(01-26-2023 01:14 AM)Sactowndog Wrote: (01-26-2023 12:42 AM)SouthEastAlaska Wrote: (01-24-2023 06:07 AM)XLance Wrote: (01-22-2023 03:47 PM)SouthEastAlaska Wrote: (01-22-2023 03:06 PM)Gitanole Wrote: That would be 'intents and purposes'. We'll see. The B12 hemorrhaged more teams in recent years than all other P5 conferences combined, yet the conference lingers as its fans still entertain fantasies of being giant killers.
I'm such a doofas at times, I wrote that on my phone at the barber shop. Thank you for the correction 
The BigXII's strength has come from the ineptitude of the PAC and ACC to strengthen their positions. The ACC much like the PAC is living in the past. Neither conference seems to understand how to become viable long-term. The PAC has looked down on the academics of the schools in the BigXII for many years, this mentality will be the conferences downfall. Adapt or die.
The difference, or course, is that the ACC is owned by ESPN and can only make moves that ESPN agrees to pay for. Living in the past .....perhaps, but a past that will provide a steady paycheck for years to come.
The PAC on the other hand decided to back themselves financially and through a series of bad hires and questionable decisions finds themselves up the creek with no paddle and no one willing to rescue them.
Oh I absolutely agree with you Lance, the PAC has screwed themselves over in numerous ways over the past 15 years. I could make the argument that in the 2000s when USC was winning under coach Carroll, the PAC was the 3rd most powerful and influential conference in college athletics. Then they hired Larry "the cable guy" Scott and he took a swing at becoming number 2. Swung for the fences ala "Willie May's Hays" and legged out a single with the additions of Colorado and Utah. Ever since its been a one strike out after another. The PAC is now clearly number 5 and when you include basketball number 6. It's absolutely embarrassing considering the advantages we had at the beginning of this century.
Every conference and commissioner has ran the business of college athletics differently over the last 20 years but the PAC has clearly done it the worst.
The PAC’s problem is in California.
Ohio State acceptance rate: 57.2%
Penn State acceptance rate: 51.0%
Illinois acceptance rate: 59.7%
Cal acceptance rate: 14.4%
That **** isn’t going to work if you want a broadly watched athletic conference….. when you tell 8.5 out of 10 applicants they aren’t good enough to attend your school it doesn’t make you a TV must watch.
Oh btw… I did get into Cal in the 80’s. Of course their acceptance rate then was around 50%
Eh - I don’t buy that as being the factor.
Some acceptance rates of blue blood football schools:
USC: 12%
Notre Dame: 15%
Michigan: 20%
Florida: 30%
Texas: 31% (greatly inflated by the state’s top 6% auto-admit rule; acceptance rate is LESS than 10% outside of that group!)
I don’t see fans of those schools being bothered by academic elitism. What they care about is that they’re athletically elite. THAT is Cal’s issue. If they had Michigan or USC’s athletic success, then they’d draw fans. USC and UCLA (acceptance rate of 9%) have even lower acceptance rates than Cal, but no one would (or should) be seriously suggesting that their sports fandom is somehow capped because of that fact. If USC and UCLA football and basketball are playing to their historical norms, then their acceptance rate could be 1% and still draw fans.
Plus, it’s a supply and demand factor for spots at the top UC schools along with the sheer size of California.
Cal received 128,000 applications last year. UCLA received nearly 150,000 applications. By comparison, their public peer schools of Michigan received 80,000 applications, Florida received 60,000 applications and Texas received 57,000 applications. UCLA is the most applied to school in the country while Cal is #5. (The others in the top 5 are also UC schools - UCSD, UCI and UCSB.)
At the same time, those application figures are actually intentionally *deflated* compared to what they could be because the UC System uses its own quirky college application as opposed to the Common App.
As a reference point, Illinois had its own similar school specific application without the ability to use the Common App up until this past year. That 59% acceptance rate reflects the Class of 2025 rate with the old app. In just one year switching to Common App, applications for the Class of 2026 went up by 34% and the overall acceptance rate dropped nearly 15 points to under 45% (and the acceptance rate getting into the applicant’s first choice major went down to 37%). So, the “real” demand for spots at Cal and UCLA compared to its national peers is even larger - they’d be easily receiving over 200,000 applications each if they were on the Common App.
Cal would need to essentially to have an undergrad enrollment of over 150,000 on campus to even be in the ballpark of the current still-low acceptance rate of Florida. That wouldn’t be a good educational experience for anyone. Cal’s problem isn’t somehow having a lack of popularity, but rather it’s *too* popular among high school students that want to go to college.
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Pac12 fires two senior executives for failing to report overpayments by media
