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Arizona Football: Best and worst Pac-10 divisions for the Wildcats

by on Jun. 21, 2010, under Sports

¡Adiós, Paco Once!

With the addition of Utah the Pac-11 became the Pac-12. Increased football riches will start pouring in with the Your-Corporate-Sponsor-Here Pac-12 Championship Game. All that’s left to do is split into two divisions.

Except that might be more difficult than convincing Texas to join your league.

Everyone

Everyone wants to play USC’s highly compensated team.
Photo by Gary A. Vasquez-US PRESSWIRE

The battle lines are being drawn and, believe you me, this will be a battle. Access to the fertile Los Angeles recruiting fields is a treasure nobody wants to give up.

Colorado says it was promised L.A. but that isn’t sitting well in Northern California. The folks in the Pacific Northwest aren’t happy about it either.

The Arizona schools need to fight to keep them unhappy.

This is not an argument you want to lose. Arizona and Arizona State were going to be shipped to the New Big 12 South if Texas came on board. It’s somebody else’s turn to play good soldier.

Dig your heels in. Raise a ruckus. Take shots at people through the media. Whatever it takes to make sure you end up on the bus with the cool kids.

The easy answer is the zipper model where each division gets one of the L.A. schools. But this isn’t the time for easy. One team from Los Angeles would be a nice consolation prize but the UA and ASU need to pull a Larry Scott and shoot for the biggest fish in the sea.

Here are the best and worst possible divisional alignments for Arizona. Keep in mind this only applies to football. Basketball will function as a unified 12-team league.

Arizona’s ideal football division is…

The Calizona Division: USC, UCLA, Stanford, Cal, UA, ASU
This is the recruiting goldmine as Northern California is also important to the UA (see Tuitama, Willie). This also happens to be the true geographical split if you go North/South since Salt Lake City and Boulder are both north of the San Francisco Bay.

(In case you’re curious, a geographic Eastern Division would be Colorado, Arizona, Utah, ASU, WSU and USC.)

The next best alignment from Arizona’s perspective would be…

The Mostly South Division: USC, UCLA, Utah, Colorado, UA, ASU
This is the division the Colorado A.D. thinks he’s getting. I don’t think the new guys should get this kind of break but it sure would benefit the schools in the Grand Canyon State.

If the league drops its zipper there are two ways to look at it. The first is to root for the division that gives you the most football prestige, which would be USC, Oregon, Washington, Cal and Utah.

The other option is to hope for the easiest zipper division possible. That would be USC (sanctions minus Pete Carroll equals good news for everyone else), Stanford (Jim Harbaugh is eventually going somewhere else), Oregon State (good but not Nike U good), Colorado (“It’s Division I football!”) and Washington State (duh).

If you’re from Tucson or Tempe the worst possible division would be WSU, OSU, CU, UU, UA and ASU. If that somehow comes to pass whoever was representing the Arizona schools needs to have his negotiating arm chopped off.

My prediction is we will see one L.A. school in each division. If you split one rivalry you have to split them all so I fully expect a form of the zipper. My guess is the Cal/UCLA and Oregon/Washington secondary rivalries will be preserved so I’m going to go with final football divisions that look like this:

USC, Stanford, OSU, WSU, Utah, Arizona
UCLA, Cal, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, ASU

But the Cats and Devils better not accept anything less than both L.A. schools without a big fight.

The other issue where the Arizona schools (and everyone else outside L.A.) need to dig in is the location of the conference championship game. This can’t be the basketball tournament part two where it’s held in Southern California every year.

Plan it far enough in advance so you can rotate it among NFL stadiums in Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle and Denver. If you want to use the Rose Bowl as L.A.’s NFL stadium so
be it, but Autzen in Oregon is off the table.

If the hoops tournament at Staples Center is any indication decisions like this are only going to be made once so you have to fight for an advantage (or a lack of a disadvantage) right now.

The battle for L.A. is on.

More in TC Sports Network:

TC All-Star Selections

This entry was posted on Monday, June 21st, 2010 at 1:24 AM and is filed under Sports. Tags for this post: , , , , , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • Robber Baron

    “Arizona and Arizona State were going to be shipped to the New Big 12 South if Texas came on board. It’s somebody else’s turn to play good soldier.”
    During the Pac16 discussion Arizona fans were my favorite fans to talk to (I’m a Stanford fan).  They were intelligent, obsessed, and meticulous in their investigative reporting (far better than most sports journalists.)  Perhaps this added to them being good soldiers.  However, to say that being shipped off to the P16 East is the same as being left out of a division with the LA schools in the 12Pac is to engage in false equivalency of a very high order.
    The coming 12Pac division war is intense precisely because (as you point out above) every school is fighting for maximum access to LA.
    “Access to the fertile Los Angeles recruiting fields is a treasure nobody wants to give up.”
    The Pac16, on the other hand, had two phenomenal recruiting grounds with marquee programs to face: SoCal and Texas.  Sure, the Arizona schools were giving up sunny SoCal, but they were gaining the premier recruiting grounds in the country, Texas.  They were getting amazingly compelling opponents in UT and OU.
    So please, as we all battle it out for access to our lone gold mine, let’s stop pretending the AZ schools were selfless angels just a few short days ago.  They were not.
    p.s. My very selfish vote at this point is for the Calizona division.
     
     

  • http://www.infobarrel.com/Land_Rover_Now_Making_Cars! Landrover

    If the new Pac-12 really screws Arizona in however it divides up the divisions, what’s the chance we could secede and go join Texas and Oklahoma in the Big-12, taking ASU with us and once again restoring the Big-12 to 12 teams?  Obviously we do not want to do this unless we get screwed, but if we were shut of our California anyway…

  • HuskyMatt190

    If the Arizona schools jump to the Big-12 over the L.A. recruiting issue that would be the dumbest thing ever.
    First of all, the Pac-12 is evenly distributing money while the Big-12 is handing the biggest slice of their revenue to Texas which may end up being the death blow to that conference in a few years.
    Secondly, the Arizona schools are a reasonable driving distance from L.A. which gives them a geographic advantage in that territory.  How do they plan on convincing a Texas kid to pass up better football programs to go play in another time zone?
    Arizona isn’t going anywhere, but the realignment issue is already giving the NW schools a problem.  I think a partial zipper solution would work best.   You keep the NW schools together and you put the Arizona schools in with Colorado and Utah.  Then you split up the California schools, the public schools (Cal and UCLA) go to one side, and the private schools (USC and Stanford) go to the other.  Since there will only be 6 teams in each conference, you can keep the cross town rivalries going and then shuffle the cross division matchups every year so that you get to play two schools from the other division every three years.

  • Shane

    The best place for a Pac-12 championship game would be in Las Vegas. The problem is the stadium there is WAY too small for such a big game. But with Vegas money and promoters, they could easily expand that stadium into a suitable venue. (75,000+) It is a neutral site, large travel destination that’s easy to get to, centrally located for all schools, etc.
    In fact, they should move the basketball tournament there as well.

  • Noah

    Yep, OSU is pretty easy. Guess that’s why we have finished in the top 3 of the Pac10 three years in a row and have gone to bowl games 8 of the last 10 years.

    • Alan

      If you read it more closely, he said OSU is good, but Oregon is better.

  • Go Bears

    People keep talking about preserving the Cal-UCLA rivalry, but what about Cal-U$C?  Cal has played U$C every year since 1912 (before UCLA was a separate university). 

    Of course if you want to go way back, Washington was Cal’s original rival.  Back then, Stanfurd had only a rugby team.  I guess you could say that Cal has a lot of football history…

    • sctrojan79

      Cal has a lot of football history, all right – most of it bad. Berserkely’s last Rose Bowl – 1959 – was a long time ago. Their last win – 1938 – was a lot longer ago.
      I do agree that the 4 CA schools and 2 AZ schools should be in the same division, though.

      • blueleaf11

        Love the idea of the Calizona division- but if it happens it’s only sowing the seeds of discontent that will end up hurting the conference, if not killing it eventually.

        I think the “partial zipper” idea that was floated a few posts back is probably the most fair situation.

  • Robber Baron

    I think it will be important for the sake of rivalries that all CA schools play each other yearly.  Same goes for the PNW schools.  And also for the AZ/CO/UT schools.  Is there a way to do this with 2 divisions?  Yes, if we are willing to stay at 9 conference games.  The added requirement is for each school to have TWO protected interdivisional rivals.
     
    That means you split up the CA schools (either geographically or in a mini-zipper) but still allow them to play each other.  Each other regional group stays together in a division.  That means it will be a 5+2+2 format.  5 intra-division + 2 protected inter-division + 2 out of 4 remaining inter-division.
     
    If you zipper just the CA schools you can maintain all regional rivalries and give every school regular access to both SoCal and the Bay Area.

  • http://www.wmea.org Bruce

    East/West zipper geographically. (In other words, in each rivalry place the teams in divisions by their geographical relationship.)

    EAST: WSU, UO, UC, USC, UA, UC
    WEST: UW, OSU, Stanford, UCLA, ASU, UU

    Play all five from division, “rival,” and two across (one home, one away). Schedule so that “across” games are located in opposite location from the divisional opponent from the same area that year.

    • Alan

      If a zipper is gonna happen, you’ve gotta at least make an attempt at keeping secondary rivals together.  Oregon and Washington together, and I think Cal and UCLA as the two UC schools might be the next biggest secondary rivalry.

  • locke

    9 conference games
    Zipper East/West division
    2 guaranteed games with designated rivals, non-division played every year
    rotate the other four non-division teams over a four year home/away schedule (two no-play, two play)

    Divisions (although not necessarily geographically accurate)

    East:
    Arizona
    Colorado
    Oregon
    Stanford
    USC
    Washington State

    West:
    Arizona State
    California
    Oregon State
    UCLA
    Utah
    Washington

    Guaranteed Rivalry games:
    Arizona: Arizona State & Utah
    Arizona State: Arizona & Colorado
    California: Stanford & USC
    Colorado: Arizona & Utah
    Oregon: Oregon State & Washington
    Oregon State: Oregon & Washington State
    Stanford: California and UCLA
    UCLA: USC & Stanford
    USC: UCLA & California
    Utah: Arizona & Colorado
    Washington: Oregon and Washington State
    Washington State: Oregon State and Washington

  • Mack

    I think I miss the old Pac-10.

  • Dokdo

    Here is another proposal:

    The Randomly Generated Division System – where you are guaranteed to play one team from all the 5 other geographic regions, but it’s drawn at random.

    If they do go with a North and South Division – each school should be guaranteed trips to each of the three geographic zones in the other division each year, to make sure all Northern teams get to LA once a year and Southern teams get to the Bay Area each year. 

  • Pingback: Football Schedule Fix: How many games should the Pac-12 play? - UAsports.net

  • Alan

    A zipper would just be too confusing, but in a “Calizona” configuration, it basically ignores the NW schools and hangs them out to dry.  There’s not a single solution that’s equally fair for everybody, but I think the solution that’s most fair to everybody is to do the North/South split while splitting the bay area schools apart from the LA schools.  Each division has three regions so it’s not confusing.  While the south division gets better access to southern California, it at least doesn’t cut the northwest off from California completely.  They’ll at least have regular visits to the bay area.  Yes, it doesn’t seem fair to give the new guys such a sweet deal, but that sweet deal for them is the most fair way to keep from screwing over the northwest schools, three of which were three of the four original schools in the original Pacific Coast Conference if you wanna get into tradition.  And then if there are too many guaranteed cross-division games between the bay area and LA area, then it again keeps the northwest schools from access to the LA area, so each of the California schools should only get one guaranteed cross-division game with a school from the other region.  They can either go back and forth to guarantee they’d play at least one of them each year or make it a permanent rival, and about half the time they’d still be playing both teams during the year anyway.
    As for the championship game, I agree it shouldn’t permanently be in LA.  But if it’s gonna rotate through the regions, then it’s gotta rotate to every region and not just four or five of them.  Again, it’s what’s most fair.  Though I’d prefer Vegas if they upgrade the stadium.  It’s neutral and in a great city.

  • http://Pac12Cooler.com Jake Smith

    The best plan is a zipper. If you do that, you get to play all your rivals and still get access everywhere. A good zipper plan can be seen at:
     
    Pac12Cooler.com

  • Creative1

    As a CAL fan I think that the new guys should not be deciding the divisional outcome of the Conference.

    The CU AD may believe one thing but CAL is part if the PAC -10s DNA and her fans will not allow the break-up of  the LA and San Francisco Bay rivalries.  (On this one point Stanford and CAL stand united.)

    Given the number of CAL and Stanford alumni in the LA basin I cannot believe the conference would be stupid enough to split these four schools.  The same goes for USC and UCLA alums in the Bay Area.

    As for the Championship Game I believe a great site would be San Diego.  Great climate, big stadium that is not the fome field to any of the conference schools and easy to get to.

    Las Vegas will always have the stain of gambling and hookers to deal with.

    Not a good fit.

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