Pac-10 falls even further behind

A must read column from Tony Barnhart of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Excerpt:

I was still getting calls late Monday night about the SEC’s staggering 15-year deal with ESPN that will reportedly pay the league about $2.25 billion. That deal, coupled with the 15-year deal the SEC has signed with CBS will give the league financial security for a long, long time.

In addition to the SEC, the Big Ten and Big XII have pretty impressive TV deals in place. Meanwhile, the silence from the Pac-10 office is deafening.

The most important game of the season is...

Forget UGA, forget U$C. One game stands out as the most critical on the Sun Devils' schedule: Stanford. That's right, the trees. Why? Because it's the Pac-10 opener, and this game has historically been a strong predictor of the season.

Consider these numbers (which count conference games only): since joining the Pac-10 in 1978, ASU has lost the conference opener 17 times, and in those seasons has gone a combined 57-70-2 (a 45% win percentage). However, in the 11 seasons in which we have won our first Pac-10 game, the composite record is 56-31-0 (a 64% win percentage). We tied our opener in 1983 and 1986 and finished a combined 9-4-2 in those seasons.

Since 1982, ASU has only once (in 1999) lost the conference opener and finished with a winning record in the Pac-10. Conversely, 1994 was the only season where the Sun Devils won their conference opener but finished below .500 in the Pac-10.

So feel free to overlook NAU, but don't overlook the Cardinal. September 6 in Sun Devil Stadium is the most important game of the season.

I thought he retired 10 years ago?

Probably the most significant offseason news, in terms of its long-term impact on ASU, was the announcement that Tom Hansen will retire as Pac-10 commissioner next summer (what, he has to hang on for another year?).

I'm surprised that the guys over at FireTomHansen.com didn't update their website in celebration. Let's face it: this guy was inept. Many people will claim that the lack of TV exposure is his biggest "crime"; personally I think his inability to secure a New Year's Day bowl for the second-placed team is the biggest indictment of his tenure.

Phil Knight as the next commissioner? Lisa Love? It really doesn't matter: whoever the Presidents select will be better than Hansen.

While blogs review his accomplishments (or lack thereof), other authors use the opportunity to re-open the discussion about Pac-10 expansion. This article makes the huge mistake of assuming that the Utah TV market is relevant. Let's be clear: Salt Lake City brings negligible additional viewers, and that is all that matters. The only schools that make sense for the conference to add are Texas, Texas A&M, Colorado or Missouri. And that will only happen if the Big XII breaks apart. Given their recent TV deal, however, that is unlikely to happen.

Sun Devil women's hoops team 3 point favorites over TBA today

As you will know from an earlier post, I am not a big fan of the ASU athletic department's website(s). It's a little like shooting fish in a barrel, but here's more evidence of why something needs to be done.

I don't follow the women's basketball team closely, but I am vaguely aware that the Pac-10 tournament is starting this weekend.

So to get details, I first go to the home page at TheSunDevils.com. I see an article about Aubree Johnson and Emily Westerberg being named to the All-conference team, but nothing about the tournament.

Next I go to the women's basketball page. As of 6:25 a.m. AZ time on Friday, March 2, the page has no mention of the Pac-10 tournament.

Assuming I was mistaken, I go next to the women's basketball schedule, where I am interested to see that on Friday, March 2, ASU will play TBA in the Pac-10 tournament. It is Friday, March 2.

I finally have to go to the Pac-10 website to find out that ASU got a bye, and will not be playing their first game until Saturday, where they will face the winner of today's UCLA vs. Washington State matchup.

Come on people! How do you expect people to be interested when you can't even bother to promote your star program properly? You've got the #7 team in the nation, and you can't even keep their schedule up-to-date?

Turkey day football at Sun Devil Stadium

Despite my earlier prediction that it may be several months before the Pac-10 schedule is finalized, the conference actually announced the 2007 lineup a full eight months in advance.

This rare display of proactive behavior from the conference office doesn't change my opinion that Tom Hansen needs to go, but it's nice to see the conference, and ASU in particular, get a prime timeslot on Thanksgiving evening.

The ASU press release makes a couple of dubious claims. First, it asserts that "ASU will enjoy a national stage alone on Thanksgiving evening at 6 p.m." which is true only if you count college football. There will be an NFL game starting at the exact same time, although I guess you could argue that the NFL Network isn't exactly on the national stage.

The second claim that caused me to raise an eyebrow is: "ASU asked for (and received) an evening kickoff time for that date so that fans could have the opportunity for a traditional Thanksgiving meal and then attend the game." Hmmmm, methinks that ESPN had no interest in starting the game at any time other than 8p.m. Eastern, in order to avoid competing with the NFL games on CBS and Fox.

Anyway, exaggerated claims aside, this is good news for the program. A national TV audience is never a bad thing, and it spreads out the last five games of the season. Let's just hope that ESPN doesn't unleash its dreaded Full Circle coverage on us.

It's also worth noting that Oregon's game at au was moved to Thursday, November 15 so the rats will have 16 days to prepare for their defeat at the hands of the good guys.

Success means beating USC, UCLA, Cal off the field

CFN, a publication I've never been able to fully endorse, has a respectable list of Top 30 players in the Pac-10 regardless of position.

ASU had two players make the list for this past season, Zach Miller and Ryan Torain. One has announced his NFL eligibility, while the other probably thought long and hard about it.

Meanwhile, USC, UCLA, and Cal racked up 19 of the top positions between them. The thin spread of premium talent doesn't appear to change much next year. Only Oregon State's Sammie Stroughter breaks the monopoly on those three schools stranglehold of Top 10 returning talent.

If you are a Pac-10 program wanting to challenge for top dog status, you have to beat those three schools in recruiting -- two of them in their own backyard. There's no other path. We've seen forays in Texas, Illinois, and the Midwest the past 20 years with very mixed results. Winning the battles in SoCal have produced two Rose Bowl teams. There's no alternative.

Possible changes to the 2007 football schedule

According to the Trib's ASU football notebook, the ASU/USC game at Sun Devil Stadium, currently scheduled for November 17, could be moved to Thanksgiving, pushing the au game back to December 1.

I'd be all in favor of this move. We already know that the last five weeks of the schedule are brutal (Cal, @Oregon, @UCLA, USC, au) so adding a bye week could only help. Plus, the TV exposure would be significant.

According to a few posts on various message boards, there is some confusion as to whether the proposal is to move the game to Thanksgiving Day itself, or to the Saturday following Thanksgiving. Either would be OK from my perspective.

Keep in mind that in 2007 Pac-10 games will be split between ABC, Fox Sports Net and ESPN, so expect the conference to move several games to non-traditional slots.

Typically the pre-season selections for TV games are announced in May/June, so it may be several months before anything is confirmed.