Utah and Colorado

[Anonymous]

How would people feel about the two mountain schools moving to the North if the trade off was an eight game conference schedule?
This would mean moving Stanford and California to the South.

[Utah]

I’d do it in a heartbeat. 

[Utah]

It would be us and UW as top dogs in the north. Let USC/Stanford/UCLA beat each other up. We’d be the SEC east of divisions.  UW and us would be Georgia and Florida. 

It would be great. 

[Anonymous]

It would mean visiting Southern California three out of six years. 

[Utah]

I’m fine with that. There are ways around that. Much better that way record wise. 

I don’t care how often you play in Southern California. Winning trumps all. Being Kong’s of north is more valuable than playing in SoCal. 

[palos_verdes_ute]

Wouldn’t we need exposure to the LA market and Bay area for recruitment?  

[Anonymous]

That’s basically the trade we’d be making. 

OTOH, we’d be freed up to do some Texas and Florida H’nH’s. 

[sweetgrass]

here’s why its a bad idea:

– 9 game conference schedule equates to around $1 million more in TV revenue (from what I’ve read)
– we play USC every year, that would drop to about once every 3-4 years (essentially we’d get USC in SLC about once every 6 years)
– recruiting would take a hit

[Anonymous]

We would play USC four of six years. The unbalanced requirement would be nullified with all four California schools in the same division. 
Oops, I mean four of eight years.

[Anonymous]

We would have our five division games and the three crossovers. I imagine it would be the “zipper” arrangement. One, two year period we’d have ASU, UCLA and California, and the next two year period we’d have UA, USC and Stanford. 

We would also have a balanced conference schedule, four home and four away. And we’d have freedom to schedule a higher profile intersectional series. 

[Utah]

This isn’t a wrong argument, but it’s overstated.

recruiting would be better winning 9+ every year and playing in southern cal would still happen 6 out of 8 years. 

Youd be crazy not to do this. 

[Anonymous]

The South would be USC or Stanford every year, while the North would be Utah, Washington or Oregon every year. I think this would help our conference immeasurably. 

[Puget Ute]

There is zero chance everybody will go along with that. Right now every team plays once in NoCal and once in SoCal, every year. No way will they give up those trips.

The fact is California has a bit under twice the population of the entire rest of the PAC-12 states combined. Like it or not California is the major recruiting ground for the entire West and is the reason every team needs to spend as much time in the state as is possible.

 

That being said, SLC and Boulder are already located more north than Stanford and Cal, so geographically it makes sense.

[Anonymous]

That’s not actually true. Everybody plays in California once a year, but North teams miss SoCal trips one out of every three years. Everyone would still play in California every year. 

[Author]

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