(Pacific)
1- Washington
2- Wazzu
3- Oregon
4- Oregon State
5- Stanford
6- Cal
7- UCLA
8- USC

(Plains)
1- Arizona
2- Arizona State
3- Colorado
4- Utah
5- Oklahoma State
6- K-State
7- Texas Tech
8- Baylor

Old PAC-8 back together.

(08-24-2021 08:15 AM)ThunderDent Wrote:  (Pacific)
1- Washington
2- Wazzu
3- Oregon
4- Oregon State
5- Stanford
6- Cal
7- UCLA
8- USC

(Plains)
1- Arizona
2- Arizona State
3- Colorado
4- Utah
5- Oklahoma State
6- K-State
7- Texas Tech
8- Baylor

Old PAC-8 back together.

So if you are a mountain school you end up trading an annual presence in southern CA for 1 game every 4 years. This is why they would hold up expansion (if it ever came) until they received guarantees that it wouldn't become an east/west split.

(08-23-2021 09:48 PM)Troy_Fan_15 Wrote:  The idea of rotating pods to have divisions like AB CD Year 1 and 2 and AC and BD Years 3 and 4 is one reason the WAC died so long ago and the Mountain West was formed. Traditional rivalries were not promised to be played depending on what pod you fell into. Unless teams scheduled each other OOC like UNC/WF have done.

I would rephrase it by saying Quads couldnot save the WAC from its ill-fated decision to add 6 to get to 16. A 3-year rotation may have benefited the WAC too, with only 8 conference games.

A 16 team Pac may likewise be an ill-fated decision. Given the premise, however, I think quads/pods would give the 16-team league more longevity than static divisions.

California recruiting seems the biggest issue. So, if we are adding 4 CTZ teams, let us not disrupt the current Pac-12's access to California too much. If they are to reroute any games, it should be games between the non-California "North" and "South" teams.

Here is a new idea that keeps Oregon and the Northwest teams in LA exactly as often as now and the Arizona and Mountain teams in the Bay Area just as often as now. Arizona teams do decrease their visits to LA from 4 out of 4 years to 3 out of 4.

The 4 Northwest teams and 4 Mountain teams continue to anchor their present divisions, while the 4 California teams and the 4 Central teams flip-flop between "North" and "South" everyother year. Teams play 1 crossover game against the 4 teams withwhom they never share a division and 1 crossover game against a permanent rival from each pod withwhom they do share a division.

Here are the 4 static North and South teams as well as their permanent rivals; they are paired, roughly, to create more best-on-best, made-for-TV matchups.

North
Oregon (Stanford, OK State)
Washington (USC, Houston)
Washington State (California, TCU)
Oregon State (UCLA, Kansas)

South
Utah (Stanford, TCU)
Arizona State (USC, OK State)
Arizona (UCLA, Houston)
Colorado (California, Kansas)

Oregon's schedule, for example would be Washington, Washington State, Oregon State, Stanford, and OK State every year (5 games). For two years they would play home-home against USC/UCLA/California and for two years they'd play home-home against Houston/KU/TCU (+3 games). Their 9th game would slowly rotate through the Mountain teams (Utah, Colorado, Arizona, ASU), 1 per year.

(08-23-2021 09:48 PM)esayem Wrote:  What would a PAC-16 with 2 divisions look like?

Ugly. The answer is ugly.

/thread

(08-23-2021 08:08 AM)Fighting Muskie Wrote:  Here’s where expanding the PAC 12 is problematic—no one wants to lose access to California. No one is going to want to be in the East division with the new schools.

This is why the PAC-12 fundamentally doesn’t work. Playing 9 conference games is bad for the conference, but there’s no other way for the CA schools to play each other and for everyone else to have barely enough SoCal access.

People think I’m joking, but if you know how the PAC works and what each of the schools needs, you would recognize that UCSD starting a football program would be the single most important event for increasing the likelihood of PAC expansion.

(08-23-2021 09:41 PM)Troy_Fan_15 Wrote:  

(08-23-2021 12:37 PM)clpp01 Wrote:  

(08-23-2021 11:53 AM)Erictelevision Wrote:  Clpp: switch BYU for Kansas and that’s good

I'm not exaggerating when I say that there would be a better chance that the SEC schools decide to stop playing football then there is of the California schools allowing BYU to join them in the Pac.

BYU's only path to the Pac involves the P12 having to rebuild after the B1G took half+ of the current membership.

What are BYU's academics like? Would ND get denied access to the PAC-12 if they were located in a western state? Genuinely curious, not defending BYU. Is ND the exception to the we want to exclude religious schools like BYU, Baylor, and TCU? (which is their preference so it is what it is)

People roll a lot of factors into “religious school” when in fact the issues are not directly the result of being associated with a religious group.

First, academics can be broken into 2 parts: education and research. Education is basically the dissemination of knowledge and research the discovery of knowledge. Most religious schools operate primarily in an educational role.

TCU and Baylor have some of the lowest research activity of all FBS programs. BYU is a little bit higher but is still below Boise State in that regard. Notre Dame is more active, enough to stand well apart from the other “religious” schools, but not enough to be an AAU type institution (AAU weighs both education and research). For a conference that places any emphasis on research as part of its identity, Baylor, TCU, and BYU are out. Those 3 won’t be joining the B1G or PAC. ND gets a pass because they’re not far off target.

The final factor is academic freedom. Does the school act in a manner to prevent research or other scholarly activity that might run counter to its affiliated church. For ND and TCU, that’s sort of a no. For Baylor, that’s a no but... we do lots of other things with campus policies that are religion-based and also sometimes dangerous to female students.

For BYU, the answer is yes. There is heavily restricted academic freedom. Say that Exxon sponsored a school and then dictated that certain things be taught or not taught about climate science, solar or nuclear energy, electric cars, etc. That is the equivalent of how BYU operates, and is why BYU will never be invited to the PAC. Their funding could be from a source other than a church; the issue is how that influence is used to limit academic freedom.

If you know some history, the University of Deseret was started as both the Church and Territory school (there was no real church/state separation). The president of the University of Deseret (John Rocky Park) and the head of the Mormon church (Brigham Young) got into an argument over academic freedom, which ultimately resulted in John Rocky Park dissolving the University’s relationship with the church, moving the entire campus away from the church headquarters, and renaming it the University of Utah. That’s why Brigham Young then asked that a new college be made where he explicitly could limit academic freedom. It’s sort of a foundational principle of BYU.

For 16 schools, dump divisions and have a 9 game schedule. Top two teams play in the championship game. Protect 3 schools for each team. Rotate the other 12 schools every four years. 6 home/away in years 1&2, the other 6 home/away in years 3&4.

Cali schools could protect each other and you could set up schedules so that everyone plays 2 California schools each year. The PAC "pods" are actually really good at potential protected games and dividing up schedules.

I like idea of the addition of a school in Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico and Idaho(or Wyoming?). They don't really need to lock down the Mountain/Pacific/Hawaii time zones, but it would really be cool to include almost all states in those areas.

(08-25-2021 02:49 PM)Eggszecutor Wrote:  For 16 schools, dump divisions and have a 9 game schedule. Top two teams play in the championship game. Protect 3 schools for each team. Rotate the other 12 schools every four years. 6 home/away in years 1&2, the other 6 home/away in years 3&4.

Cali schools could protect each other and you could set up schedules so that everyone plays 2 California schools each year. The PAC "pods" are actually really good at potential protected games and dividing up schedules.

Give everyone their pick of 3 rivals and you’ll end up with the same, obvious pod. The benefit, then, of putting them into rotating divisions (you can keep the frequency you describe) is that teams will have schedules where they share at least 7 common opponents (including head-to-head). Divisionless opens things up to a team skating by on an easy schedule and supplanting a team who played more top-half opponents but had an extra loss. Coaches (less so the fans and the ADs) want that competitive fairness.