(09-02-2020 11:26 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  

(09-02-2020 11:10 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(09-02-2020 10:44 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  

(09-02-2020 09:37 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(09-02-2020 09:17 PM)SoCalBobcat78 Wrote:  I am not sure where to start. California in January of 2020 had a $21 billion dollar surplus and has the 5th largest economy in the world. The state budget was $214 billion in 2019-2020. The schools are not hurting. UCLA has a $7.5 billion dollar budget and a $5.3 billion dollar endowment. A $130 million dollar athletic budget is not a problem. At Cal, they have a $3 billion dollar budget and a $4.7 billion dollar endowment. Their $100 million dollar athletic budget is not a problem.

There is plenty of talent on the west coast and I am not sure what the changing demographics have to do with kids playing football? The recent California debt is from the pandemic and every state is dealing with that. I agree, college football is a regional sport and it is more popular in the South than in the West. In Southern California, if UCLA and USC are not playing well, fans will stay at home. There are too many other options. Plus, two NFL teams (in the beautiful SoFi Stadium), two NBA teams, two NHL teams, two MLB teams, and two MLS teams.

You make it seem like the west coast is dying. The priorities are somewhat different on the west coast, but the area is not dying. It is actually booming, at least in the housing market. As I have mentioned before, the Pac-12 Network has been an albatross around the conference neck and has limited exposure and revenue. Attendance has at best always been 4th among power conferences. A number of schools, UCLA and USC for example, have made mistakes that have hurt their programs. But I think the new AD's at UCLA and USC will turn it around.

I know where to start. The GDP of California is substantial. It would be 5th as a a world nation. But GDP is not State Revenue although it helps to generate it. The debt comes from running red ink in the State budget.
https://usdebtclock.org/state-debt-clock...clock.html

Endowments don't help athletic budgets unless they are athletic endowments and even then endowments tend to specify what their proceeds may be used for, and the principal is not touched.

Your attendance was 5th last year as posted above and an athletic budget of 100 million is near the bottom of the P5.

That said I would love to see the PAC12 become competitive again as it would help all college sports. It's just that in the past 20 years the trajectories have all been down.

The last 20 years? Did you ever hear of Pat Carroll and USC with its two Heisman Trophy winners? The rise of Oregon? Stanford and Andrew Luck?

If there's any disappointments in the last 20 years, I can think of two: UCLA and Arizona State. Especially Arizona State. That's one program that has the resources, location and size to be running for a NY6 bowl bid every year. Utah has done more in less than a decade than Arizona State since Jake Plummer took the Sun Devils to the Rose Bowl after the 1996 season.

As SoCalBobcat78 stated, the Pac-12 issues are not about money or talent. They have it. It's mostly questionable hires from the L.A. schools and bad management from Larry Scott. As I stated before on this thread, the Pac-12 perception issues start and end with USC football and UCLA basketball. It's easy to blame Larry Scott for everything but he's one of the symptoms, not the disease.

Finally, California sends more to Washington, DC than it receives. If I was a resident of a state where they get more federal dollars than what they send, I would be very concerned about how that will affect my state in the short and long term if net contributors like California and New York get hit really bad financially because of COVID-19.

Last time I checked the 2004 title was stripped due to cheating. Oregon has had a couple of runs the last serious one a decade ago. Titles in football, basketball?

If the talent was there you would be winning. Even halfway decent coaches can win with talent. I'm not so sure the talent is really there as much as the rating services pick enough everywhere to hold interest in their services.

The PAC's money issues are directly related to actual viewers. The big change was when technology could measure actual viewers vs subscribers vs estimated viewing based on state population. Advertisers have benefitted the most from actual counts.

I never said there wasn't plenty of money in California. Cal and UCLA are state schools. The issue is the red ink run by the state, not the GDP. California was on par for 90 billion in red ink. The emergency COVID expenditures will cost them about another 56 Billion if what I read was accurate. With a GDP as large as the state has I don't understand why the taxes don't cover it. This is part of the structural and management problems within the state. The industry is quite healthy.

The talent and money is there. You're confusing mediocrity on the field and court with lack of resources and recruits. Want to know a good example of a state that has plenty of talent and money and can't win championships? It's not California. It's Texas. When was the last time before 2005 that a Texas school won a national championship in football? In basketball? That was UTEP or Texas Western as it was called then 54 years ago. It's still the only Texas school that hast won the NCAA Tournament. But nobody would confuse not winning any championships with lack of talent and money especially for the likes of Texas and Texas A&M.

Yeah but people CARE about schools in Texas.. CA doesn't care, they are more passionate about Pro Sports than college. I think if SC was elite, the PAC would be in a much better position. Oregon just can't do what SC can do when they are real contenders. But the elephant in the room is the fact that people are leaving CA and heading elsewhere. They are about to lose it's #1 recruit, again, to the South (Foreman).

Until you figure out how to shrink/eliminate the time zones Pac 12 FB will always rate 5th in this ranking.

(09-03-2020 10:01 AM)westwolf Wrote:  Until you figure out how to shrink/eliminate the time zones Pac 12 FB will always rate 5th in this ranking.

If there were a couple other Utahs in the MWC, that’d help for expansion. I always considered New Mexico a Utah-lite. Decent academics and a state flagship. Also, it doesn’t hurt the state is fairly blue - fits the PAC. I also suspect Hawaii and one of the Nevada schools may have a chance in the future. The conference needs to maximize and dominate its region.

(09-03-2020 09:52 AM)Thiefery Wrote:  

(09-02-2020 11:26 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  

(09-02-2020 11:10 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(09-02-2020 10:44 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  

(09-02-2020 09:37 PM)JRsec Wrote:  I know where to start. The GDP of California is substantial. It would be 5th as a a world nation. But GDP is not State Revenue although it helps to generate it. The debt comes from running red ink in the State budget.
https://usdebtclock.org/state-debt-clock...clock.html

Endowments don't help athletic budgets unless they are athletic endowments and even then endowments tend to specify what their proceeds may be used for, and the principal is not touched.

Your attendance was 5th last year as posted above and an athletic budget of 100 million is near the bottom of the P5.

That said I would love to see the PAC12 become competitive again as it would help all college sports. It's just that in the past 20 years the trajectories have all been down.

The last 20 years? Did you ever hear of Pat Carroll and USC with its two Heisman Trophy winners? The rise of Oregon? Stanford and Andrew Luck?

If there's any disappointments in the last 20 years, I can think of two: UCLA and Arizona State. Especially Arizona State. That's one program that has the resources, location and size to be running for a NY6 bowl bid every year. Utah has done more in less than a decade than Arizona State since Jake Plummer took the Sun Devils to the Rose Bowl after the 1996 season.

As SoCalBobcat78 stated, the Pac-12 issues are not about money or talent. They have it. It's mostly questionable hires from the L.A. schools and bad management from Larry Scott. As I stated before on this thread, the Pac-12 perception issues start and end with USC football and UCLA basketball. It's easy to blame Larry Scott for everything but he's one of the symptoms, not the disease.

Finally, California sends more to Washington, DC than it receives. If I was a resident of a state where they get more federal dollars than what they send, I would be very concerned about how that will affect my state in the short and long term if net contributors like California and New York get hit really bad financially because of COVID-19.

Last time I checked the 2004 title was stripped due to cheating. Oregon has had a couple of runs the last serious one a decade ago. Titles in football, basketball?

If the talent was there you would be winning. Even halfway decent coaches can win with talent. I'm not so sure the talent is really there as much as the rating services pick enough everywhere to hold interest in their services.

The PAC's money issues are directly related to actual viewers. The big change was when technology could measure actual viewers vs subscribers vs estimated viewing based on state population. Advertisers have benefitted the most from actual counts.

I never said there wasn't plenty of money in California. Cal and UCLA are state schools. The issue is the red ink run by the state, not the GDP. California was on par for 90 billion in red ink. The emergency COVID expenditures will cost them about another 56 Billion if what I read was accurate. With a GDP as large as the state has I don't understand why the taxes don't cover it. This is part of the structural and management problems within the state. The industry is quite healthy.

The talent and money is there. You're confusing mediocrity on the field and court with lack of resources and recruits. Want to know a good example of a state that has plenty of talent and money and can't win championships? It's not California. It's Texas. When was the last time before 2005 that a Texas school won a national championship in football? In basketball? That was UTEP or Texas Western as it was called then 54 years ago. It's still the only Texas school that hast won the NCAA Tournament. But nobody would confuse not winning any championships with lack of talent and money especially for the likes of Texas and Texas A&M.

Yeah but people CARE about schools in Texas.. CA doesn't care, they are more passionate about Pro Sports than college. I think if SC was elite, the PAC would be in a much better position. Oregon just can't do what SC can do when they are real contenders. But the elephant in the room is the fact that people are leaving CA and heading elsewhere. They are about to lose it's #1 recruit, again, to the South (Foreman).

Hence my entire point on this thread. It starts and ends with USC being mediocre since Carroll left ten years ago. They made questionable hires since then starting with Lane Kiffin. You can’t rely on Oregon or Washington or Utah to carry the conference. But most people on this board focus on Larry Scott who’s one of the symptoms but not the disease.

People might be leaving California but there’s still about 40 million people living there. Hispanics are the majority or about to become the majority in California. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans love football (just look at Fresno and the support they get in the community which is mainly Hispanic and blue collar). I don’t think of any Hispanic group that likes football that much. The rest either like soccer (Central and South Americans) or baseball (Caribbean). Maybe the Pac-12 needs to have the NFL approach and target that demographic.

(09-03-2020 10:01 AM)westwolf Wrote:  Until you figure out how to shrink/eliminate the time zones Pac 12 FB will always rate 5th in this ranking.

The P12 zone accounts for only 19% of the US population, but over 50% of the US map.

It's only two time zones. Pacific and Mountain. That is not any more of problem than Eastern and Central for the Big Ten and SEC. The problem is the population density is much lower. There is a lot of nothing between Western cities in all directions, often desert or mountain.

What you mean by time zone, is that the Eastern and Central, where days often start a bit earlier than the East to stay in sync with New York ... all the way out to Dallas and KC, find games on the Pacific coast way too late. A 7pm or 7:30pm start time to avoid the heat in Southern California or Arizona is 10pm or 10:30pm for the Eastern time zone, and 9 or 9:30pm for the Central where people's days are shifted slightly earlier. Since 80% of the population is there, it's pretty much done for the day when Western football starts.

Nobody is going to shift the US to two time zones (East and West) where Central and Eastern merge on Central time and Pacific and Mountain merge on Mountain time. That would solve it ... or not. In reality people in Western China start their day at 10am or 11am while those in Beijing start at 7am, because that is when the sun comes up.

(09-03-2020 12:28 AM)Stugray2 Wrote:  Demographics do make a big difference. Football is basically a sport played by Whites and African-Americans at the collegiate level. Sure some Hispanics are in there, and a very small handful of Asians, but even in California not many. And when you look at the top players it's majority African-American. We all know this is the result of history and social pressure, but that is neither here nor there. Fundamentally the strength of a region in Football is largely proportionate to the size and proportion of their African-American population.

Demographics don't work for me. They don't tell me about the quality of the football being played, or the competition, or the talent. I am aware that the majority of football players at the FBS level and in the NFL are African-American. But there are too many different ethnic groups and mixed marriages in California. Talent can be found anywhere. The California State Division 3 champs in football in 2019 was Corona Del Mar in Newport Beach. In 2010, Newport Beach was selected as the most affluent city in America. The quarterback and tight end got football scholarships to Washington. One wide receiver went to Stanford, the other to UCLA. A cornerback went to TCU. Five FBS scholarships and a state championship from a wealthy beach community. All five are white kids.

The top two quarterbacks in the nation in 2019, according to the player rankings, were Bryce Young of Mater Dei and DJ Uiagalelei of St. John Bosco. Young is African-American (mixed) and Uiagalelei is an American of Samoan descent. St. John Bosco and Mater Dei were the top two teams in the nation and they played in the same league. The ethnic mixture was all over the place. Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Polynesians. As far as the talent goes, there first meeting in October of 2019 had over 50 players on the field with at least one D1 offer. From the LA Times:

It will be the most important game I cover all year,” Rivals national recruiting analyst Adam Gorney said. “There is no better evaluation opportunity than seeing arguably the two best high school teams in the country play each other. This isn’t seven-on-seven or a camp setting. Both of those are valuable. But we will get to see both of these teams with a lot on the line and everybody raring to go.”

“When you have elite on elite and when you see these guys going head to head and they stand out in that kind of setting, it definitely can up their stock and kind of shows you just how good they are,” said 247Sports national recruiting analyst Greg Biggins, who will be in the booth as part of the FS West broadcast team. “These are the two best teams in the country. It’s unprecedented that they’re from the same league. If you’re talking pure high school teams, there’s nothing like this rivalry at all; nothing close.”

They love football in the South and they have a world of talent there. But I think California and the west coast are just fine. One area the South does have an edge on the west coast is on the lines. The quantity of talent on the lines is significantly better than on the west coast. I think the 7 on 7 camps work well on the west coast and a lot of talent is developed from those camps. But it does not help on the lines.

(09-03-2020 11:30 AM)Stugray2 Wrote:  

(09-03-2020 10:01 AM)westwolf Wrote:  Until you figure out how to shrink/eliminate the time zones Pac 12 FB will always rate 5th in this ranking.

The P12 zone accounts for only 19% of the US population, but over 50% of the US map.

It's only two time zones. Pacific and Mountain. That is not any more of problem than Eastern and Central for the Big Ten and SEC. The problem is the population density is much lower. There is a lot of nothing between Western cities in all directions, often desert or mountain.

What you mean by time zone, is that the Eastern and Central, where days often start a bit earlier than the East to stay in sync with New York ... all the way out to Dallas and KC, find games on the Pacific coast way too late. A 7pm or 7:30pm start time to avoid the heat in Southern California or Arizona is 10pm or 10:30pm for the Eastern time zone, and 9 or 9:30pm for the Central where people's days are shifted slightly earlier. Since 80% of the population is there, it's pretty much done for the day when Western football starts.

Nobody is going to shift the US to two time zones (East and West) where Central and Eastern merge on Central time and Pacific and Mountain merge on Mountain time. That would solve it ... or not. In reality people in Western China start their day at 10am or 11am while those in Beijing start at 7am, because that is when the sun comes up.

US should be a three-timezone country.

Atlantic to Mississippi River. (“Eastern” = modern ETZ)
Mississippi River to Continental Divide. (“Central” = modern CTZ)
Continental Divide to Pacific. (“Western” = modern MTZ)

A lot of places would get dark later, which would be great. I’d love for Chicago to get dark at 10 & 6 instead of 9 & 5 in summer & winter.

(09-03-2020 11:13 AM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  

(09-03-2020 09:52 AM)Thiefery Wrote:  

(09-02-2020 11:26 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  

(09-02-2020 11:10 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(09-02-2020 10:44 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  The last 20 years? Did you ever hear of Pat Carroll and USC with its two Heisman Trophy winners? The rise of Oregon? Stanford and Andrew Luck?

If there's any disappointments in the last 20 years, I can think of two: UCLA and Arizona State. Especially Arizona State. That's one program that has the resources, location and size to be running for a NY6 bowl bid every year. Utah has done more in less than a decade than Arizona State since Jake Plummer took the Sun Devils to the Rose Bowl after the 1996 season.

As SoCalBobcat78 stated, the Pac-12 issues are not about money or talent. They have it. It's mostly questionable hires from the L.A. schools and bad management from Larry Scott. As I stated before on this thread, the Pac-12 perception issues start and end with USC football and UCLA basketball. It's easy to blame Larry Scott for everything but he's one of the symptoms, not the disease.

Finally, California sends more to Washington, DC than it receives. If I was a resident of a state where they get more federal dollars than what they send, I would be very concerned about how that will affect my state in the short and long term if net contributors like California and New York get hit really bad financially because of COVID-19.

Last time I checked the 2004 title was stripped due to cheating. Oregon has had a couple of runs the last serious one a decade ago. Titles in football, basketball?

If the talent was there you would be winning. Even halfway decent coaches can win with talent. I'm not so sure the talent is really there as much as the rating services pick enough everywhere to hold interest in their services.

The PAC's money issues are directly related to actual viewers. The big change was when technology could measure actual viewers vs subscribers vs estimated viewing based on state population. Advertisers have benefitted the most from actual counts.

I never said there wasn't plenty of money in California. Cal and UCLA are state schools. The issue is the red ink run by the state, not the GDP. California was on par for 90 billion in red ink. The emergency COVID expenditures will cost them about another 56 Billion if what I read was accurate. With a GDP as large as the state has I don't understand why the taxes don't cover it. This is part of the structural and management problems within the state. The industry is quite healthy.

The talent and money is there. You're confusing mediocrity on the field and court with lack of resources and recruits. Want to know a good example of a state that has plenty of talent and money and can't win championships? It's not California. It's Texas. When was the last time before 2005 that a Texas school won a national championship in football? In basketball? That was UTEP or Texas Western as it was called then 54 years ago. It's still the only Texas school that hast won the NCAA Tournament. But nobody would confuse not winning any championships with lack of talent and money especially for the likes of Texas and Texas A&M.

Yeah but people CARE about schools in Texas.. CA doesn't care, they are more passionate about Pro Sports than college. I think if SC was elite, the PAC would be in a much better position. Oregon just can't do what SC can do when they are real contenders. But the elephant in the room is the fact that people are leaving CA and heading elsewhere. They are about to lose it's #1 recruit, again, to the South (Foreman).

Hence my entire point on this thread. It starts and ends with USC being mediocre since Carroll left ten years ago. They made questionable hires since then starting with Lane Kiffin. You can’t rely on Oregon or Washington or Utah to carry the conference. But most people on this board focus on Larry Scott who’s one of the symptoms but not the disease.

People might be leaving California but there’s still about 40 million people living there. Hispanics are the majority or about to become the majority in California. Mexicans and Mexican-Americans love football (just look at Fresno and the support they get in the community which is mainly Hispanic and blue collar). I don’t think of any Hispanic group that likes football that much. The rest either like soccer (Central and South Americans) or baseball (Caribbean). Maybe the Pac-12 needs to have the NFL approach and target that demographic.

They have some of the most rabid NFL fans.. Cowboys, Raiders, 49ers.. Chargers are the only one that isn't that supported, but i blame ownership.. they were beloved in SD in the 90's and early 2000's.

(09-04-2020 01:09 AM)IWokeUpLikeThis Wrote:  

(09-03-2020 11:30 AM)Stugray2 Wrote:  

(09-03-2020 10:01 AM)westwolf Wrote:  Until you figure out how to shrink/eliminate the time zones Pac 12 FB will always rate 5th in this ranking.

The P12 zone accounts for only 19% of the US population, but over 50% of the US map.

It's only two time zones. Pacific and Mountain. That is not any more of problem than Eastern and Central for the Big Ten and SEC. The problem is the population density is much lower. There is a lot of nothing between Western cities in all directions, often desert or mountain.

What you mean by time zone, is that the Eastern and Central, where days often start a bit earlier than the East to stay in sync with New York ... all the way out to Dallas and KC, find games on the Pacific coast way too late. A 7pm or 7:30pm start time to avoid the heat in Southern California or Arizona is 10pm or 10:30pm for the Eastern time zone, and 9 or 9:30pm for the Central where people's days are shifted slightly earlier. Since 80% of the population is there, it's pretty much done for the day when Western football starts.

Nobody is going to shift the US to two time zones (East and West) where Central and Eastern merge on Central time and Pacific and Mountain merge on Mountain time. That would solve it ... or not. In reality people in Western China start their day at 10am or 11am while those in Beijing start at 7am, because that is when the sun comes up.

US should be a three-timezone country.

Atlantic to Mississippi River. (“Eastern” = modern ETZ)
Mississippi River to Continental Divide. (“Central” = modern CTZ)
Continental Divide to Pacific. (“Western” = modern MTZ)

A lot of places would get dark later, which would be great. I’d love for Chicago to get dark at 10 & 6 instead of 9 & 5 in summer & winter.

I agree. My dad and I was talking about this not too long ago. There wouldn’t be that much difference in daylight hours given how short the Mtn timezone is from the Pacific Ocean.
But the railroads still seem to control the time zones since they set it up a hundred or so years ago.