Cal & Stanford as B1G members
- Thread starter MADHAT1
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Who wouldn't want to be associated with Stanford, one of the top three academic universities in the country.? One of the best in the world. With great sports too. Cal Berkeley not far behind. The Big Ten has plenty of elite college football royalty. If the Big Ten wants to promote itself as an academic as well as an athletic powerhouse, adding Stanford (and Cal) is a no brainer to me.
I know I'm an anomaly, but it shouldn't solely be about $$$ and viewers/media. Stanford is an incredible institution.
I know I'm an anomaly, but it shouldn't solely be about $$$ and viewers/media. Stanford is an incredible institution.
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Yes, teams like Cal and Stanford would balance the conference competition wise. Need to keep some level of competition for RU, Illinois, Maryland, Northwestern, Minnesota etc. Otherwise you keep taking the top programs and who knows what happens the next re-alignment in ten years. Some teams that are current to BIG could be left out and an entirely new conference formed. Let the SEC or Big 12 take Florida St, Clemson, etc. RU is having a pretty good recruiting class thus far, even after a 4-8 season (currently 34th). And guess what? That's 10th rated for the conference. If its just steam rolling through these teams there will be a conversation at some point to eliminate them. anything's possible. Who would have thought the PAC-10 (12) would be currently on the verge of collapse, 20 years ago (USC was the nat'l champion)?
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Amen - I'm sick of blowouts and half seasons of mismatches.
I have yet to even watch an RU v OSU game because I always knew what was coming and won't waste a fall day watching an OSU fodder game. After a gauntlet of 4 or 5 B1G, boss teams many RU players are broken and flat
In Cal's case, zero. The stadium is over an earthquake fault.
It is not the BIG’s job to solve Stanford’s and Cal’s problems. Our Media Partners do not want them. Why should Rutgers give up revenue to help Stanford and Cal?
mismatches is the key word used here. Thats what it has been for most of RU's football time in the BIG. Hope schiano-man can make something happen this year. The deck is stacked against him.
Media/revenue aside, as a Rutgers fan, would you rather see Rutgers play Stanford or play FSU and Clemson?
Our media partners may feel they have enough content with the conference at 18. I am not sure they will want more schools that will just add more inventory in the Eastern time zone and create all sorts of scheduling issues.
At present, FSU or Clemson would blow Rutgers out just the way Ohio State, Michigan and Penn State do. A game with Stanford is more likely to be competitive. But the blowouts would attract more eyeballs (at least initially) because those three teams have bigger fan bases than Stanford does. And attracting eyeballs is what it's all about.
You're right that Stanford is a great institution (I say that although I'm a Cal grad), but that's not what's important here. You can say that's a shame, just as it's a shame that athletes are going to have to cross three time zones to compete. But, for better or worse, money is what makes the college athletic world go round.
After the AAU selected USF and not FSU to be Florida's third AAU school (after UF and Miami) I am a bit worried about AAU... how they currently make decisions. But that said... I think UCF is just as worthy as USF for AAU or soon will be. Orlando area is growing by leaps and bounds and, no doubt, lots of Big Ten alum live nearby.
So if it is about business then the state of Florida is a good add.. but the Tallahasee area... meh. USF, despite AAU status, just doesn't cut it and to people in central Florida they see UCF as superior to USF.
I hate that Cal and Stanford could be left out of all this... especially Stanford. But if the state of California can have 4 high-level programs.. USC, UCLA, CAL, STANFORD.. then why can't Florida have 4? UF, MIAMI, FSU, UCF... hmmm.. Miami?
So if it is about business then the state of Florida is a good add.. but the Tallahasee area... meh. USF, despite AAU status, just doesn't cut it and to people in central Florida they see UCF as superior to USF.
I hate that Cal and Stanford could be left out of all this... especially Stanford. But if the state of California can have 4 high-level programs.. USC, UCLA, CAL, STANFORD.. then why can't Florida have 4? UF, MIAMI, FSU, UCF... hmmm.. Miami?
Shocked to see the huge viewer’s ratings at Maryland. We have much work to do in building our brand . Our CFB viewership is last in the B1G. Even Syracuse last season had 200K+ more weekly viewers than RU.
If the Big Ten wanted to add FSU (or ND) I can see Stanford being added to balance it out. Then you'd have a five team "pod" out west. Looks like Cal is the odd team out.
Your suggestion interests me: why would a five team pod be better than a six team pod?
The reaction out in Cal-Stanford land is still shock. From what I am reading, Stanford has an outside shot at Big Ten if ND were to join. Cal may be in bigger trouble. Their only hope may be Big 12, else MWC. Stanford can afford independence and waiting. Cal, though well endowed, cannot afford it as academic side will go ballistic if it is used for athletics. Cal's only glimmer of hope for Big Ten is if university presidents of Big Ten want Cal academically badly enough to push on it. This glimmer is real low that it borders on pipe dream. Cal and Stanford just learned that its all about Football and dollars -- not academics and Olympic sports.
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If Stanford is counting on Notre Dame to save them, well, good luck. You're right that there is *no* way that Cal is going to use endowment money for athletics. I am hoping that all of this is a negotiating tactic by the Big Ten to get Cal and Stanford to join for much less payout that Washington and Oregon are getting. (That's legitimate; Washington and Oregon have higher TV viewership. I think it is very unlikely that the Big Ten presidents would accept a reduced payout in return for having Cal in the conference.
One of the problems here (and I don't know why Cal doesn't solve it) is brand name. Cal cannot decide whether it is Cal, or UC Berkeley, or Berkeley or Cal-Berkeley or whatever. That lessens the academic prestige that admitting "Cal" would give to the Big Ten. Here in the east, people don't know whether Cal is Berkeley or Cal Tech or what.
Edit: although I am a double graduate of Berkeley (or whatever you want to call it), it is hard for me to muster sympathy on this issue. UCLA is part of the same system, is just as prestigious, and yet was able to build an excellent program. Indeed, athletics is part of the way UCLA became prestigious -- think about John Wooden's teams. UCLA also avoided the branding problem. I am told on good authority that Franklin Murphy was asked what the biggest problem was that he had to face upon becoming Chancellor of UCLA in 1958. He said, "Persuading the switchboard operators to answer the phone "UCLA!"
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Retired711, have you heard anything from Cal? From what I know and can tell, they have not reached out to the Big 10. The Big 10 does not reach out till the other party, until they reach out to them.
All I hear are rumors from fans. The Cal administration has said only that they are not just watching and waiting, and are seeking a solution consistent with the campus's values. That might be code for "we don't care if we have big time athletics," but the campus is still on the hook for a large-scale athletics project 20 years ago whose financing fell apart when fans declined to buy personal seat licenses in the anticipated quantity. And of course "the Play" is still part of campus lore. I would be very surprised if the administration has not reached out to the Big Ten in some way, but who knows.
Edit: the latest rumor is that Cal's administration is not interested in joining the Big Ten and that it and the rest of the Pac-4 will meet with the MWC shortly to discuss a merger. (Fans on Cal's board *hate* the idea of joining the MWC.) The rumor is that Stanford will be part of the meeting, but is not that interested in becoming part of the MWC.
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Stanford won the directors cup for like 25 straight years from 1994 to 2019.
I would like for something to not be solely about money
I would like for something to not be solely about money
I hope you are right on the "accept a lower payout", but no chatter on that out here. The Cal fans are more distressed than Stanford fans, that seem a bit "ho-hum". Bit surprising given how uppety they are on their athletics success overall. I am not a Cal grad, but my daughter is as are many friends, so I have some sympathy for the school. They are frustrated by the adminstrators, who remind me of Rutgers administrators of the 80s and 90s --- clueless as to the positive impact athletics can have on the overall institution. Rutgers was always afraid of the academics howling over waste of money. But that rapidly changed once they saw the positive impact of the Big Ten. As you said, UCLA figured this out. I also look at schools that previously were not seem as academic powerhouses, but were athletic powerhouses suddenly rise up -- Florida, Florida State, Alabama --- things are changing fast and Cal doesn't seem to in tune with the macro picture.
Yes, I note that no one on the Cal board is talking about the Big Ten. I think Stanford fans are more ho-hum because they think (perhaps wrongly) that they have a better chance of finding a good solution. Cal's administrators have been oblivious to sports for decades; it goes back to the 60s. Cal was once actually outstanding, but that was last true in the 1950s. Perhaps Cal is thinking it can be like the University of Chicago or MIT or Cal Tech in ignoring sports, but that's a heavy lift.
Thanks for the info.
If the Cal admin really believes that, then they have committed suicide.
Feel bad for the Cal community, they deserve better than that.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing to actually want your university to focus on its mission and not semipro sports
The fact that they are not interested in joining the Big Ten really is unbelievably disappointing, not to mention, flat out stupid. Access to the academics side alone should be a huge draw to them.
That said, I wonder how much of those rumors are to try to get some negotiating leverage. Even that is just dumb if that was the play given really the leverage is zero. If the Big Ten throws Stanford and Cal a small playout to earn in full share, they should take it. They have the same leverage Rutgers had when Rutgers joined the Big Ten.
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But most on message boards that are about college sports programs want sports to be the best possible and many posting in them act like academics should be secondary.
Putting together strong confrences its the TV revenue that will come with the program is thought about first and being a top academic school is secondary, even in a confrence that streesses it's members being top academic institutions .
Interesting take on Cal and Stanford. Doesn’t matter re: football driving the bus but interesting nonetheless.
Who you adding to ucla, usc, wa, and or in a 6 team pod? Maybe Nebraska and Iowa? Those latter two are 1500 miles away. At least in a 5 they’re all on the WC and same time zone. So a third of their schedule is no different than when they were in the PAC
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But I thought markets were so important.. lol. Bay Area is what the 6th or 7th market? But the Big Ten doesn’t care cause no one cares about Stanford & Cal just like they don’t give two sh!ts about UVa.
I'm sure they'd love to . . . but I can't see the Ivies (all from Philly north) wanting to travel regularly to San Francisco. There has been a little talk on the Cal board of trying to make a conference with Rice, Tulane, and similar schools, but it's hard for me to see how that would work, even assuming that these schools could easily leave their existing conferences.
Maybe the Olympics will finally get rid of the other sports except Basketball, Football (rest of world) and add Football (U.S.). Rip synchronized curling ......
