University of the Pacific sponsored football at the I-A (now FBS level) before discontinuing the sport after the 1995 season. They played at 28,000-seat Stagg Stadium, which is still in use for their soccer program and high school football.

Would Pacific have become part of the WAC-16 in 1996, or would have they remained the 7th team in the Big West?

Would they have joined the Sun Belt in 2001 as its 8th team (Idaho, NMSU, North Texas, Arkansas State, MTSU, SW Louisiana, NE Louisiana), or would they have played as an independent like Utah State prior to joining the WAC?

Would Pacific still be stuck in the WAC right now?

If Pacific had football, they likely would have been the last school selected - before Idaho -besides Utah State and NMSU when SMU, Rice, and Tulsa left the WAC.

Idaho probably never gets in the WAC if UOP football was still around - sending Idaho back to the Big Sky eight years ago.

Pacific likely would be contemplating dropping football today, but that assumes a poor team perfomance. With Pacific, SJSU, and Fresno in the WAC, maybe Sac St would have found the corporate support to move up.

What if, "what if" scenarios actually mattered?

(05-05-2012 09:26 PM)chargeradio Wrote:  University of the Pacific sponsored football at the I-A (now FBS level) before discontinuing the sport after the 1995 season. They played at 28,000-seat Stagg Stadium, which is still in use for their soccer program and high school football.

Would Pacific have become part of the WAC-16 in 1996, or would have they remained the 7th team in the Big West?

Would they have joined the Sun Belt in 2001 as its 8th team (Idaho, NMSU, North Texas, Arkansas State, MTSU, SW Louisiana, NE Louisiana), or would they have played as an independent like Utah State prior to joining the WAC?

Would Pacific still be stuck in the WAC right now?

Pacific as a small private school does not have the dollars to keep up with the arms race in college football. It has no doctoral program and is already concerned with the change in Cal grant funding. The issues facing Pacific are why I question SDSU's success as a charter. They and Pacific would be in direct competition.

At the end of the day, Pacific does well in Ca Olympic sports and participates in the MPSF for a number of them. But they operate on a shoestring compared to the pac12 schools. But it is a small family atmosphere.

What if ST johns, Marquette, Providence, Depaul, Seton Hall still sponsored football and Georgetown and Villanova were more commtted?

(05-06-2012 09:00 AM)gosports1 Wrote:  What if ST johns, Marquette, Providence, Depaul, Seton Hall still sponsored football and Georgetown and Villanova were more commtted?

Um, could potentially be a fantastic D1AA conference.

Why limit this discussion to Pacific? They are a small private school not in a major urban area, in a city of 300,000 people, and they were never a power in college football when they had a team.

There are other BW schools that used to have I-A football, and three of them are large public schools in the L.A. metro area: Long Beach State, Cal State Fullerton, and UC Irvine.

Long Beach State has over 34,000 students and their athletic programs do very well in the Big West -- the obvious comparison is to San Diego State.

Pacific would be in the Pac-12 if it stuck with football.