kirklandduck

I'm going to make an uneducated guess that the media partner Canzano is (also) speculating on is ESPN. Since Fox Sports is pulling away the LA market, ESPN may want to shore up more west coast media markets with the rest of the Pac12 (plus perhaps SDSU and Fresno St to have at least some penetration into Southern Cali).

It'd be hilarious irony if the B10 brought in Oregon but not UW...

Pac-12 to explore expansion options after losing USC, UCLA THEATHLETIC.COM The Pac-12 board of directors has approved the conference to explore expansion options after USC and UCLA... In what may be a case of "too little, too late"...could there be conversations with the Big12 soon?

Only way I see the Pac12 hold onto Oregon/UW is to hold onto all the other teams plus pull in the Big12 to form a 3rd "super conference" (albeit the weakest of the 3 that would result). Then they can be the "Clemson" of the Pac12/Big12 conference. However unless some kind of miracle happens I think the window has passed for that.

GK was surely blindsided but that would be because he naively thought he could trust the other conference commissioners in this so-called "alliance". His overall solid 1st year on the job is now marred by this huge failure to protect the Pac12 by not implementing any legal framework to prevent others in the alliance from poaching from each other...instead relying on a "gentleman's agreement". Larry Scott certainly shoulders most of the blame for putting the Pac12 in such a bad financial spot in the first place, leaving GK very little margin for error. But we can't say GK is completely blameless in this as he left the conference wide open to attack with no possible defense.

To me there's enough there to be in the same ballpark as the potential expanded Big10, in particular Baylor/Utah/BYU/Houston/Cincinnati...certainly way more competitive than the ACC.

This was a big miss by the current Pac12 commissioner and to me a contributing factor should USC/UCLA leave.

Wasn't one of the points of the "alliance" was to help prevent poaching of teams from other conferences?

That one hurts and is really surprising. My guess is there's a large NIL deal in play here somewhere 🤦‍♂️

I believe that's absolutely what's going on here. Moving to the Big10, to me, doesn't make much sense in a couple ways: 1. Increased costs traveling farther for virtually every away game 2. Increased competition. In the Pac12 USC realistically only needs to worry about Oregon and Utah; in the Big10 they have to deal with tOSU, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Penn St which is a tougher group in the aggregate. It's all about the $$$.

Dante Moore and any combo of 2-3 of the other 5* players is a darn good day in my book.

That's not that bad to me. If they had a 12pm/1pm kickoff in Houston that would be 10am or 11am for us...not horrendous and something definitely manageable for a Saturday. I'll trade a slightly earlier game time for all that recruiting benefit in the Southeast any day of the week!

Welcome to the forums! I agree with what you're saying and advocated for taking in some of those teams rather than the "alliance" that the Pac12 formed with the ACC and Big10. Simply put, the media exposure and recruiting footprint drastically expands for the Pac12 with those teams. Can you imagine Oregon going to Houston/Lubbock every other year and vice versa? Think of all the eyeballs that would be on Oregon from that recruiting area. Before anyone thinks about the distance, LA --> Houston is about 1548 miles. LA --> Seattle is 1137 miles. So from a plane flight standpoint, you're really only adding an hour or two...less for the mountain zone teams. Re-arrange the North and South divisions with each team visiting the other division once a year and it's definitely a feasible thing.

DeBoer is certainly a step up from that sinking boat, Jimmy Lake. He's what I call a "stability" hire, one that is level-headed and practical enough to stem the bleeding and shift their program back into neutral. In terms of how well he can recruit, I'm skeptical that he could recruit at the level of Oregon and USC. If he gets UW back to 7-8 wins a year for the next few years, he could pull in top 25 recruiting classes but he'll be hard pressed to get into the top 15. UW's brand is damaged as it no longer has that glowing aura for the state's best to consider the Huskies as a top choice, even when Chris Petersen was there he had to work overtime to get top 20 ranked classes consistently...which led to him burning out and leaving. Other than that 2016 season where they snuck into the CFP on the back of an extremely weak schedule, the pups have been at best mediocre. At least for the next 2-3 years UW will indeed be another Cal in terms of record and success.

If Dante and Richard are having fun singing and dancing to "Shout" in a small group then they need to stand in a packed Auzten and watch thousands of fans do it, it'll blow their minds!

It feels like Oregon's pulling out all the stops for Moore now, hope they land him!

It's far easier to hold onto commitments than to pull them away from other programs...so commitments mean a lot.

Better than having prospects walking around in damp grey weather!

So many Mannings, they all look the same to me lol

Thanks for the article and welcome! I had a gut feeling that Jay was flying a bit under the radar and it showed in the Spring game, I thought he was really solid and edged out TT for QB2. I share Wrathis' opinion that Butters has a somewhat lower ceiling but a higher floor than TT, primarily because I think he's just more polished coming from a football family growing up.

5-star QB and No. 1 recruit in the country Arch Manning commits to Texas WWW.YAHOO.COM The nephew of Peyton and Eli is heading to Austin. He chose the Longhorns over Georgia and Alabama. The biggest QB domino has finally fallen, this means the remaining uncommitted QBs (particularly Dante Moore) will likely have more attention paid to them.

I feel like Lanning's ceiling may be higher than Riley's. We've already seen how much Lincoln struggles against elite defensive coaches (see Dave Aranda and losses to Baylor). It's going to be very interesting to see DL grow as a HC over the next 3-4 years

That's such a general purpose word that I doubt it would stand up in court should another school contest Ohio State's "sole" use of it. What a waste of school money.

He actually had both ACL and knee injuries simultaneously at the end, which severely compromised his ability to compete in the NFL. Really unfortunate as I had no doubt he would've been a starter for a pro team somewhere....at least his family had taken out insurance for him and was able to get at least some money for the loss of career he should've had.