(11-27-2020 04:56 AM)Tulsa Guy Wrote: Is it any wonder the PAC-12 is looking for opponents to bail league out of the mess it made?
Deseret News, by Doug Robinson, November 25, 2020
The PAC-12 has made its mess with all its dithering. Now it wants other teams to help fix it. First the league cancels all those nonconference games, costing dozens of schools millions of dollars and their athletes dozens of games, and now they're saying please come back and play us on our home fields and let us recoup the money with our TV contracts and give our athletes a little exercise.
And, by the way, you have to undergo their pre-game COVID-19 tests. By the way, whatever protocols the league has in place aren't any more effective than the protocols elsewhere--the league has canceled one-third of its games (7 of 21) due to coronavirus outbreaks.
The PAC-12 is a Power Five conference in name only. The league has lost 11 of its last 15 games to SEC teams; 16 of its last 19 to Big Ten; 20 of its last 33 to Big 12 teams, and 20 of its last 31 bowl games.
There have been six college football playoffs so far, offering a total of 24 berths. The PAC-12 has claimed just two of them, by far the worst among the Power Five conferences.
The league found itself falling behind when it realized everyone was going on with the football season and it has been playing catch up ever since. Anyone want to help them catch up?
The Big 10 numbers are incorrect and I just looked at the 2019 season. The Pac-12 went 5-1 against the Big 10 in 2019:
Stanford beat Northwestern
Colorado beat Nebraska
Arizona State beat Michigan State
Cal beat Illinois (Redbox Bowl)
Oregon beat Wisconsin (Rose Bowl)
USC loss to Iowa (Holiday Bowl)
If he wants his article to have credibility, he needs to get the facts correct. He sounds like someone who just got his media credentials denied by Utah. Also, the Big Ten canceled the Ohio State at Oregon and Michigan at Washington games. They had no control over many of the cancellations.
I thought this article, which was critical of the Larry Scott and the Pac-12, was fair:
https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/202...tt-hotseat
I think it is fair to say that the Pac-12 should have started their season a 2-3 weeks sooner. I also think it is fair to say that the leadership in the conference is a train wreck. That said, the 2020 pandemic has made playing college athletics a bit challenging and the west, right or wrong, has had stringent standards for playing and attending athletic events during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Pac-12 looks like a power conference from the revenue produced and the athletes then send to the NFL, NBA and MLB. As long as their getting their split of the college football playoff revenue, that is not going to change. But everyone agrees that at a minimum, the Pac-12 needs USC football to improve and that will help the conference overall.