The Pac-10 is overrated?

Prior to today, there would be no question mark after the post subject. As West Coast homers we’re pleased as punch that the folks that cover college hoops for ESPN and CBS have noticed the fine ball being played out here this year but as often happens when an NFL player is finally recognized by the fans and the media and is awarded a Pro Bowl spot, its probably a year too late.

We feel the Pac-10 was actually a stronger conference last year and we owe this largely to the fact that Oregon and Arizona (though hobbled by injuries) have underachieved somewhat and have not lived up to the lofty expectations people had for them at the beginning of the season.

As we said, though, that was prior to this morning when we (full disclosure: any following of hoops yesterday was done via a friend’s Blackberry as we were wine-tasting in the gloriously green Temecula Valley at another friend’s birthday) came-to this morning and cracked open the fish wrap and saw that #9 seed Pittsburgh defeated Georgetown for the Big East championship, a 16-16 Georgia Bulldog team was going to play unranked Arkansas for the SEC tourney title (this, after playing and winning 2 games yesterday because of the tornado that ripped through the Georgia Dome thus postponing their quarterfinal match-up against Ole Miss) and a 16-18 Illini squad was taking on #8 ranked Wisconsin for the Big 10 championship.

Sorry, that’s not reflective of “parity” or the “top to bottom” toughness in a big-time basketball conference. That’s just straight-up mediocrity in a big-time basketball conference.

Everybody has their own idea of how to rate and rank the respective conferences and we have always felt that you can make the numbers and stats say anything you want regarding the relative merits of the conference so we’ll just say this: We’ll take the overall strength of the top 7 teams of the Pac-10 (UCLA, Stanford, USC, Washington St., Arizona, Oregon and Arizona St.) against the top 70% of any other conference in America (this percentage figure factors against mega-conferences like the Big East that have 16 teams and thus a natural advantage in the “top 7 teams” argument).

P.S. Our arguments for UCLA not being a Final Four team keeping on taking hits as they gutted-out a win against Stanford, 67-64 in the Pac-10 championship without starting forward, Luc-Richard Mbah a Moute (sprained ankle) and an ailing but still playing center, Kevin Love (back spasm). “Barometer Boy”, Josh Shipp had only 7 points on 3 of 10 shooting but that was more than compensated for by point guard, Darren Collison getting off for 28 points while playing all 40 minutes. Stud.

P.P.S. As of this posting, #8 Texas is down eight to #5 Kansas with 10 minutes left in the Big 12 championship. Were Texas to beat Kansas and also being a team that is the only one to beat 3 currently ranked top-5 teams (UCLA, Tennessee and Kansas in the regular season), not be worthy a #1 seed?)

When Did You Realize Phil Knight Owned Your Soul?

A wise man once said that if you truly enjoy what you do then you will never work a day in your life. Did we get that right or did we screw it up? Anyway, the quote, however its supposed to go was talking about this guy.

Imagine a paying gig for attending college football games and reporting out on the tailgates… food, drink and coeds, all included.

His first foray was a trip through the Pac-10 in ’06, the highlites which we link to here. Love the Arizona/Arizona St. chica smackdown to start things off and the instantly matter-of-fact responses to who really is the Ducks’ Daddy are priceless (6:50 mark for those of you on the go).

H/T: The Wizard of Odds

"Tom Hansen is even responsible for the picture posting error!"

It appears that people are starting to catch on to what we have known for quite a while: Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen is a relic who continues to hamper the image and relevance of the conference. In fact, its to the point that whatever success the conference does enjoy is in spite of, rather than because of Hansen.

The attached list (scroll way to the bottom) takes Hansen to task for standing athwart any designs the BCS has toward employing a "plus 1" game to the current bowl configuration. Hansen has said that if the BCS chose to go with the "plus 1" format he was going to take his ball and go home, essentially withdrawing the PAC-10 from the BCS. Uhh... Tom, that horse left the barn when you signed on to the BCS. Forget the legality of withdrawing, he would be handing down a death sentence to a conference that outside of USC, has the collective Q-rating of the Big East.... oops, bad analogy. We actually saw a couple of highly entertaining, mid-week, prime-time games involving Big East teams last year.

And ESPN's Colin Cowherd had Hansen on his radio show a couple weeks ago. Cowherd's criticism of Hansen through the years on his show carried over to his interview, though, Cowherd couldn't help coming across as a bit of an ass with some of his sniping. Cowherd being Cowherd.

Many criticize the conference's weak bowl affiliation, although, we don't mind seeing the Pac's #2 team come down here to San Diego every December to play the Big 12's #3 team. However, its unfathomable that the conference that dominates the Pacific Time Zone does not have any national cable or network TV affiliation in either football or basketball. Led by USC's "anybody, anywhere" philosophy, the football programs have done an admirable job of scheduling challenging out-of-conference games to enhance visibility, no thanks to the conference office.

Because of its geographic locale and access to the high school football recruiting hot beds of the L.A. Basin, San Diego and to a lesser extent, the Puget Sound area around Seattle, there is no reason why the Pac-10 should not be more on par with the SEC. And similarly, with L.A., the Bay Area and Seattle, there is no reason why the conference should not be more on par with the ACC in hoops.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/preview07/columns/story?columnist=schlabach_mark&id=2957159