Jun 21st, 2010
We’re trying to imagine the reaction of Stanford athletic director Bob Bowlsby and Cal A.D. Sandy Barbour when Pac-12 salesman supreme Larry Scott triumphantly strolled in and said:
“Hey, I got Colorado to agree to join us, and all I had to do was promise those guys they would be in a division with the Arizona schools, Utah, UCLA and USC. They were talking out in Denver as if that might matter to you guys, but I assured them it was no big deal, right?”
In that ensuing moment of silence, Bowlsby and Barbour would realize Scott did not know West Coast dynamics as well as they thought.
And as the blank stares continued, Scott would slowly begin to realize the biggest mistake a salesman can make: He didn’t know the territory.
Suddenly, Scott, whose expertise in marketing and aggressive manner made him look like the best huckster at the traveling carnival, now had the look of Prof. Harold Hill on the Music Man. Hill knew how to sell, but he didn’t know Iowa, as this opening to the musical predicts about knowing the territory.
In that setup Scott had proposed, and to which Colorado readily agreed, the Bears and Cardinal would not play UCLA and USC every year, and certainly would not host one of the two Los Angeles schools every season. Other than the Big Game, home games against the Los Angeles schools are Cal’s biggest draws for a number of reasons, most notably being those are the games Cal and Stanford alumni care about most. That is particularly true on the Cal side of the ledger.
When Barbour was able to lift her jaw from the floor, she probably said, “Uh, Larry, we need to talk.”
That’s why an official announcement on the alignment has been delayed. If Cal and Stanford are in the division that does not include the Los Angeles schools, this expansion thing will amount to net loss for the Bay Area schools. (Washington is not to pleased about it either.) The current Pac-10 setup would seem a lot more attractive to Cal and Stanford folks than that alignment, regardless of the expanded television markets.
Not only would fans be up in arms about being deprived of the anticipated annual visit by an L.A. school, but Cal and Stanford would sacrifice the revenue it would get from the bigger crowds that attend those games. It certainly will affect basketball, and Cal coach Mike Montgomery was quoted saying he would be “disappointed, shocked and dismayed” to only play UCLA once a year in basketball. That’s almost certainly going to happen some seasons in a 12-team conference. That can’t be helped.
But the football thing is different, and Cal and Stanford officials are not going take being separated from the L.A. schools lying down. They probably had no idea Scott would consider such an alignment. They forgot that Scott comes from the East Coast. He was Harvard man, played tennis, made his name as the head of the Women’s Tennis Association, which has its headquarters in Florida. What does he know of Northern California’s weird little connection with Southern California? Heck, most of us can’t even articulate the north-south relationship, which is different depending on whether you’re on the Northern California or Southern California end. How can we expect Prof. Harold Hill to get it?
