PAC 12 2020 Season Thread

[CatsbyAZ]

Petros Papadakis from Fox Sports LA 570AM on Clay Travis’ show this morning, voicing worries about the future of Pac 12 football:

Papadakis:
“There's a lot of LA sports raging right now, the Chargers and the Rams are in pads, except you hear nothing from USC. USC doesn't act like a blue blood like the rest of these college football programs, like I looked at the headlines yesterday for college football, and I saw Auburn has a bunch of cases but they're pushing forward. I saw the SEC come out with a schedule. I saw a petition come out that Justin Fields was starting. I saw a petition from parents of Big Ten schools - Penn State, Iowa, and Michigan specifically. I saw all these different things happening with everybody pushing forward and fighting for their players. Whether you think it's right, whether you think it's wrong, these people are pushing and fighting, and trying to fulfill their promise to the players which is we are going to showcase you and give you your moment. Scott Frost won't shut up, you know. Brohm was trying to map out a schedule. Not that it'll do anything or help anybody but at least if you're on those teams you feel like guys want to play and a lot of those teams aren't even blue bloods.

And at USC you know what the headline was yesterday? Social Justice backpacks. For all the athletes. Which is great but can't you do that and also act like you kind've want to play football too? And it's just amazing to me the weakness and the limpness of the programs out west particularly with what's supposed to be flagship USC. They just don't act like a blue blood program anymore.

Clay Travis:
"The SEC's tagline is It just means more. I do agree with you in the sense the Pac 12 tagline might as well be It just means less. Even if you are upset about the Big Ten cancellation at least there's a big fight over the Big Ten being cancelled. There's no parent organization rising up angry over the sports being cancelled in the Pac 12. It seems as if everybody is just going to take that decision lying down and not combat it in anyway.”

Papadakis:
"Yea, and for me USC has got to carry that torch. And maybe it's regional and obviously very political because that's a part of this, but I just can't imagine a guy like Pete Carroll or John McCay or John Robinson - any USC Coach I've ever been around that won a championship - I can't imagine any of these guys taking this lying down and acting like - hey it's all good, we're going to take a year off. I don't see it being a great recruiting tool to keep the California guys who are already pledging to Alabama and Clemson. Those guys ten years ago would go to USC and UCLA respectively. And everybody is still going to recruit here in Southern California and use it as their campground for greatness and the bigger time college football here is going to be left behind. Ultimately it comes down to who's the coach and it's Clay Helton and it benefits him to not play...when they get on the field they embarrass themselves. Looking at the headlines yesterday that really jumped out to me - everybody is fighting for the players and here USC is giving out rainbow backpacks."

Clay Travis:
"It looks very bad for the Big Ten and Pac 12 right now. Can you imagine if the SEC which released it's ten game schedule and the Big 12 and the ACC manage to play complete seasons in the Fall, how bad it would look?"

Papadakis:
“Here in California our kids can't even go to school...we don't seem bent on doing anything here. The question is what if the Pac 12 doesn't play football this season? The Big Ten will be fine. Whatever they end up doing. They make a ton of money and will take a hit this year obviously but it's been financially healthy because of the network deal they did and all of those schools, even the crappy ones, are in great shape. That is not the case in the Pac 12. We're hemorrhaging money for years because of our terrible network deal Larry Scott bestowed upon the conference. They have no leverage for their next deal and I'm really scared if you don't have a Phil Knight or the cash at USC who has the money but not the will anymore to be elite and I wonder what a lot of these Pac 12 schools come out looking like? They're probably going to come out of it looking a lot more like the Mountain West."

YIKES

[betarhoalphadelta]

This all assumes that the SEC/ACC/B12 actually go through with their football seasons, *AND* that it doesn't completely blow up in their faces. 

But I agree with the premise, that at least in the B1G you can see coaches and players voicing opposition to having their season postponed/canceled. I'm hearing crickets from the PAC-12. The bigger news was the PAC-12 athletes coming out with a list of outrageous demands to even be willing to come back and play. 

[CatsbyAZ]

This all assumes that the SEC/ACC/B12 actually go through with their football seasons, *AND* that it doesn't completely blow up in their faces.

But I agree with the premise, that at least in the B1G you can see coaches and players voicing opposition to having their season postponed/canceled. I'm hearing crickets from the PAC-12. The bigger news was the PAC-12 athletes coming out with a list of outrageous demands to even be willing to come back and play.

Yes, and Petros’ disappointment agrees that while us western states are more so exercising a responsibility to address this pandemic we’re all in, to include the lesser position it’s putting the Pac 12 in, he’s ALSO bemoaning that the SEC is exercising what they see as a responsibility to play college football at all costs, even at the risk of public health, and will subsequently be in a stronger position when it comes to recruiting, TV deals, raising booster money, keeping concessions going, etc. But say it again: This all assumes that the SEC/ACC/B12 actually go through with their football seasons, *AND* that it doesn't completely blow up in their faces.

This pandemic has really forced the realization of what we as individuals or regions view as vital for us. If day to day living is as much as anything else about identifying what we are responsible for and going about addressing those responsibilities, here in California the responsibility is practiced as mitigating the pandemic spread despite the inconveniences to our educational and economic routines and expectations. Meanwhile, the south is unapologetically forthright that having a college football season is the superseding responsibility.

[CatsbyAZ]

More of the same from our friends Clay Travis and Petros Papadakos this week:

Clay:
“Obviously you’re a huge college football fan, and…I want to ask you this question right off the top – obviously Big 10 parents, Big 10 coaches, Big 10 fans have been incredibly outspoken about how upset they are that their season was cancelled, yet we’ve heard nothing from anyone in the Pac 12. No coaches. No players. No fans to speak of. Why do you think that is?”

Petros:
“…there’s a few reasons. I think the political leadership in most of the states that are in the Pac 12 are pretty the opposite of what the political leadership is in SEC country. And, really polar opposites. And the Big 10 is somewhere in the middle. And they have a lot of really upset people who are letting their voices be heard. On the West Coast it feels like if you’re an advocate for playing football or an advocate for kids fulfilling your promise to them – something that Nick Saban has finally started talking about; and all of these very pro-cancellation college football writers will still write what Nick Saban says like it’s Moses coming down from the mountain. And Nick Saban is right. They promised these kids an opportunity. These are not opportunities that are really fulfill-able if you just sit around for a year. Football is not like that. It’s going to have detrimental effects on a lot of guys for a lot of different reasons. But it really just feels like politics are different on the west coast. And I think a lot of the writers who are reporting within thirty seconds positive tests on college campuses without mentioning hospitalizations to avoid the nuances of the story, they’re just putting out headlines to frighten people. Using words like the virus is raging! Those guys are all on the west coast it feels like. Anytime I tweet something like the high school kids are getting screwed over right now with football being played around the country but not here on the West Coast – whenever I tweet anything like that I get shouted down about the science or you want people to die! And I don’t understand how somehow football became the one sport for this. Look, the letter of intent the players sign says you’re going to give the opportunity to play football and they’re not doing that in the Pac 12 or Big 10 right now. And sadly those are the conferences that Fox has a TV deal with. We lost somewhere close to a hundred games and they told me the other day I might call only one or two games this year. Which is a tremendous hit to me but that’s not really what I’m upset about. I’m upset that West Coast football is basically dead. The Big 10 can handle the financial hit but west coast football can’t and it doesn’t seem like anybody out here is willing to fight for it.”

Clay:
“They’re a lot of people fighting for the Big 10…none of that seems to be materializing in the Pac 12. No one is lighting a fire like Kevin Warren has under him.”

Petros:
“Part of that is because Larry Scott has ruined the Pac 12 long before the coronavirus. This is just a shovel of graveyard dirt on top of it. And part of it is weak leadership which in the Big Ten you see people fighting against. Whether Warren did the right thing or not he’s certainly hasn’t handled it well in the aftermath. And Larry Scott has always been a toothless leader. Always. And now the conference looks a lot like him: Weak. Another big part is the flagship program in the Pac 12 is much more comfortable in neutral, not playing, and not being at risk of embarrassment – that being USC. USC is great when they don’t play football. Colin Cowherd can talk about how great their social media is but it’s only when USC plays that they become an embarrassment. And everybody starts wondering when the coach is going to get fired. So imagine the Big Ten if Ohio State didn’t want to play, and that’s basically what we have in the Pac 12. Except the Big Ten can sustain the financial hit. The Pac 12 cannot because they did a terrible TV deal; they’re not going to survive this.”

[bayareabadger]

The argument that Larry Scott ruined the PAC-12 in this context strikes me as silly. I’m a historical context, you have maybe two programs with more fervent fans than Oregon. The best program is an inconsistent mess. 

It is what it is. The interest wasn’t gonna be there to throw a fit. 

[CWSooner]

Yeah.  Larry Scott didn't invent all those other things that West Coasters would rather do on Saturdays in the fall than attend college football games.  He didn't put the Pacific Ocean out there.  He didn't give the West Coast a West Coast climate.

West Coasters have many other things to do.  They can be very smug about, sometimes even acting as if it is a measure of their own personal worth as human beings, and we can resent them for being smug S.O.B.s if we want.

But it's still true, and Larry Scott had and has nothing to do with it.  Demand for his product is low, so he has a weak hand to play.

Clay Travis is politically active in a "Save our Confederate memorials" way that makes his questions and comments on the show extremely predictable.

[betarhoalphadelta]

Exactly... 

There are 40M people in California. USC, Stanford, UCLA, and Berkeley have a combined undergrad enrollment of ~90K students. So over a span of 20 years, you can graduate 2M folks, equal to 5% of California's population, if you assume they all give a shit about college football. But they don't. Both areas are huge for pro sports, although only recently did Los Angeles return to hosting NFL teams. 

Then you figure the number of Californians who are transplants. There's a huge immigrant population (~28%ish), so those 11M probably aren't exactly attuned to local college football teams. Then there are the additional 16% who are transplants from other states. Maybe some of them are from adjacent PAC-12 states, but a lot are from "elsewhere", such as me. 

So you're left with ~56% of the state being native-born, many of whom went to other colleges and didn't care about college sports or are merely "nominal" PAC-12 team fans--the sort of fair-weather fans that might watch those teams in a big game but otherwise literally don't give a shit. It's not like some areas of the country that you have to declare whether, for example, you're for Auburn or Alabama, at a young age. 

And all of those 56% have tons of other things to do on a daily basis. 

So college football just isn't huge here. 

[bayareabadger]

Clay Travis is politically active in a "Save our Confederate memorials" way that makes his questions and comments on the show extremely predictable.

Clay is the most fascinating opportunist in sports media. He'll find his market and just hammer it. He leans into a certain kind of iconoclasm and has a great feel for finding slightly less than mainstream audiences who both relish not being mainstream and he can resonate heavily with. 

That Robert Lee thing was a moment where a lot of what he does came into view. He's here to find something to be offended by, but has a smooth way of doing it. 

[CWSooner]

Clay is the most fascinating opportunist in sports media. He'll find his market and just hammer it. He leans into a certain kind of iconoclasm and has a great feel for finding slightly less than mainstream audiences who both relish not being mainstream and he can resonate heavily with.

That Robert Lee thing was a moment where a lot of what he does came into view. He's here to find something to be offended by, but has a smooth way of doing it.

He lost an endorsement deal with Jack Daniel's Distillery a few years ago.  They didn't want to be affiliated with his political comments.

[bayareabadger]

Exactly...

There are 40M people in California. USC, Stanford, UCLA, and Berkeley have a combined undergrad enrollment of ~90K students. So over a span of 20 years, you can graduate 2M folks, equal to 5% of California's population, if you assume they all give a shit about college football. But they don't. Both areas are huge for pro sports, although only recently did Los Angeles return to hosting NFL teams.

Then you figure the number of Californians who are transplants. There's a huge immigrant population (~28%ish), so those 11M probably aren't exactly attuned to local college football teams. Then there are the additional 16% who are transplants from other states. Maybe some of them are from adjacent PAC-12 states, but a lot are from "elsewhere", such as me.

So you're left with ~56% of the state being native-born, many of whom went to other colleges and didn't care about college sports or are merely "nominal" PAC-12 team fans--the sort of fair-weather fans that might watch those teams in a big game but otherwise literally don't give a shit. It's not like some areas of the country that you have to declare whether, for example, you're for Auburn or Alabama, at a young age.

And all of those 56% have tons of other things to do on a daily basis.

So college football just isn't huge here.

Yep. You also have two northern schools, one that I love dearly and one that I loathe, that are frankly not culturally so attuned to sports (their noses raised so high). One of the southern schools has 25 miles from school to stadium, and that understates the trek to get there. And the best of them is a small private school that relies heavily on fair-weather in-town fans who glom onto success and step off quickly. 

[bayareabadger]

He lost an endorsement deal with Jack Daniel's Distillery a few years ago.  They didn't want to be affiliated with his political comments.

And I bet he converted that into evidence he was more persecuted, which in turn was held as a reason his ideas were dangerous and subversive, therefore being worth listening to if you wanted to hear the real truth. 

I don't like the man, but he's good at his thing. 

[CWSooner]

Nice work if you can get it, I guess.

[CatsbyAZ]

Former All-Pac 12 Oregon OL Geoff Schwartz on Clay Travis’ radio show talking Pac 12 football:

Clay:
“A big part of the discussion of what’s going on in the world of college football is the Big Ten and their many different moving parts. For instance one reason the Big Ten is getting all the attention is because players, coaches, & fans made an aggressive decision to fight against cancellation. The same thing has not happened in any way in the Pac 12. But as a former Pac 12 player are you surprised it hasn’t happened in the Pac 12 at all?”

Geoff:
“I’m not surprised for a couple of reasons. One of them is because the Pac 12 put out a comprehensive memo, a twelve page memo saying here is why we are shutting down. The conference commissioner, the athletic director of Arizona State, the conference’s head medical chief all did a press conference explaining the decision. All the coaches came out with statements supporting the decision. And the conference footprint is in a different place than is the Big Ten footprint as far as the lockdown situation, especially California. Some schools can’t practice. USC, UCLA, Cal, Stanford – couldn’t even practice. So it’s a different situation than in the Big Ten. The thing that bothers me, Clay, and this is from me being a Pac 12 homer, is that no one seems to care that we’re not playing football. It’s not that we shut down, or that the Big Ten is fighting this. It’s that nobody cares we not playing out here…we’re going to be so left behind that I do think the other conferences are starting to realize this is a problem for the Pac 12. There was a leaked memo detailing the hiring of someone to maybe oversee the Pac 12 commissioner, which, why don’t you just get rid of the commissioner? The Pac 12 hired a football operations guy – Merton Hanks, the old 49er - to run football which has never happened in the Pac 12 conference. So the conference realizes this is a problem – we have to get better at football and basketball so when we’re not playing people elsewhere wonder why, because we’re being left behind right now.”

Clay:
“Do you think they’ll be a lasting impact here? That’s the question I get asked a lot by college football fans. If the Big Ten and the Pac 12 don’t play, let’s pretend you were a college recruit – would that impact your decision if the Big 12, ACC, and SEC were also recruiting you? Or do you think any possibility of that issue is entirely overrated? “

Geoff:
“Obviously it’ll be used against the Pac 12, but Oregon is still third in the country in recruiting right now. It obviously hasn’t affected them very much. The lasting impact is going to be two things. One is the money. Trying to come up with the money you’ve missed. And the Pac 12 has talked about an insurance policy that you can collect on if you’re a public school. But I think the lasting impact of this is that the Juniors who are sitting out already wanted to do so and COVID provides them the cover to sit out without any pushback. We’re going to see true Juniors and redshirt Sophomores who really have nothing to prove this year just take a year off to get ready for the NFL. And that could be the impact for all conferences.”

Clay:
“The thing about that is – and I said this back when it happened – we were going to see a slippery slope of: if you’re willing to sit out for a bowl game then at some point someone who establishes themselves as a projected top ten pick will question why they are even playing at all. I do think you’re right that COVID gives Ja’Marr Chase an excuse to not play.”

Geoff:
“Yes, but there’s also a stigma with sitting out. This idea of proving you love football is a huge part of the NFL combine process. Because coaches and front office guys live and breathe football and sitting out your last year is always looked at as you don’t love football.”

Clay:
“That’s the fear in general. Is that if you get big money and you don’t love the game enough to play anyway that you’ll never commit to football in a big way…to coaches it’s one thing to lose because the other team has a better QB or game plan but it’s another thing if a guy falls asleep in the film room and then isn’t committed enough to put in an A grade effort on the field.”

[CWSooner]

So, CatsbyAZ, I've wondered how you pronounce the "Catsby" part.  Does it rhyme with "Gatsby" or with "cats fly"?