Go Mighty Card

The Pac-12 Network Is Coming. Will It Be On Your Television?

We've been hearing about the Pac-12 Networks for more than a year now, and it finally arrives today. Programming begins at 6PM Pacific time, and the first live event will air on Friday evening when the reigning national champion Stanford women's soccer team will open its title defense against Santa Clara.

You probably already know the problem. Here at GMC Headquarters, we subscribe to DirecTV, so I don't know if I'll get to watch the Mighty Card. Stanford's August 31st home opener is set to air on the Pac-12 Networks, which means they won't appear on my television unless the network and the satellite company come to an agreement in the next two weeks.

If you're in a similar predicament, you can do more than just cross your fingers. The Pac-12 Networks have created a Facebook App called Power of the Pac. All you need to do is enter your zip code and provider, and the app will let you know where you stand. If the Network is available for you, get your popcorn ready and enjoy the season. If not, the app will let you send a quick email to your cable or satellite provider to nudge them in the right direction.

Do this now.

How Not to Cover Pac-12 Media Day

If you make the same mistakes I did when you decide to cover Pac-12 Media Day for  the first time, your day might go something like this.

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You won't be able to find a Pac-12 preview this summer that doesn't rank the Oregon Ducks and the Stanford Cardinal as the top two teams in the Pac-12 North, and whichever team wins the regular season will be favored to win the inaugural conference championship game, and it wouldn't be a surprise if that champion were to move on to play for the BCS Championship.

With all that in mind, I'm guessing that there are Stanford fans out there who are getting more than a little pleasure out of Oregon's current recruiting scandal. (Here's the short version: the university paid Will Lyles $25,000 for what they say were recruiting packages, but there is concern that that payment was actually for Lyles to funnel talent (LaMichael James and Lache Seastrunk) from Texas to Eugene. You can read the Yahoo! Sports story that broke all this here, and you should read a level-headed response from the outstanding Oregon Duck fan blog Addicted to Quack.) There are some pretty knowledgeable folks out there who are predicting that Kelly won't coach another game for Oregon, and that the NCAA will come down with penalties more severe than those levied against USC and Ohio State.

If all that happens, the Duck program will crumble and the door will be wide open for the Cardinal to dominate the Pac-12 North for at least the next few years. Sounds great, doesn't it? Here's why I don't like it.

First of all, I harbor no ill-will towards the Ducks. They're a rival, but not a hated rival. I think Chip Kelly's a great, innovative coach; I love the goofy four-square signs they use to signal plays from the sideline; and I love that they have 17,000 different uniform combinations. 

But here's the real reason I'm hoping this all blows over -- I don't want any asterisks hanging on this season. I want LaMichael James to be eligible because I want Andrew Luck to outdistance the best competition on his way to the Heisman Trophy. I want Chip Kelly on the Oregon sidelines on November 12th because if he isn't there a Cardinal victory won't feel like revenge for last year's loss. Most of all, I want a potential Pac-12 championship to mean something.

Even after last year's dominant season, I don't think college football fans and analysts are willing to accept the Cardinal as one of the nation's elite teams. If the NCAA comes down hard on Oregon, any story about any Pac-12 champion -- especially if that champion is the Stanford Cardinal -- will include mention of the ineligibility of perennial powers Oregon in the North and USC in the South.

The Mighty Card deserves better than that.

The Revolution Will Be Televised

Even though the season is still four months away, there's been lots of news regarding Stanford Football, especially as it relates to how you'll be listening and watching it.

The big news, of course, was the Pac-12 television deal that commissioner Larry Scott brokered last week. Here are the basic facts: 

• The deal kicks off in 2012 and runs through 2023.
• Official numbers haven't been reported either by the Pac-12 or by the partnering networks, ESPN and Fox, but widespread reports peg the haul at roughly $250 million per year, distributed equally across the conference for an average of approximately $21 million per school per year. That's some serious cheddar, dog. (Utah, by the way, didn't get as sweet a deal as Colorado upon joining the conference, so they won't get a full piece of the pie for two more years. The Utes aren't crying though; that expected $21M share is about ten times the TV revenue they banked last season.) 
• There will be a Pac-12 Network, and unlike the Big Ten Network, this one will actually carry some marquee football and basketball games.
• EVERY SINGLE football and basketball game will be televised. I can't emphasize the importance of this enough. Games will be divvied up over the three platforms, but they'll all be there, and they'll all be live.

So what does this mean for the Mighty Card? The money will be nice -- money is always nice -- but it's the impact on recruiting that I'll most look forward to watching. We all know that Stanford has to cast a wide recruiting net in order to gather in those players who are academically-minded enough to gain admission to the University, and it can sometimes be difficult to convince an East Coast recruit to come to the other side of the country to play football. One of the big sticking points is often that friends and family won't be able to watch any of the games, but that argument has just been erased. Unlike any coach in the Big Ten, the SEC, or the ACC, Stanford coaches will be able to sit in any living room in America and tell proud parents that they'll be able to watch their son play football on television. Huge.

Also, in smaller but equally interesting news, it was announced last week that San Francisco's KNBR, the premiere sports radio station in the Bay Area, will be the flagship station for Stanford Football and Basketball. As the football program faces the daunting task of building up a fan base and increasing interest in the team, this is a huge step. Bay Area sports fans who are tuning in to KNBR to listen to San Fransciso Giants and 49er games will hear promos for Stanford football, interviews with Stanford coaches and athletes, and sports talk geared focusing on the program.

Amazing stuff.

2011 Schedule Released

The Pac-10 office released the 2011 Pac-12 Conference schedule on Friday afternoon, so I thought I'd break it down here.  

As detailed early last week when the division alignments were finalized, the conference will stick with a nine-game schedule, meaning the Cardinal will play its five division rivals (Cal, Oregon, Oregon State, Washington, and Washington State) every year, as well as USC, UCLA, and either Colorado and Arizona or Utah and Arizona State in alternating years.

The first conference game of the year will be Utah at USC on September 10th, and the season will conclude with the inaugural Pac-12 Championship Game on December 3rd on the field of the division champion with the best overall conference record.

There aren't any real surprises in the schedule, but I do have one quibble.  It used to be that the Saturday before Thanksgiving was always rivalry weekend in the Pac-10, as each set of natural rivalries matched up on the closing weekend of the season.  This tradition has faded over the past five years or so as the Pac-10 has looked to spread out these marquee games in order to compete with the various conference championship games around the country.  

I didn't like it then, but I like it even less now.  If they're going to have a conference championship game, there should be some uniformity of scheduling to ensure that both teams arrive at that title game on equal footing.  Let's imagine that Arizona beats Arizona State on November 19th next year to clinch the Pac-12 South and finish at 8-1 in conference play.  On that same Saturday, Oregon and Oregon State both win, leaving both teams tied at 7-1 in first place in the Pac-10 North.  

On the following Saturday, with their conference play complete and a berth in the championship game assured, Arizona can rest any dinged up starters as they host -- and demolish -- Louisiana-Lafayette.  Oregon and Oregon State, meanwhile, will be kicking each other's heads in Eugene, battling for the Northern Division championship and a spot in the title game.  Advantage: Arizona.

Hopefully this will all get straightened out by 2012, though I'm guessing any TV deal the conference strikes will likely dictate any scheduling issues, common sense be damned.  Oh, well.

Anyway, here's the Mighty Card's 2011 schedule.  Good seats are available.

 

Sept. 3	vs. San Jose State
Sept. 10	at Duke
Sept. 17	at Arizona
Sept. 24	BYE
Oct. 1	vs. UCLA
Oct. 8	vs. Colorado
Oct. 15	at Washington State
Oct. 22	vs. Washington
Oct. 29	at USC
Nov. 5	at Oregon State
Nov. 12	vs. Oregon
Nov. 19	vs. California
Nov. 26	vs. Notre Dame

I Have Seen the New Pac-12, and I Like It

Pac-10 Commissioner Larry Scott laid out the plans for the new Pac-12 during a press conference on Thursday afternoon, and after watching it I have to say that things look a lot better for Stanford than I had hoped.  There had been lots of hand wringing in Northern and Southern California during the past few weeks that the traditional intrastate rivalries would be severed as the conference was split into two divisions.  Earlier this week I wrote about my hope that Stanford would be able to negotiate an assurance that they would play one of the Los Angeles schools each year, but the scheduling plan announced is even better than that.

As expected, the Pac-10 North will be comprised of the four Northwest schools plus Stanford and Cal, and the Pac-10 South will have the Los Angeles schools, the Arizona schools, plus newcomers Utah and Colorado.  Looking at things from Stanford's point of view, the Cardinal will play the other five teams in the North, plus four of the six teams in the South.  The good news, though, is that both Bay Area teams will play both L.A. teams each year.  As he discussed this aspect of the schedule, Commissioner Scott noted that USC has actually played Cal and Stanford more times than it's played UCLA, and he made it clear that he saw these rivalries as integral to the history and identity of the conference.  In order to respect this history, the decision makers unanimously agreed to extend the rivalries between the California schools.

In the long run, this couldn't have worked out better for Stanford.  The Cardinal will still make yearly trips to the fertile recruiting ground of Southern California, but they won't have to compete against either UCLA or USC in the conference standings.

The sole purpose of the divisional split, of course, is the creation of a conference championship game.  Beginning in December of 2011, the championship game will be played in the stadium of the team with the best overall conference record.  The SEC holds its championship game in a neutral site, but there are two reasons this wouldn't work for the Pac-12.  In a sprawling conference the size of the Pac-12, it would be difficult to expect Washington fans, for example, to travel more than a thousand miles on a week's notice.  Also, as difficult as it may be to believe, there are exactly three football-only neutral sites within the Pac-12 region: Qwest Field in Seattle, Invesco Field in Denver, and Glendale Stadium outside of Phoenix.  All three are on distant outposts of the Pac-12, and wouldn't make sense.

So now it's finally all clear.  The Mighty Card will be in Los Angeles to play the Trojans in the fall, and then host the inaugural Pac-12 Championship game in December.  Make your travel plans now!