an afterthought to the eastern half of the country. How many football fans, including the most ardent CFB fans, are willing to stay up way past midnight to watch two PAC 12 teams when most of the conference is mediocre or worse.
I don't have stats to prove it, but I'd have to believe a lot more west coast athletes head east than vice versa, partially as a result of the long-term mediocrity of PAC 12 football and hoops.
January 4th, 2019 at 10:08 PM ^
The problem with the conference is Bill Walton. He calls it the "Conference of Champions." He says the most insanely idiotic comments on air. I equate him to the Harry Caray of basketball. The longer the game goes...the stranger he becomes.
January 5th, 2019 at 12:39 AM ^
January 5th, 2019 at 2:45 AM ^
Walton is a national treasure.
January 5th, 2019 at 9:36 AM ^
I want Walton and Vitale to do a game together just once.
January 5th, 2019 at 8:18 AM ^
Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
January 4th, 2019 at 10:12 PM ^
Because they're too busy touching themselves at night
January 4th, 2019 at 10:17 PM ^
Too many coaching changes. No consistency of programs, philosophy, recruiting, recent history. You can’t just change head coaches every 4-5 years and build or maintain a successful program.
USC 4 in 10 years
UCLA 4 in 11 years
UW 4 in 15 years
WSU 3 in 12 years
Oregon 4 in 7 years
Arizona 3 in 8 years
. . . .
January 4th, 2019 at 10:32 PM ^
I blame XM and myself. Our constant reminders of traffic season have scared off the best athletes.
January 4th, 2019 at 10:41 PM ^
but if we're not scaring the top athletes to michigan, we're really not doing our jobs now, are we?
January 5th, 2019 at 10:20 AM ^
I just hope your livestock never comes to the realization that you are to blame. Especially the bulls in your herd.
Animal Farm Part II ?
January 5th, 2019 at 12:46 PM ^
if you want to get care package of beef from the XM farm, i suggest:
January 5th, 2019 at 1:35 PM ^
Who is that alongside Brady Hoke and when did they visit your farm?
January 4th, 2019 at 10:35 PM ^
It has not been the same for football since Pete Carroll left usc and kelly left Oregon
January 4th, 2019 at 10:53 PM ^
Right. Pete Carroll, who bailed out of USC and the entire NCAA right before it was revealed that the best players on his teams were actually professionals.
January 4th, 2019 at 10:51 PM ^
Maybe enough of them got busted for paying players that they aren't doing it anymore, and that disqualifies them from getting a percentage of top tier talent?
January 4th, 2019 at 11:03 PM ^
Football seems to be a size issue. Speed isn't really the problem. Washington was relatively small compared to Ohio State and looked tiny vs Auburn. Collectively the Pac12 looks small to me.
Pac 12 has been a coaching carousel with Oregon State, Oregon, Cal, UCLA, USC, ASU, AZ and Colorado all going through coaching changes in the last 5 years, some multiple. That's 2/3 of your conference. The longest tenured coach is at Utah. 2nd longest is at Stanford. Not exactly national powers.
Basketball woes have been weird but I think a lot circles back to coaching, which is just sort of meh.
January 4th, 2019 at 11:30 PM ^
The answer is Bill Walton
January 4th, 2019 at 11:47 PM ^
I am a graduate of a PAC-12 institution. Google Larry Scott and you’ll have your answer.
January 5th, 2019 at 10:39 AM ^
Is he also a "Comedian. Masturbator." like our very own Jim Delaney?
January 5th, 2019 at 12:04 PM ^
Believe it or not, he's worse. Much worse.
January 5th, 2019 at 12:04 AM ^
The PAC 12 has many issues. For one thing the Schools have not stood up to the networks and the presidents have buckled. I am very well connected to the PAC 12 and the Schools and coaches for football hate playing on Thursdays, Fridays and 7:45pn on Saturday. The coaches feel they are at a disadvantage as some months they play w never even play a Saturday (DAY) game.
When the conference has repeatedly made the schedules to favor there HOT team of 3-4 years other schools have had it.
ARIZONA ST. - is the future of that conference. The football facilities are the best in the confer eve besides Oregon, the campus is amazing, they are close enough to Cali as they are getting more and more Football, Basketball and Baseball players every year.
Washington will continue to get Cali kids as well. BIGGEST MYSTERY in all of the NCAA IS why isn’t UCLA the most dominant college in all of the NCAA! They have everything and that’s not including the location, campus and women.
January 5th, 2019 at 12:29 AM ^
UCLA is a mystery for the ages. They have it all. They should be able to out-recruit even USC.
Their only shortfall is no on-campus stadium. That might be a bigger deal then we realize.
January 5th, 2019 at 1:54 AM ^
I think it is a pretty big deal. It makes going to games really annoying. Michigan and most schools are having attendance issues, primarily amongst students and younger fans.
Well, take that and multiply it 3x for UCLA because students and anyone near Westwood have to deal with 1.5-2 hours of traffic each way rather than stumble down main st and hang a right at hoover.
Gotta be hard to recruit with a stadium a quarter full.
Other barriers: tough academics, a culture that doesn't worship athletes, etc.
They have it all for students that wants a top-notch education in a world class city. But for future NFL players, eh. Their priorities are probably very different.
January 5th, 2019 at 9:11 AM ^
People in LA largely don’t care about sports; they’ve got stuff to do because it’s endless summer there.
January 5th, 2019 at 10:32 AM ^
Makes sense.
Protip: If you went down State St. and then hung a right at Hoover, you probably wouldn't stumble as much.
January 5th, 2019 at 10:41 AM ^
But that also depends upon how many hours of tailgating you did first.
January 5th, 2019 at 10:41 AM ^
"stumble down main st and hang a right at hoover"
You always watch the Michigan games at Allmendinger Park?
January 5th, 2019 at 10:42 AM ^
Student body demographics. Students that dont care about football turn into alumni that dont care and without alumni pressure the administrators - who seldom care about football at a personal level anywhere - will deprioritize football.
Its the mirror image of the SEC/Texas/OSU type situation where the community around the university is so invested in football success that the school engages in Faustian bargains left and right.
USC is the only school in the Pac where theres a bigger outside pressure to be good at football because its the school that has a real fanbase and attracted the kids who care about football at college for a long time. They shifted toward more of a UCLA type approach institutionally in the early to mid 00s though and I suspect theres going to be a major disconnect between the older alumni invested in football and many newer alumni who are only vaguely aware they have a football team.
January 5th, 2019 at 12:19 AM ^
My theory is that the Pacific Coast is the only place in the country where karma still applies. USC football was a dirty, scumbag program and has been cursed by a slew of horrible coaching hires that has prevented any success despite how down the PAC 12 is. Same with Arizona basketball. Didn't actually have the balls to cut loose their blatantly cheating douche of a coach when he got caught, and have thus been rewarded with a series of decommits, transfers, and (my personal favorite) a blowout first round loss to 13 seeded Buffalo in the tourney despite having the 1st overall NBA draft pick that year.
Let's hope the karma caught a ride on the Buckeyes' flight back from California and starts to infect the Big Ten this winter and next fall.
January 5th, 2019 at 12:30 AM ^
Seems legit.
January 5th, 2019 at 2:52 AM ^
Tucson is not on the Pacific Coast
January 5th, 2019 at 2:59 AM ^
Karma occasionally will extrapolate
January 5th, 2019 at 12:53 PM ^
Well the SEC is the dirtiest conference in football, filled with coaches who blatantly cheat and it's done well, OSU the dirtiest program in the big-ten and done well, actually the best in the big-10 under Meyer, not even sure there's a close second. Of the P5 conferences, pac-12 is probably the cleanest, and that's probably why they're doing the worst, at least in the two sports we're talking about.
As someone posted, the non-revenue sports, they do really well. In the fall 2018 director cup standings, UM is one, and four pac-12 teams are in the top-10, Col at 3, Stanford at 5, Oregon at 7, Washington at 8.
January 5th, 2019 at 12:37 AM ^
January 5th, 2019 at 12:48 AM ^
The conference had a big influx of money when the network started, leading to the hiring of some good coaches and real improvement in the on field product. Then, some of those hires went sideways. RichRod at Arizona, Todd Graham at ASU, Jim Mora, and of course the two headed Lane-Sark disaster at SC. Coupled with Helfrich being unable to sustain Oregon’s momentum post Mariota and Shaw not being quite to Harbaugh’s level, it’s a bad scene. About the only coaches from that era still going strong are the two in Washington.
January 5th, 2019 at 2:56 AM ^
If you look at non rev spirts the pac 12 dominates. Even leaving Stanford aside, cal, UCLA, usc, zona and asu and UW do very well due to 3 things:
location to talent, location to weather, and academics
people in these sports know they likely won’t make 50M within 5 years of graduation by playing professionally. So we know there’s talent out there (simply a combo of population and money and weather to train all year long)- why would anyone leave that weather, especially if it’s ones home, for academics that won’t beat the pc12?
However, basketball and football players don’t care about school. Legitimately - they money is too much for the top 50 players. So duke will pull kids from the west, Gonzaga will and a few others. Of course it’s also coaching but that stems from admin issues at these places too- IMO the admins are so academically focused they don’t know how to deal with Athletics and the money that comes with it too well.
January 5th, 2019 at 3:16 AM ^
It actually is related to my cynicism re: CU and Utah joining the pac12. Those two schools will never win anything in that conf. Who the hell is going to draw Cali and southern kids to play skool in Colorado or Utah? Maybe in a niche sport like CU track (which I suspect is dominant in major part due to elevation) and Utah WGym.
They will field uncompetitive teams every year in almost every sport until the state of California finally falls off into the pacific due to an earthquake sometime in the mid 2500s.
Similar to Psu - when they joined the b10 arrogant psu ppl thought they’d pull every talented athlete from Chicago and the rest of the Midwest to play in state college. The reality was just the opposite- the rest of the B10 could now access Penn and Bal-md-dc area kids and sell them on playing at home 1-2 times a year. Penn Kids now srsly look at 10-12 other schools instead of just Psu bc, cause, etc. Conversely, middle west kids now just look at one more school - psu - which I think we can all agree just isn’t that ducking special. #usernamechecksout
January 5th, 2019 at 3:49 AM ^
UCLA basketball is one of the most storied programs in college basketball but hasn't really accomplished anything in a long time and has been in a funk that is entering its third decade (sounds familiar). Under Sean Miller, Arizona basketball has been a solid regular season team but not a good tourney team. USC football has been lost in the woods since Pete Carroll left. Oregon football is still trying to recapture the Chip Kelly magic. Washington is basically the league's football power by default in the absence of USC and Oregon. In basketball, there's really no one without UCLA and Arizona. So yeah, the Pac-12 overall hasn't really amounted to much lately.
January 5th, 2019 at 10:56 AM ^
Oregon is starting to feel like a one trick pony who's day in the spotlight is done.
They will still be in the top half of the Big 12, but they won't be the cool "it" program in college football that they were up until Kelly left.
They had three things going for them that were unique at the time: Their high-tempo, high-scoring spread offense, their crazy ever-changing unis, and their outrageous facilities from Nike money.
Now everybody has those things. Three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust Ohio State and Penn State went spread, Maryland has crazy retina-burning unis too, even Northwestern has cool, hip facilities in the works.
There is nothing unique about Oregon anymore. They are not in decline per se - they still have all that cool stuff - but so does everybody else now. If you want that stuff, you don't have to go to the middle-of-nowhere Eugene Oregon to get it.
January 5th, 2019 at 4:21 AM ^
yup...which is when Pete Carrol left USC for the Seahawks.
January 5th, 2019 at 7:45 AM ^
Part of it can be explained by the arms race....
The PAC decided to do things differently with their independent owning of their conference network. Plus they decided to put their head quarters in a HIGH rent downtown SF location vs. suburb of Chicago. The money that is going to each school is drastically lower than then the SEC, B1G and less then BXII and ACC. Money that goes to assistant coaches and facilities... etc.
I was looking for the graph I saw, but couldn't find it.
January 5th, 2019 at 8:07 AM ^
I think much of it has to do with the time difference and that many of the games played in the Pac 12 take place after 10:00 Eastern time. The games are televised after people on the East Coast have gone to sleep and end to late to make the deadlines for the next day's media.