Aug 27th, 2010
How would you make this a Pac-11 logo?
The Pac-10 has a brand-spanking new Pac-10 logo for this season, with plans to break out its Pac-12 logo version next season. The only problem is, the conference may be neither the Pac-10 nor the Pac-12 next season, but the Pac-11, leaving the conference, Larry Scott and the football and basketball schedules in an awkward state.
OK, we realize it’s very possible Colorado is posturing, negotiating, playing hardball, scheming, lying or however you want to term this hazy, almost sleazy, present-day procedure for changing conferences.
But let’s assume for a second that Colorado officials were actually telling the truth the other day when they claimed they can’t reach a satisfactory agreement with the Big 12 to leave the conference after this season and won’t join the Pac-10 until 2012.
Yeah, yeah, we know. The Pac-10 can kick in some money (which it probably will), and the Big 12 and Colorado may ease their demands, because none of the parties benefits from Colorado sticking around the Big 12 for an additional season. But let’s suppose the way things stand now are the way things stand in eight months.
Well, Utah is joining the Pac-10 next season with or without Colorado, and if the Buffs can’t work things out with the Big 12, the West Coast’s preeminent conference becomes the Pac-10-Plus-One or Pac-12-Minus-One or Pac-11.
Bet you never thought the Beach Boys would be invoked for a ditty about Utah, where surfing is really not that big.
Worse than calling on the musical brilliance of Mike Love is that adding just one team will create football and basketball schedules that will be askew.
First of all, there can be no conference championship game in football, which was the entire point of adding two schools. Presumably, there would be no attempt made to divide the conference into two divisions for 2011 without Colorado, so there would be one 11-team division. Every conference team won’t play every other conference team as they do now, because schools will demand to play at least three nonconference games. Each team would miss playing one (or possibly two) conference opponents.
The Big Ten is the only BCS conference that has that issue now (the SEC, ACC and Big 12 each has two divisions and the Big East has only eight teams), and for some reason there has been no outcry from Big Ten teams that missing two conference opponents each season creates a patently unfair conference race. Last year, Ohio State won the title without having to play Northwestern, which beat both Wisconsin and second-place Iowa.
It seemed a strange situation from afar, but it could be the Pac-11’s problem in 2011.
Basketball could be even stickier. The Pac-10 prides itself in being the only major conference in which every team plays every other team twice. However, the current 18-conference-game schedule may be the limit. It was assumed the complete round-robin format would be abandoned with 12 teams, but with 11 the debate remains. Do you have 20 conference games, which severely limits the nonconference schedule, or do you pinch off just a few games in the round-robin schedule, again creating unequal scheduling. And who would want to be the team that does not get a chance to host UCLA, the biggest draw in the conference?
The most intriguing aspect of a Pac-11 is how Scott, the new, much-publicized, modern, bold, media-savvy, forward-thinking, marketing-wise conference commissioner, would spin it. There seems to be no way he could make an 11-team conference seem like a good thing, but he’ll give it a shot. Maybe he’ll try to play on the odd number of conference members and the year with a slogan like, “11 goes into ’11 evenly.”
And what logo would the conference use? That modern-looking logo developed a month ago is now adorning the football fields across the conference, with plans to simply replace the “10” with “12” to create next year’s logo.
The final issue is the name itself. The potential 11-team conference may call itself the Pac-10 or the Pac-12, but it’s a near certainty it won’t rename itself the Pac-11 for one season. It adds fuel to the notion that conference commissioners are numerically-challenged. Next season we could have a Big Ten Conference with 12 teams, a Big 12 with 11 teams and a Pac-10 (or Pac-12) with 11 teams. Why do they even include the number, especially with conference membership changing almost every month these days? Take a lesson from the Big East, ACC or SEC, which can expand or contract without having to apologize to their third-grade math teachers.
The plight of the Pac-11 reminds us of “This is Spinal Tap,” when Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) tries to convince us (and himself) that 11 is one better than 10.
