Utah Meets Pac-10 Opposition
As if there weren’t enough upheaval in college football, Friday brought the accusation that Utah to the Pac-10 wasn’t necessarily a done deal.
San Francisco Examiner contributor Glenn Dickey wrote on Friday that a former UCLA chancellor is urging Pac-10 presidents not to give final approval on Utah’s and Colorado’s admission to the conference.
Chuck Young says Colorado, and specifically Utah, bring little academically, could cost the conference money and won’t bring in TV ratings.
“Colorado is on a par with Oregon,” Young said of the academic profiles. “Utah isn’t even in the picture.”
This isn’t a new argument, or one that wasn’t discussed before the invitations ever came. The problem for those like Young is that he wants to keep things the same. He obviously liked the old West Coast clubbiness of the Pac-8 and later Pac-10. He liked the proximity, too.
Young can argue academics, to some extent. It’s true Colorado and Utah don’t rate with Stanford, Cal and UCLA , though it could also be argued that neither do Arizona State, Arizona and Washington State. He can even bring up TV appeal. But raising the travel specter isn’t especially valid. Utah and Colorado are the closest and biggest TV markets the Pac-10 could have added. They are also among the cheapest to reach from the West Coast.
More important is that the Pac-10 saw the future. It knew it had to expand. Staying a safe, insular conference may seem a good idea, but things are heading toward super conferences, and if the Pac-10 sat around too long, then its travel costs could have gone way up. It probably wouldn’t like Oklahoma State — academically or financially — any better than Utah and Colorado.
My colleague Dirk Facer checked out whether anything can be done to keep Utah and Colorado out of the Pac-10 and found out there isn’t. The final vote was taken in June.
Still, the way things are going in college football, if I were Utah I’d watch my back right up until it plays its first Pac-10 game.