Report: Pacific-10, Big 12 conferences could form superleague that would remake college sports landscape The big news in college sports today is a report that the Pacific-10 Conference may attempt to lure six teams from the Big 12 Conference to form a superleague that would dramatically alter the college landscape. Chip Brown, a former Dallas Morning News writer who now works for the Rivals.com affiliated site Orangebloods reports: (I)t appears the Pac-10, which has its meetings in San Francisco starting this weekend, is prepared to make a bold move and invite Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Colorado to join its league, according to multiple sources close to the situation.... The six teams from the Big 12 would be in an eight-team division with Arizona and Arizona State. The other eight-team division would consist of USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington and Washington State. Prior to Brown's report, columnist Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman had floated a similar scenario - with different teams - on Sunday. In that piece he wrote: My suggestion (for the Big XII)? Align with the Pac-10. The Southeastern Conference is closer geographically and in some ways culturally, but an expanded SEC likely wouldn't go past Texas and A&M. Convince Texas that its best interests are to stay with much of its current Big 12 members and head west. The Pac-10 in some ways is like the Big 12. A little isolated. A little behind in television revenue. A little apprehensive with all the talk going on around the Great Lakes. A confederation of A&M, Texas, OU, Kansas and two from the group of OSU, Tech, K-State or Colorado (let the politics sort it out; my vote is OSU and Colorado) could join Arizona State and Arizona to form an East Division of the Pac-16, with the eight coastal schools comprising the West Division The move as outlined by Brown, if made, would create a conference with seven of the country's top 20 TV markets (Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco, Houston, Phoenix, Seattle and Sacramento). The Oregonian has calls in with the Pac-10 offices. Last week, conference commissioner Larry Scott spoke in Portland about the issue of expansion in particular. On Sunday, The Oregonian ran a Q&A with Scott that also touched on the subject. For more context on the matter is this report from The Associated Press on Missouri's refusal to commit to staying in the Big 12: KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The head of the University of Missouri is giving no assurances that the Tigers intend to remain in the Big 12. Chancellor Brady Deaton said Missouri remained a proud member of the Big 12, but “we’re going to do what’s best for our institution.” “We’re not shutting our ears to anything,” Deaton said as he walked into a meeting of Big 12 presidents. “I’m sure every school here has a responsibility to its own institution as primary responsibility. Conference realignment is something we do for our athletic programs. That’s what we’re working on right now.” Big 12 commissioner Don Beebe has repeatedly said he wants to know which Big 12 member schools are committed to remaining the league. So far, that’s been a difficult task. Nebraska and Missouri have both indicated they might be interested if the more lucrative Big Ten Conference decides to expand, a move it is studying. And that has led to speculation that Oklahoma, Colorado and Texas might bolt for the Big Ten or elsewhere. The Pac-10 holds its spring meetings this weekend in San Francisco. Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne said this week that he hoped some resolution to the whole question of conference realignment might be arrived at by the presidents this week, but that was not expected by most attendees. “We’re not making any comments about all the speculation about conferences,” Deaton said. “What we’re doing right now is what’s best for Missouri and we’ll continue to look at all the resources as we look to the future and all alignments.” The Big 12 meetings end Friday. http://blog.oregonlive.com/pac10/2010/06/report_pacific-10_big_12_confe.html
Living in Texas, this would make me so happy. The Pac 10 would be so lucky to get Texas in it's conference. That team has incredible tv ratings, and tons of money. It's also a very good academic school
I'd be for this. I'd assume every team would play the teams within their local 8 sub conference, and then would arrange to play 3 alternating teams from the other subconference, and then a conference championship.
well 10 does seem like a lot, but that's if you are more concerned about fluffing up your team's stats. Besides, consider right now some schools end up playing teams of that caliber before conference games anyways. Like Oregon and Ohio State.
The biggest, silly issue I see would be Oregon State University and Oklahoma State University. Both are orange and black, nay?
I saw that same one, I think...it's not JUST academics, but it's having a bunch of competitive sports and a specified research budget threshold or something, iirc.
Ya, something along those lines. Adding the Texas schools would be huge. I don't think anyone out in Oregon realizes just how huge college sports are in Texas. UT has a stadium that is being expanded to over 100,000 seats. They have a waiting list of 15,000 people for tickets.
Agree. Boise St. would only be competive in football. They'd kick their asses kicked in almost every other sport.
I don't like the idea. First, within each team's division they would play 7 games. Then what? Four non conference games against tomato can opponents to make them a laughingstock? Or maybe a random assortment of teams in the other division? The team that had to play OK and Texas in the same year while another played Tech and K-State would be screaming bloody murder- and justifiably so. Second, To do this just to get a conference championship game is doing so for all the wrong reasons. Third, I am certain Texas and OK will turn us down as it just weakens their chances of getting to ther BCS Title game by having to play each other yearly and then the PAC-179,852 (or so it will be by then) title game. As for me, I'd like to see conferences each consisting of 10 teams where each team plays all the others in conference schedule, no conference title game, and then on to the east coast biased BCS fraud of a system.
I think this would be AWESOME! We would play 10 conference games by the way in answer to BP. I can just imagine a season where I would have tix to USC, UofO, Texas, and Oklahoma. Wow! The only negative is that I bet they would raise the price of season tickets.
I don't necessarily disagree with this, but that ain't gonna happen. The SEC has already changed the landscape of college football. We either get with the program or get left behind.
