Pac-10: Aligning the divisions rough
The Pac-10 had a solid plan for divisional realignment. Whatever six Big 12 schools were coming would join Arizona State and Arizona for an eastern division. The old Pac-8 schools would stay in the western division.
But now that the Pac-10 has gone from a hoped-for Pac-16 to the Pac-12 by adding Utah and Colorado, the politicking has begun again. And it’s not easy.
I assume Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott had to do a lot of talking to get Arizona State and Arizona to agree to leave its 32-year partners in a new division. UofA and ASU are like every other school in the Pac-10; they make the most out of those annual football trips to Los Angeles to play either UCLA or USC.
Which is why the new Pac-12 will have trouble slicing up the divisions. Colorado officials said they had agreed to be in a Pac-12 South with Utah, the LA schools and the Arizona schools.
But that apparently has brought angst from the North schools — Stanford, Cal, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington and Washington State. All recruit greater Los Angeles and reap the benefits of a game a year in southern California.
Go to that scheduling format with an eight-game conference schedule, and the North schools would go to LA only twice every four years. Go with a nine-game conference schedule, in which every school would have an annual crossover opponent, and that would solve the problem of probably Cal (paired with UCLA as University of California system partners) and Stanford (paired with USC as the only private schools in the league). But the four schools of the Pacific Northwest, which need the LA exposure worse than anyone, would still be disenfranchised.
Some have suggested a zipper format, whereby each set of natural partners — UW-WSU, Oregon-Oregon State, Stanford-Cal, SC-UCLA, UofA-ASU, Utah-Colorado — would be split. Washington State and Washington would be placed in separate divisions, same with the Oregon schools, the Arizona schools, etc. Then play a nine-game conference schedule and allow your natural rival to be an annual opponent.
Using that method, every team would play in Los Angeles seven times every 10 years.
And you think this is complicated. Just wait until we get around to dividing up the Big Ten.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
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Comments
They should have 2 divisions with Wash, Wash St, Ore, Ore St, Utah, and Colorado in the North Divsion and USC, UCLA, ASU, Arizona, Cal, and Stanford in the South Division. You can’t break up the California Schools and you can’t break up the 4 Northwest schools. The rivalries are too big. Cal and USC have played football every year since 1915 and Ore against Wash. is as big as ever. It’s the Cascade Clash. Its the only way you can bring in Utah and Colorado. That new head hancho of the PAC-10 should have thought of that before he invited the 2 new schools.
I have been reading about many options to divide up the league. What I came up with is a combine approach to make most schools happy. Do a combine geo-zipper plan and have each school to have two designated rival games.
North
WASH WSU ORE OSU CAL UCLA
I have been reading many ideas on how to split up the conference. The approach I came up with is to do a geo-zipper plan where each school plays two rivil games.
North
WASH WSU Ore OSU CAL UCLA
____________________________________________________________
Rival 1 ARI ARI COL COL STAN STAN
Rival 2 ASU ASU UTAH UTAH USC USC
South
COL UTAH ARI ASU STAN USC
____________________________________________________________
Rival 1 OSU OSU WSU WSU CAL CAL
Rival 2 ORE ORE WASH WASH UCLA UCLA
This format gives the geographic setting many people are looking simplicity. Secondly, all the California schools get to play each other every year. Lastly, all the other schools get to play a LA school and a Bay Area school every year.
Any comments?
There is a simple solution that makes everybody happy it is called the regional zipper and it assures that all the regional schools play against one another every year, and makes sure that every school plays games consistently in the other regions. The two division would look as follows:
West East
Oregon Oregon St.
Washington Washington St
California Stanford
UCLA USC
Arizona Arizona St
Colorado Utah
Each division would play a round robin within the division for a total of five games. The next thing you do is ensure that the the regional schools play each other every year so the regions would be broken up as follows
NW- Oregon, Oregon St, Washington, Washington St
Cal- USC, UCLA, Stanford, California
East- Colorado, Utah, ASU, Arizona
Since each school in the region all ready plays one of the other schools this would add two games to the schedule and bring the total amount of league games to seven and ensure that the california teams play each other every year. Then you alternate years that you play the remaing four teams
One year the northwest teams in the west division would play against the california teams not in their division one home and one away. the next year they would play against the east teams not in their division. The following year they would play against the California teams not in their division but switch the home teams from the previous meeting. This would bring the total to nine conference games, everybody gets to play in California, rivalries are maintained, and new rivalries are established.
At the end of the year the west and east division champions would play one another.
So a team like Oregons schedule would look like this in
2011 2012 2013
at Washington Washington at Washington
California at California California
at UCLA UCLA at UCLA
Arizona at Arizona Arizon
at Colorado Colorado at Colorado
Oregon St at Oregon St Oregon St
at Washington St Washington St at Washington St
USC at Arizona St at USC
at Stanford Utah Stanford
I think everybody wins in this scenario.
Couldn’t they just divide each division into two groups of three and put USC, ASU, and CU in one group and UCLA, U of A, and UU in the other? Then one North subset plays the USC group for two years (getting a home-and-home with each school) while the other North subset plays the UCLA group. That way each team gets eight conference games and 4 non-conference.