As long as UTex and OU are themselves making as much or more on average as Ohio St, Alabama, USC, Florida St, etc., and then feel that they have at most equal difficulty winning the Big 12 as winning the other P confs .... I can't on earth figure why they'd want to leave.

Association with higher research/academic schools, via athletics, might be a nice feather in your cap. But I hardly see it as being a good enough reason, in of itself, to leave what you have that's working well.

(10-25-2016 03:26 PM)jrj84105 Wrote:  Unless or until USC returns to glory and unless or until UCLA lives up to potential, the PAC will continue to have little at the top or bottom and a lot in the middle. It's intrinsically set up to be a conference of parity with only two schools that one would expect to have permanent little brother status (OSU and WSU).

The style of play (predominantly pass heavy) also lends itself to more upsets or unexpected results. Add in a 9 game conference schedule, and the odds of producing two undefeated or one loss teams drops further. It's not a great formula for NY6 placement.

Absolutely agree with jrj here. I believe the PAC's parity shows what Division 4 would be like for the rest of the P5 if they were to jettison the G5.

In addition, Stanford, USC, and UCLA - 3 of the top-6 PAC programs - rarely, if ever, play FCS opponents. USC and Stanford get Notre Dame every year, which over the previous 5 years has been an extremely solid P5 matchup.

So, it is that much more difficult for the top half of the PAC to have the nice and shiny win-loss records as compared to the padded win-loss records of the other P5.

As mentioned elsewhere above, the PAC is 3-0 against the Big 12 OOC. And, I note how the #6 team in the PAC NORTH and #5 team in the PAC SOUTH did against top-10 teams in OOC play:

Oregon (2-5, 0-4) lost AT #7 Nebraska (7-0, 4-0) by 3 points.
UCLA (3-5, 1-4) lost AT #9 Texas A&M (6-1, 4-1) in overtime.

I'm not trying to imply transitive property here, but just to point out that even the "bottom-wrung" teams have plenty of punch.

Compare to:
- Kansas: who lost to Ohio 21-37 and Memphis 7-43
- Iowa St.: who lost to FCS UNI and to Iowa 3-42

Also, from a more general philosophical point of view: why are we analyzing the NY6?

From the CFP, in two years you see both B12 and PAC have got 1 each in. Both have a tie with a contract bowl. So really, we're talking about the Access bowls. What's so special about making the Access bowls?

I don't even think they pay out that much, when they aren't semi-final games. Do they? Certainly not $40M each.

Both B12 and PAC have nice bowl games outside the CFP that pay well and are on ESPN, in late Dec. Alamo, Russell Athletic, Holiday ...

YNot,

Pretty much nailed it: the Big 12 teams play weak schedules, and they purposefully design the conference schedule to try to get 2-3 (sometimes 4) teams with 0 or 1 losses heading into the last 3-4 weeks of the regular season by not playing each other until the end of the year. And that also helps because all those teams then get ranked in the top 25 artificially, because of their W-L records.

The PAC12'S biggest problem is east coast perception. I'm not going to call it bias because a bias would mean the AP voters on the east coast rank teams on the east coast higher because they like them better than west coast teams. I don't believe that is true.

It's all about what people see on their TV sets. They see a conference that generally is more pro sport centric to their populous and because of this cant put butts in seats fot their football and basketball games.

On top of empty seats, the PAC12'S football has been played down nationally bye media giant ESPN. I am actually not upset with any of this, to think that ESPN isn't going to protect the 2 conferences they have invested 100's of millions of dollars in would be ludicrous.

When you combine the lack of fan's in seats and the worldwide leader in sports gently pushing there own self interest, you create a perception of a conference being less than. That perception dictates votes, and those votes create a narrative about a conference that causes it to have a 1 loss team barely able to crack the top 20, while another conferences team needed 4 losses to finally be bounced out of the top 20.

The conference is deep, in fact the one truth about the PAC that I will absolutely proclaim is that it is the deepest conference. Having a deep conference creates parody, and in college football unfortunately this is perceived as weakness.

I don't think that the PAC is the best conference or even the 2nd best but I absolutely believe it is on that number 3 line with the ACC(3&3a). And to kind of answer the question posed by the thread, the PAC12 never gets a pass. It is the first conference to be marginalized by the National media at the first sign of weakness. I would ask everyone else here, why does every other conference get a pass?

The PAC plays much tougher nonconference schedules. In the 2015 regular season:
PAC played 10 P5 schools + BYU + 13 games against AAC/MWC
Big 12 played 8 P5 schools + 4 AAC schools

PAC played 5 MAC / Sun Belt / CUSA + 8 FCS schools
Big 12 played 10 MAC / Sun Belt / CUSA + 8 FCS schools

And how many of those P5 games were against marquee teams?
PAC: Michigan State, Texas A&M, Michigan (x2), Notre Dame (x2), Texas, Northwestern, Rutgers
Big 12: Iowa, Notre Dame, Tennessee, Arkansas, Cal, Minnesota, Rutgers, Maryland

This is a fairly consistent pattern over the years - the Big 12 plays soft schedules out of conference.

Why did you choose 2015 and not 2016 schedule? Just curious...