(06-25-2022 11:29 AM)Section 200 Wrote:  I find it really difficult to be bullish on the Pac - I see them as the 5th conference right now & think it will be hard for them to climb higher. We took our vacation in June in California - wonderful place. Kudos to the NBA & MLB for owning the state in terms of sports teams. Lakers, Golden State, Dodgers, Giants, Padres gear everywhere, on TV in the sports bars, on the mind of Uber drivers. Add in the Mexican National Soccer team & that's a lot of competition not even counting the NFL (Rams won the Super Bowl!)

Ultimately USC, UCLA & Stanford should join the Big 10, Cal should drop sports and that will allow the schools to maximize their value. At a certain point "potential" has to be realized & the fans have seemed to move on. Perhaps the problem is that the California Pac schools are just too elite for the t-shirt fans to care about them. Almost every Ohio student can go to Ohio State, even if they have to go to a branch campus for a year or 2 before transferring. OSU alumni are everywhere. There is essentially no path to UCLA or Cal for the vast majority of California kids, even celebrities have to cheat to get their kids into USC & Stanford is basically Harvard for admissions. Hard to form a bond with one of these schools if all of the folks you know have no chance to attend.

I am glad to hear that you enjoyed your California vacation. I have lived in Southern California for the past 40 years and I see people wearing t-shirts and hats from UCLA and USC all of the time. I am frequently wearing a UCLA t-shirt or hat. As a kid, you grow up rooting for UCLA or USC, and you know it will not be easy to get into either of these schools. Just the way it is. That does not mean you are not a fan for life. There are other UC schools that students can attend. UCLA received 149,700 aplications for admission for the fall of 2022. Cal received 128,000 applications for admissions for the fall of 2022. These schools can only take a limited amount of students.

The California schools are not joining the Big Ten and the Big Ten is not going to invite them. The statement that, "Cal should drop sports and that will allow the schools to maximize their value", makes absolutely no sense to me. But it is obvious that Cal is never going to drop sports. Just because some dumb pseudo-celebrities decided to cheat to get their kids into USC does not mean that everybody does it.