(10-09-2021 08:10 AM)schmolik Wrote: In a conference of 10 or 12 teams, someone is almost always going to be the dead weight. ...
Dead weight has more than one meaning and football isn't everything. Maybe Oregon State and Washington State can be competitive with the California schools in football. So what? So could 20-50 other schools in the country. What makes them more special than say San Diego State other than historical ties?
You hit that nail on the head ... it's exactly historical ties which makes them more special than SDSU. Their brand value is that they are instantly recognized as longtime PAC schools within the core PAC market.
Quote: The California schools (especially Stanford) take great pride on academics, and Oregon State and Washington State are pretty bad academically according to USN&WR rankings.
USN&WR is most relevant for a University that ties its academic status to its undergraduate teaching. For Washington State, in the 95-114 US tier (top 400 in the world) in the AWRU and Oregon State in the 66-94 tier (top 300 in the world), their academic research standing is likely their priority in terms of academic status. SDSU would be a step below those in academic research standing (though certainly not as far below as Boise State or Memphis).
Quote: And unless Corvallis and Pullman are nicer places than I think they are, why would UCLA and Berkeley want to go there every other year or however often they do? If the California schools have Oregon and Washington (the clear cut #1 schools in those states, do they need the "little brothers"?)
Obviously UCLA and USC don't see Corvallis or Pullman all that often. And it's not like Cal is going to complain that they get to go to Corvallis and Pullman, when they are more often focusing on getting to a bowl than getting to the conference championship.
None of them
need the little brothers of Washington and Oregon, and if need be, under some future restructure of big money college football, it seems likely they will, with some reluctance, say goodbye to them ...
... but until then, the history exists.
And as you point out, every conference of 12 needs some teams to be in the cellar in any given year, so under the current system, it would be silly to work on replacing them with someone else and restarting the process of building up history from the ground up.
Quote: Can the California Four get more money leaving behind some schools?
If they can join the Big Ten along with Oregon and Washington, perhaps yes, but a coast to coast conference of 20 or more is not yet feasible, so that's a question for another day.