What does Block U think about Utah joining the Pac-10
by carp on Oct 28, 2008 7:51 PM MDT
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PrintI'm a Cal fan and I regularly post over at Cal Golden Blogs. I recently proposed the Colorado Buffaloes should join the Pac-10 along with one of Utah/BYU/Boise St/Fresno St. Some Buffs fans sound willing and excited since the Big 12 South is taking over the Big 12. Fresno St. would be a tough sell; the 4 CA Pac-10 teams would have to agree to make Fresno St (who can beat BCS teams) a BCS team. Boise St doesn't seem to fit academically (although Wazzou and ASU are in the Pac-10). BYU, Utah, and Colorado wouldn't impose recruiting issues and represent good-to-excellent academic institutions as well as having successful all-around athletics.
I like Colorado the best and I think this expansion might even require Colorado. I question whether BYU can compete with BCS teams every week as a private (some would say "segregated") institution. Yes, the Pac-10 has U$C but it also has Stanfurd. Utah, I believe, has the best chance out of non-BCS schools. I would say Utah and Boise St. have the longest history of being competitive. Utah might not have lost Urban Meyer if they were part of the Pac-12. Graduating good schools to better conferences happened with WAC powers UofA and ASU. I think a non-BCS team would take all of about 3 seconds to say "yes" to join a BCS conference.
To be better then the SEC and Big-12, the Pac-10 needs to be them. They need 2 divisions, more out-of-conference games, and an over-hyped Conference Championship. You might say "more teams, less $ to go around." You'd have a point. But this format would increase the likeness of two teams going to BCS bowl games and that would be significantly more money.
What's Block U's thoughts? I welcome any comments and critiques. I saw the MWC expansion thread...I think Utah's better than that. I really enjoyed visiting that campus a couple of years ago to watch Air Force-Utah in baseball action (my brother played at Air Force). Thanks to the chief bloggers for letting me post here!
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We've actually discussed it a few times.
All the fans would love to make the jump.
See these posts:
Making the case for Utah as a Pac-10 team
Pac-10 expansion forthcoming?
What if….?
It might take a couple years to adjust. The Pac-10 is having a bad year, but that probably won’t be the case if/when the jump ever happens. Most fans think recruiting will improve with more money and more exposure.
I for one would love to restart the rivalry with the Colorado Buffs. So use your power to help lobby for the Utes, okay?
I like it.
The one thing I wouldn’t like is not playing the TDS every year. I know I might take crap for this but really, that is one of my favorite times of the year. I love just having that over TDS fans. Although, I think we would have a HUGE bragging right over the TDS if we got asked to join the Pac-10 and they were left out. I just don’t like not playing them. It would be cool to be in the Pac-10 and having a rivalry against Colorado. Colorado is a good team in an even better conference and is having trouble playing so maybe a change for them is good too. Other than that little tiny problem, I have nothing against joining the Pac-10.
GO UTES!!
what's TDS?
Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water, the other third is covered by Kotsay...in his prime...like 3 years ago.
TDS is the "team down south"
Rban (there’s no “U” in Rban Meyer) referred to BYU as TDS. A lot of us still use it.
And yeah, pretty much every single Utah fan would be on board for a move to the Pac 10. Also, as long as we’re dreaming, I’d like a Ferrari.
Everyone hates a pink-shirt-wearing communist.
by displacedute on Oct 29, 2008 12:07 AM MDT up reply actions
my idea would allow for 5-6 (!) OOC games
so Utah and TDS can preserve the Holy War. With 5-6 open dates, this should be easy. I have more specifics to come later today
Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water, the other third is covered by Kotsay...in his prime...like 3 years ago.
We would have 3-4 OOC games
I am sure BYU would be one of them, and remain at the end of the season.
thanks Jman & Ute in DC!
Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water, the other third is covered by Kotsay...in his prime...like 3 years ago.
We'd not like it
We’d most likely be a middling team in the PAC-10, that’s the only reason they’d want us.
At times we’d be good, but constant beat downs by some of those teams would only reduce your recruiting potential and we all recruit from the same pool now. Best to be the outside the PAC-10 option, especially in years like this when all pundits are saying “The MWC is superior to the PAC-10 overall”. That guarantees recruiting props.
I’ll take several acceptable or good years outside the PAC-10 to 20 years of hoping to have one really great season. National championships in football are magnified in their importance, who really cares anyway? It means you have to pay your coach 4-8 million annually or replace them every year. It means sick and unacceptable expectations and a fan base that is not student and alumni and community based but really just “I want to root for winner” wannabes. Maybe Utah can never win the BCS outside the PAC-10, maybe we can. We have about the same chances if we improve our league and schedule, and if we won it outside? Waaaaaaaaaay cooler. Way.
Winning the PAC-10? It could happen, but not for a time, and in that time the program could deteriorate rather than improve due to increased recruiting competition, then where would you go? Any move back to the MWC would appear to be regression so you’d have to suck it up and play “middle of the pack butt boy” year in and year out. Better to be intriguingly unique and different than to be USC’s whipping boy. Besides, we’ve always been more about being a students team and an academic school first than athletic conference whore wannabe. Utah is one of the few teams in the nation that made money in athletics this year, why go to “make more and spend more and thus earn less” ville?
Better for the MWC to expand and bring in either Fresno and Boise, Boise and Tulsa, or Fresno and Tulsa.
2-4 potential “BCS-busting” teams in one league means eventual participation in the automatic bid category and parity with the PAC-10 in that regard. It also means recruitment groove pills for all. If we want to drop any teams? Lose SDSU, then you can compete with their recruiting as an outsider and allegiance issues don’t crop up in terms of intra conference rivals.
Send BYU to the PAC-10. Their fans want it, and as much as the author thinks they are not up to it, BYU prefers the old “measurement increases improvement” stick. They are a good academic school, but the PAC-10 won’t take them simply because they don’t want Mormons beating up sissy PAC-10 teams in 3 sports (Football, baseball, and Basketball) and holding their own in track. Then the Cougs could play Utah as an out of league contest and have one of the better schedules in the nation instead of sissyville central like this year—wait, that’s because they played two PAC-10 teams that couldn’t beat a hairdressing college . . .
MBM...I respectfully disagree
I’m frankly shocked. It’s not like your joining the SEC. I don’t see how BYU fits so well and Utah doesn’t. The BCS ommitted a few key universities in the Rocky Mountain region, but adding another BCS conference isn’t going to happen. I think MWC expansion could result in diluted league with too many fly-by-night programs. Being a non-BCS national champion doesn’t make it cooler for one reason: strength of schedule (what plagues every non-BCS team).
Utah’s the #7 team in the nation! You don’t think you can compete with the #5 team in the nation ($C)?!?! What does this say about our current polling system! Rban Meyer is now coaching one of the best programs in the history of college football. I believe Utah had the #1 NFL and NBA draft pick in ‘05 (thanks, by the way, for Alex Smith). I highly doubt they’d be middle of the road and, if they were, they aren’t worthy of it anyway. The institutions in the Pac-10 would argue they are academic schools. There is some of the best research in the world coming out of Pac-10 universities. I’m sorry, I just don’t by the “let’s be on top of a weak league when we have the opportunity to compete with better competition.”
Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water, the other third is covered by Kotsay...in his prime...like 3 years ago.
MeanBobMean - I too disagree
First off our schedule would improve. I would rather have home games against teams such as UCLA, Oregon, and Washington State than against UNLV, Colorado State, and TCU.
Second, I think bolting the WAC for the Pac-8 definitely helped Arizona and Arizona State. Arizona is a consistent basketball power and even has an NCAA Championship during their time in the Pac-10. Arizona State goes to great bowls on a regular basis. If Utah loses one of their remaining four games – a distinct possibility – where will they go bowling? Poinsettia Bowl? Armed Forces Bowl?
If Utah were 10-2 or 9-3 in the Pac-10, where would they go bowling? Maybe the Holiday Bowl, maybe the Sun Bowl, maybe even the Rose Bowl. And a Utah team that goes 7-5 or 6-6 in the Pac-10 would play in the Poinsettia Bowl or the Las Vegas Bowl, which is exactly where they can go now with a 10-2 season in the Mountain West Conference. The improvement in bowls would be worth it alone.
Finally, I’m not sure why you think Utah would have to pay their coach $ 4-8 million. Only a handful of coaches in the country make that much. But given that Utah will have to pay its coach more, it will be a lot easier with BCS money than without.
Anyway, I think you represent the minority view of Utah fans.
If . . . sure . . .maybe . . . but what about
Well, sure.
Yes, if they were 10-2 in the PAC-10. That wouldn’t be bad, I agree. A team that we beat—at home barely—is 4-3, OSU.
And think we’d have been 9-3 or 10-2 the last three years?
How about the 40 years prior to Urban coming here? Not a chance. Not a chance.
Sure, we could beat Wazzou and Washington this year, probably ASU and even UCLA easily. How about everyone else? Think it’s hard to play in New Mexico, TCU and SDSU after a grueling CSU game? Try playing a four game stretch of Oregon, Cal, USC, and Arizona.
Think UCLA will be a doormat for many more years? Washington? Once proud Washington State?
Do we think this year’s “We are better than the PAC-10” mantra will hold true every year? Enjoy it.
Think we will always get recruits from those schools when we go head to head? Think we will still recrutit in our current base when we move Conferences?
Last 9 years Utah has averaged 8-4 in the MWC conference. Not 9-3, not 10-2, 8-4 and these last nine years are probably about our best 9 year stretch in history and that is counting an undefeated year and a 10-2 year with a head coach who is gone.
2 great years in 9 (provided we win out) does not make you an automatic elite program.
Yes, the grass is always greener, no we won’t always have 12-0 and 11-1 MWC teams. Sometimes, like other perennial conference Champs BYU, Air Force, CSU, we will stumble on bad times. Whentaht happens you could become te SDSU of the PAC-10 with zero chance of being resuscitated.
Would you rather go 8-4 or 9-3 or even 10-2 in the MWC and recruit off a bowl game or 5-6 every year in the PAC-10 and play in a bowl game once every ten-20 years maybe as a 7-5 team?
Both are reasonable possibilities. They won’t invite you there to displace traditional powers, believe me.
As for other arguments . . . Arizona State and Arizona have done OK but not that fantastic. Lute Olsen made them a basketball powerhouse, not the PAC-10. Don haskins did it at UTEP, it aint the conference in roundball.
As for those teams in Football? You’re making my point: how many PAC-10 titles between those two programs in 20 years? And ASU was a perennial powerhouse going into that program, far better program regularly than we are year in and out. Those two were WAC dominant and they have been off and on at best, often being absolute doormats in the PAC-10, sometimes for years.
The WAC was as good or better a basketball conference than the PAC-10 in many years with BYU, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, UTEP, and SDSU going to the NCAAs repeatedly, heck routinely—the MWC is not as strong a BBall conf as the WAC always, always was. You can change that.
I may represent the minority view of Utah fans from the last 5-10 years maybe, but anyone who has been a fan of Utah for 40 years like me knows that historically we aint all that, and realistically we aint likely to always be what we currently are.
Anyway, I think BYU and Colorado make the best fit for the PAC-10, that would leave us with an annual game with the Zoobies as their rivalry game and a BCS busting position every so often, and a legacy of underdog done good. There are a lot of Utah fans who are converts these last five years who would stop attending and stop caring if we were 6-6 and worse year in and out. Hell they booed an undefeated and ranked team during Oregon State, I was there. You want Alumni who don’t care how many you win, they care for the U.
I live in Tallahassee now. I still bleed every game for my Utes, football and roundball. I follow them regardless, but that’s because I loved my school years there, not because I care about athletics so much. Hell athletic Glory was listening to Randy Gomez complete couple passes at Tennessee. It was fun, it was great.
In Tallahassee, they have this program called FSU? You don’t ever want to be that, believe me. People make gods of football players and lose their integrety in the process by looking the other way as kids commit crimes. You fall on hard times and the whole town hates to see a game because all they care about is winning, nothing else in life matters, and forget their real lives ot worry obsessively about football.
Is that what Utah wants to become?
Be happy with who you are Utah, you’ve gone farther than anyone thought you ever would in football, you might go further still, but don’t sell out on the way there. A great year in ten with your friends still around you beats mediocrity and complacency from fans in a conference that is glad to have you there to trample.
Cheers mates
Hmm. I don't think that's a fair comparison.
Joining the Pac-10 would not turn us into the kind of fans they have in Florida. The fans of the Pac-10 take a bit of pride in not being like fans in the south. Besides, I think ybU fans have shown that how obnoxious a fan is, has nothing to do with the conference.
Yes, if they were 10-2 in the PAC-10. That wouldn’t be bad, I agree. A team that we beat—at home barely—is 4-3, OSU.
Would we be 4-3 this year in the Pac-10? Of course not. Two of Oregon State’s three losses are from Out-of-Conference games. It’s not the Pac-10 schedule that is hurting their record. It’s playing teams like Penn State and Utah on the road that is hurting their record. Also, Oregon State has shown signs of improvement through the season. After starting 0-2, they have gone 4-1. Oregon State is not the same team that dropped the first game at Stanford. Even assuming that Utah would have the same record as OSU in conference, then Utah would be 3-1 in Pac-10 play and 7-1 overall. Instead of hoping to go the Fiesta Bowl, fans would be hoping to go the Rose Bowl. Not a bad trade at all.
And think we’d have been 9-3 or 10-2 the last three years?
I never said Utah would have every have gone 9-3 in the Pac-10 in the last three years. What I did say was that a 6-6 or 7-5 Pac-10 team goes to the same bowl a 10-2 MWC team goes to. See the 2007 and the 2006 Las Vegas Bowls.
Utah would regularly go to better bowls in the Pac-10. Most years, Utah can manage to go 6-6. Remember that there will still be out-of-conference games. The annual thrashing of Utah State would get the Utes 1/6 of the way to the Las Vegas Bowl. In better years, Utah could find themselves in the Holiday Bowl or the Rose Bowl.
I may represent the minority view of Utah fans from the last 5-10 years maybe, but anyone who has been a fan of Utah for 40 years like me knows that historically we aint all that, and realistically we aint likely to always be what we currently are.
No doubt about it. Utah was terrible in the seventies and eighties. You seem to be arguing that Utah was at its true form during the down years. I believe that the seventies and eighties were the aberration. In Utah’s long history, it has been good more often than not. But if you want to say that college football began in 1972, well then yes, Utah has been bad more often then not.
However, Utah has its third head coach since 1992. All three have found a way to win more often than not. With a resurgent fan base, a growing population in Salt Lake, and an administration that is committed to winning in football, there is no reason Utah cannot continue to win more than it loses.
Utah has many advantages over several Pac-10 schools. It’s in a better location than Washington State (Pullman, WA), Oregon State, (Corvallis, OR) or Oregon (Eugene, OR). Stanford has rigorous admission standards and California is not far behind.
I don’t see why Utah should intentionally stay in an inferior conference. Utah could move down to the Football Championship Subdivision and then be FCS champions more often than not.
Or Utah could try and take on better teams and see how they do.
Utah would regularly go to better bowls in the Pac-10.
Come now, come now.
Maybe, maybe not. If they went 6-6 they’d go to better bowls than a 10-2 Utah team?
Highly doubtful. HIghly, highly doubtful. Really unlikely.
And you really want to be a supporter of the 6-6 team system? That makes me retch really, to see .500 teams rolling around like “pig night” queens on frat row hoping the pretty boys will one day like them and coaches watching their careers die in medicority. Do you and anyone you know watch the 6-6 bowls? No.
Also, after awhile?
Quality kids quit going to perennial 6-6 schools because they don’t like them. Who wants to play on a team who has their best shot at possibly maybe not being a loser maybe? The coaching staff is a revolving door and you are making my argument:
You’re clamoring for mediocrity and a descent to worse than that just so we can put a PAC-10 beanie on our heads and say “Hooray, we have friends in California now, they like us there, oh golly, maybe if we go there they will like us Mountain folk and not stare at us and ignore us like they did on my vacation in junior high school . . .”
Utah Scheduled in the last several years Michigan, Oregon, Cal, UCLA, Oregon State . . . Arizona, they don’t need to apologize to anyone for who they play. So why join the PAC-10? Because then we’d be the anointed cool?
When I was there in the state they played Nebraska, Tennessee, Ohio State.
They could see how they did then and now. I think you play two quality non conference teams and the best we have in the MWC? You don’t have to go 6-6 just so you can say you are now as cool as Californians are, which ultimately is why most Utahns want to be in the PAC-10. They want to be accepted.
Stay outside, make your own rules, stick it to the man. The man wants a feudal system? I say burn his castle down, and his little dog too.
We want the system changed and you are never going to do that waving a pennant for the winners of the Liberace Hair Gel Bowl.
Bugger the PAC-10, I think Washington and Oregon State should bolt them becaus ethy won’t play in a play off so that means they suck.
I think Arizona and Arizona State should link up and make a New Southwestern Conference with some Texas teams.
Come on guys, who raised in the mountains wants to be “allowed” into the PAC anything? Oh wow, they will allow us to fawn over them? Thanks no.
I say let the Oregon and Washington teams come with us and if the California teams want to play us in non con games they can crawl across the desert and beg for the pleasure.
Just my 2 censt you know.
Utah != NW Florida
The people of Utah are distinctly different from those of Utah. Utah would not become another FSU. For one we have academics.
Living in Panama City Florida for 15 years of my life I can say that.
You present three expansion options
They involve the three permutations of selecting two of the same three teams. This would make an 11 team conference that would be horrible to schedule and leaves us one shy of the 12 needed for a conference championship game.
Why not add Fresno State, Boise State and Tulsa?
I have explored the BCS implications of such an expansion elsewhere.
If our topped ranked team is 9 spots or more above the Big East this year, the expanded conference would have a higher average top ranked team from 2005-2009. They have 6 more ranked teams than us, but Utah, TCU, Boise State, Utah and BYU all have a chance at being ranked. If 4 of these teams survive and the Big East only gets one ranked team in the BCS standings then we would gain three spots on them.
By expanding this year the MWC sets itself up nicely for a BCS bid in 2010. I like this arangement better than the PAC 10.
Adding Buffs. BYU to PAC-10
That makes a great deal of sense. Better media market, right fit in terms of personality. I think Buffs and BYU are the two best options and the best fit.
Depends on what the other option is...
If the other option is staying in the MWC, then I’d be much happier to go to the PAC-10.
If the other option is forming a new conference with powerful teams like Utah, BYU, Boise, TCU, Fresno, etc. then I’d much rather do that. I have to think that a conference like that would eventually merrit an automatic BCS berth, but even if it didn’t it would still significantly strengthen our SOS year in and year out.
To “Ute in DC”, you’re absolutely right about the bowl situation, but I think MeanBobMean has a point as well. I think that potential recruits would be very interested in playing in a new conference made up of the exciting teams that have either busted the BCS, or consistently been in the running to do so.
you think the other commisioners are going to approve
another conference joining the BCS ranks? I don’t see that happening…
Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water, the other third is covered by Kotsay...in his prime...like 3 years ago.
except ND won't do it
Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water, the other third is covered by Kotsay...in his prime...like 3 years ago.
It strikes me . . .
That there is another, even better reason for not joining teh PAC-10:
The PAC-10 and the Big Ten were the conferences that killed the plus one playoff. Not a true playoff, but better than the “elitist control apparatus” BCS charade.
If Utah joined them, we’d be selling out to the man. Selling out tthe system every college football fan knows relegates the sport to a have/have not system of fedual patronage.
Is that what we want? We want the original BCS buster to be co-opted by the system?
No way, we want to stick it to the man, not be his lackey.
I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees mates, and PAC-10 syndicalism . . .it’s jsut so . . .corporate, icky, and absolutely unimaginative.
Blah.
really?
PAC-10 syndicalism . . .it’s jsut so . . .corporate, icky, and absolutely unimaginative.
I didn’t know that. Not that I’m “all things Pac-10” but we all know the East coast bias and so on and so forth…I didn’t think the Pac-10 was part of that. I go to Cal games at Memorial Stadium, not McAffee Coliseum (Raiders) or AT&T Park (Giants). There are porta potties because there aren’t enough bathrooms since the stadium was built in the 1920’s. The seats/row clearance are cramped together and doesn’t fit “the plus size American” these days. Hell, we don’t even have a suitable parking lot for games. That’s my perspective, but I’m not in on all things Pac-10.
Two-thirds of the earth is covered by water, the other third is covered by Kotsay...in his prime...like 3 years ago.
I still like the Pac-10
I would rather be in the Pac-10 than the MWC. Pac-10 has better bowl games as mentioned above. Yeah, a 10-2 MWC team gets to where a 6-6 Pac-10 team gets. The TDS was 10-2 last year, where did they go? Against who? Las Vegas against 6-6 UCLA. Think about it MBM. We would have our good years. Arizona and ASU, Washington and Wazzou, UCLA, Cal. All beatable this year and should be for a little bit. I like the Pac-10 idea.
GO UTES!!
A counter point
While I agree with the idea that PAC 10 > MWC an arguement for Utah and BYU staying in the MWC can be found here
.
BCS Bowl odds:
In the MWC we are likely to be BCS eligible if we are 11-1 or better. In the PAC 10 we would need to be 10-2 or better. We are 6-3 vs the last 9 PAC 10 opponnents, which indicates we could typically be 8-4 with a PAC 10 record. Frankly, I like our BCS odds in the MWC better. The difference is if we go undefeated in the PAC 10 we have a chance at the NC game.
Liberty Bowl:
A 7-5 PAC 10 team goes to the Las Vegas Bowl, just like the top MWC team. This is where we should be expected to go in either conference
Other Bowls:
The PAC 10 has other bowls, like the Holiday and Sun Bowls that are higher profile than the LAs Vegas Bowl that could be a better draw. That sadi, the MWC’s bowl agreements are cuurently being renegotiated and our recent perfromance, especially this year, indicates we deserve better bowls. I would love to see a return to the Liberty Bowl for the MWC.
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