San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Conference landscape losing coherence
There’s an element of oldschool nostalgia that finds one drifting hopelessly out of touch with reality. “Get a grip,” comes the retort. “Things were not better back then.”
I’ve been guilty of the crime, many times, but I’m about to issue a challenge as the college football season begins. Give it a look, then tell me I’m wrong.
The sport’s traditional conferences are splintering like cheap firewood — when they aren’t being gluttonous in their enlargement. We won’t see the worst of it until 2025, when Texas and Oklahoma join the SEC and the rest of the so-called Power Five landscape will be anyone’s guess. But let’s go back in time, just for kicks. Like, 50 years.
In the fall of 1971, this is how powerhouse football looked across the nation:
Pacific-8: A geographical masterpiece, with all eight schools from states literally adjoining the Pacific Coast from California to Washington.
Big Ten: Representing a cluster of seven Midwestern states — Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa — and the longest distance between any two of them, by air, was about 620 miles.
Southwest Conference: Seven Texas schools, anchored by the mighty UT Longhorns, plus Arkansas. Tradition mattered greatly at the time, and this conference had produced some of the greatest players, teams and literature in the sport’s history.
Big Eight: A convenient fit over six states, including perennial titans Oklahoma and Nebraska, with the longest plane flight covering about 730 miles.
Southeastern Conference: Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, LSU, Mississippi, Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Mississippi State — a 10-school alignment unchanged since its formation in 1933.
Atlantic Coast Conference (at a time when it had minimal impact in football): Clemson, Duke, North Carolina, Maryland, North Carolina State, South Carolina, Wake Forest and Virginia — each a charter member since the league’s inception in 1953.
Western Athletic Conference: The Arizona schools, BYU and Utah, all in another sensibly configured conference with New Mexico, Wyoming, UTEP and Colorado State. Independents: Notre Dame, Miami, Florida State, Boston College and Penn State were among the most prominent.
So here’s a question: Whether it’s 1971 or if those alignments existed now — exactly what is wrong with that?
More college football
Life can’t be too comfortable for Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh. Critics are calling for him to be fired, and the season hasn’t even started. One thing in his favor: All four of the Wolverines’ September games are at home. Most distinctive schedule in the country: Stanford, the only school playing Power Five opponents exclusively, with a non-conference slate of Kansas State, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame (admitted on a one-year basis last year into the ACC, which is trying to make it permanent). For comparison, Utah, Washington State and the Arizona schools have no such games. As Ron Kroichick pointed out, the Pac-12-Big Ten-ACC “alliance” suggests the possibility of Cal opening a season with non-conference games against Michigan, Purdue and Clemson. What a distant cry from the Bears’ upcoming games against Nevada and Sacramento State. Plus, longterm commitments have ruined schedules throughout the country for years to come. Cal has lined up games against UNLV, North Texas and UC Davis over the next several seasons, while Stanford settles for Colgate, Sacramento State and Cal Poly. Depressing: Auburn will be the only school in the country to play its entire schedule on natural grass. In contrast, all of Ohio State’s games will be on artificial turf. You really have to marvel at Larry Scott’s buffoonery. Here’s a commissioner who set back the Pac-12 at every turn — from his obscene salary ($5.3 million a year), to the flagging Pac-12 Network, to his failure to sign up with DirecTV — and then blamed everything on the schools in an Associated Press interview, absolving himself of any blame. Thank heavens he’s gone. We’re stuck until 2024 with Scott’s ill-fated TV deal, featuring far too many night games and fans routinely left in the dark about starting times until 12 or six days before kickoff. But here’s the most important thing to know: The Pac-12 Network routinely carries lesser games, catered to a specific audience. Showcase matchups involving conference schools almost invariably can be found on Fox, FS1 or ESPN.
Grim in retrospect: Last season, Cal ranked 11th in the conference in scoring, last in total offense, last in passing offense and 11th in rushing offense. Watching game tapes, “We all kind of looked at each other like, ‘Wow, we were pretty raw,’ ” quarterback Chase Garbers said during a recent media session. This year will be “completely different,” he said, with “a lot more exciting offense, a lot more explosive plays. It’s going to be a lot more exciting to watch.” In securing $17.5 million over 10 years in a cryptocurrency naming-rights deal, Cal announced “FTX Field at Memorial Stadium” as its home facility. Which is fine, except FTX now goes into the Bay Area naming-rights waste bin along with Network Associates, McAfee, O.co, RingCentral, 3Com and Monster. Add ’em all up and here’s how often any fan adopted any of them at any time: never. Things really get rolling next Saturday with Georgia at Clemson, Penn State at Wisconsin, Alabama at Miami and LSU playing UCLA at the Rose Bowl. Then behold a Sept. 11 schedule featuring Oregon at Ohio State, Washington at Michigan, Stanford at USC, Texas A&M at Colorado, Utah at BYU and Cal at TCU. Sensational.