BCS leagues expanding - yeah?

That guy is way more impressed with the PAC 7 than I am. He can complain all he wants about the haters, but sometimes the haters have a point.

 

The hypocrisy from the national media is pretty clear, I think.

It's OK for the Big Ten and Big 12 to break up the Pac-12; it's OK for the SEC to poach A&M, Texas, Missouri and Oklahoma from the Big 12; it's OK for the Big 12 to raid the AAC because they're just doing "what is best" for their respective schools, strengthening their leagues, and trying to make even more money than they already have, even though they are ending 100-year rivalries and putting tremendous pressure on their Olympic-sport athletes with ridiculour travel requirements.

But when the Pac-2 expands to simply stay alive, and attempt to form the G5's premier football league, suddenly the New York Times preaches they were wrong and the Pac should simply take their medicine, accept their lot in life and merge with the now clearly-inferior MWC?

The Athletic guy Vanni says he doesn't want to see a P2 or P4 breakaway, so the G5 schools have to "cooperate." WTF does that even mean? Couldn't the P5 conference "cooperated" to keep the historical Pac-12 alive? If the P2 or P4 breakaway, that's entirely on them and nothing any G5 league does will have any influence on what happens.

Fuck those guys.

Two teams that have lost their P4 status inviting five teams from a G5 league - who clearly didn't want to be there anymore - to form the best G5 league - and a true regional conference at that - in an attempt to grab some crumbs from the CFP cake is the "dumbest stage of conference realignment?" Dumber than Bay Area teams playing in the ACC? Dumber than four other teams located 50 miles or less from the Pacific Ocean playing in the landlocked Big Ten? Dumber than Rutgers and Maryland playing in the Big Ten?

C'mon.

The P4 clearly aren't going to restore the Pac's power status; fine, they don't deserve it. The P4 hold all the cards and have essentially locked half of FBS out of championship competition while enjoying a 15-1 advantage in playoff revenue split. But to criticize the Pac-7 for trying to do the best they can to compete in a game where the deck is already stacked against them is ridiculous.

PS: What is the hater's point?

PPS: Minnesota just got royally screwed.

 

Is trams leaving the MW for the Pac bad news for Joe Biden? [/crossthread]

 

I know it's just a typo, but I laughed audibly at "trams" and thinking maybe Disneyland should get a college football team to play Great America and Six Flags.

 

I certainly understand the PAC 2 doing what it can to put themselves in the best possible position.

What they have done so far is destroy the Mountain West to create their own league that is… half the Mountain West. They are searching for schools who do not move the needle one iota just so they can field a full conference.

I’m no fan of the mass realignment. I wish Oregon, Washington and the Big 12 teams had stuck around to create a slightly reconfigured PAC 12. But overall, I get it. I don’t like it, but the money boost combined with the incompetence of the PAC 12 leadership made those defections logical.

But this? I think it would have made a hell of a lot more sense to unify regionally instead of mimic the P4 realignments, minus the money. I am not going to argue that it’s morally wrong for the PAC 2 to expand the way it is. I will argue that it’s kind of stupid and sad and there has to be a better way to do it.

 

Had the MWC been the old 8-or-9 team MWC, might have worked. They felt 14 teams was too big. The league will be far more than half the MWC. Two middle-of-the-pack Pac-12 teams and the top five (over time) of the MWC.

The MWC has not been destroyed at all, nowhere close to what happened to the Pac-12. It has seven teams and is actively working for an 8th.

 

I mean, the current PAC 7 is five of the top teams from the MWC and the two PAC 12 teams that literally no other conference wanted. They are shopping at Goodwill to find schools willing to join. They were turned down by Tulane. They were turned down by UNLV, for Christ’s sake.

And the MWC is left with its weakest schools and is also shy of a full conference.

I’m sympathetic. I wish it never came to this, and what happened to OSU and WSU really sucks. But to look at this situation and declare that the PAC 7 “already won” and suggest that people around college football are hypocrites for not cheering how badass the PAC 7 rebuild has been? That kind of seems out of line with reality.

 

Sorry 2Pac, but it's abundantly clear the rest of P4 didn't want you. Go hook up with the MWC and like it.

 

What was wrong with a 14 team league? 14 is smaller than any of the current Power Four leagues

The answer, of course is, that the teams that will be dropped are not as rich as the ones that have been added.

It sucked when the rest of the PAC-12 dropped OSU and WSU, And I remember Southern Cal and UCLA receiving a lot of hate at the time. I realize the code of the college sports industry is to do onto others as others have done onto you. But just because OSU and WSU got shafted does not make what the current Pac-7 is doing any less unsavory.

 

Also, frankly you need enough teams to give your network partner inventory. An eight-team league means you are only giving them four games to show once October and November roll around, maybe three if two teams have the same bye week. That was part of the reason the AAC gobbled up as many teams as it did in the last expansion before Army.

 

That and they were covering their bases against Memphis + whoever making a jump to another conference.

 

So then be mad at the teams that left, just as you say happened when the SoCal and PNW teams left. Nobody was mad at Michigan or Northwestern because the Big Ten expanded by poaching four teams and killing a conference. Which hasn't been done to the MWC.