Pacific five

Pac-10's bowl lineup not reflective of on-field strength

By nearly any measure, the Pac-10 has been one of college football's strongest conferences over the past two seasons.

Its 52-19 non-conference record (.732) is eclipsed only by the Big 12's (.756) and comes in just ahead of the SEC's (.730). Similarly, only the Big 12 (seven) has had more 10-win teams than the Pac-10's five, or more teams ranked among the final BCS standings (eight) than the Pac-10's seven.

So why, when it comes to the highly political process known as conference bowl alignment, does the Pac-10 look less like the Big 12 or SEC than it does Conference USA?

Though college football's bloated bowl field has increased to 56 available berths for 2002 -- 48 percent of eligible I-A teams -- the Pac-10 has guarantees for just five, trailing the Big 12, Big Ten and SEC's seven.

The ACC, despite just nine members, has six. Five puts the Pac-10 on par with the eight-team Big East and the non-BCS affiliated Conference USA.

"[The NCAA] has moved to certify some bowls -- in cities that are not traditionally bowl locations -- that geographically align themselves with conferences," said the Gator Bowl's Rick Catlett, chairman of the Football Bowl Association. "My thought process is the SEC, Big 12 and Big Ten have been much more aggressive in aligning themselves with these games."

Perhaps most vexing of all, the Pac-10 remains alone among the six BCS conferences without the guarantee of a New Year's Day bowl game for anyone beyond its champion. The SEC, by comparison, has four: the BCS, Citrus, Outback and Cotton.

The logical explanation is geography; of the eight games played on New Year's Day or later, only the BCS' Rose and Fiesta are played west of the Rockies, and it's generally assumed fans won't travel cross-country for anything short of the national championship.

But there's no convenient rationalization for not being able to find a home for second-tier teams like UCLA, which stayed home for the holidays last year despite boasting the same 7-4 record that somehow landed Arkansas a Cotton Bowl bid. New games have sprung up the last two years in San Jose, Seattle and San Francisco, yet none carry Pac-10 affiliations into this season, even with the increased possibility of having a sixth or seventh team available now that 6-6 squads are eligible.

"As a league, I think we can play with anyone in the country," said Washington State coach Mike Price. "Then you have five bowls, it doesn't seem right."

Pac-10 commissioner Tom Hansen said talks were held with all three bowls, but they broke down after the league decided to send its fifth team to the Las Vegas Bowl. Seattle and San Francisco signed on with the Mountain West instead.

"We could have possibly negotiated into a sixth-place berth if we really felt we had to do that, but that wasn't the attitude," said Hansen. "Those become very expensive situations. People just aren't going to be very excited about a sixth-place team, and [the bowls] just felt they could not market it."

But Seattle Bowl executive director Jim Haugh said his game was turned off by the Pac-10's refusal to stray from a "pecking order" among its lower-tier bowls to create more regionally appealing matchups, something the SEC has been doing for years and has since been replicated by the ACC, Big East and Big 12. San Francisco Bowl executive director Gary Cavalli confirmed that no such scenario was discussed for his game either.

"I guarantee if Washington State had played in our game instead of going to the Sun Bowl -- how many did they take there, 5,000? -- they would have brought 30 to 40,000 fans," said Haugh, whose game instead drew just 30,144 for Stanford-Georgia Tech. "What does that mean to the Pac-10? It guarantees both teams would have been paid close to $1 million in payout."

Give the Pac-10 credit for one thing: At least the league is doing its part not to contribute to the watered-down clutter that college football's postseason has become. But besides the obvious consequence of missing out on extra revenue, a conference whose coaches claim to be constantly battling negative perceptions held by the East Coast-dominated media voters probably isn't helping matters with its unflattering bowl lineup.

New I-A membership requirements, Part II

Shortly after my last column about new I-A attendance requirements was published, I spoke with San Jose State AD Chuck Bell, a strong critic of the new legislation. Although his school came in well below the 15,000 watermark last year, Bell's bigger concern is the new directive that schools schedule at least five home games against I-A opponents.

To reach that number, SJSU will schedule fellow small-conference schools (Utah State, New Mexico State) willing to play home-and-homes. To make room, however, it will have to cut down on "money" games at schools like Nebraska and Ohio State, which pay guarantees of about $500,000 and which smaller programs count on as part of their budget. (This year, SJSU travels to Washington and Illinois.)

Ironically, says Bell, the end result may be that the same major-conference schools so concerned with strengthening the I-A ranks will end up having to schedule I-AA opponents to fill their home schedules.

"This is what people haven't had the foresight to look into the future and see," said Bell. "You take two money games away from every lower-economic school and the big guys have no one left to play. They won't play each other, because they need the home games. They're going to see that real quickly, and they're going to clamor for legislation allowing them to pick up a I-AA school [without postseason ramifications]."

Greg Sankey, commissioner of the I-AA Southland Conference and a key figure in the development of the new standards, said such potential pitfalls were discussed during the process but were deemed more a confirmation of why some programs shouldn't be I-A.

"One of the things you see when you look at those teams that are making the transition from I-AA to I-A, they go from playing six home games to three or four home games. You're clearly not building a community fan base by doing that," said Sankey. "[Money games] are not the only way they can fund their programs, they can produce gate revenue from home games necessary to support I-A expenses, but the challenge is to create a marketplace for those home games."

What's interesting is how two groups with seemingly little in common -- the big, BCS conferences and I-AA -- have bonded together on this legislation. Conferences like Sankey's are tired of losing strong programs, like Troy State, to I-A. And the big boys, if you believe the word on the street, are simply preparing for the day when they can form their own, BCS-like "superconference."

Meanwhile, the group most affected by the measures -- low-level I-A teams and aspiring I-AA programs -- are left with little recourse but to complain.

"Does it help college football the game? No," said Bell. "Does it help student athletes? No, because it could wind up ending football at some schools. It doesn't benefit anybody, so what's the purpose of the legislation? Unless it's greed, I don't know what it is."

If money is indeed the motive, it's news to Big 12 commissioner Kevin Weiberg.

"We're supportive of these standards, but it's not a high priority for us," said Weiberg. "We probably could have lived with a lifting of the standards altogether and let anyone who wants to call themselves I-A. At the end of the day, I don't know that it has a lot of impact on us as a conference in terms of access to bowl revenues and that sort of thing."

The new measures take effect prior to the 2004 season. With so much at stake and so many different parties involved, don't expect the issue of I-A classification to go away any time soon.

Worth noting

Julius Jones' apparent dismissal from Notre Dame for academic reasons is a sad story of a player who never reached the star potential he showed early in his career. Sophomore Ryan Grant had emerged in spring as the Irish's likely No. 1 tailback, and incoming recruit Nate Schiccatano was among the nation's best at his position. Nevertheless, losing national No. 1 Lorenzo Booker to Florida State on signing day must really hurt now. ... Former Virginia Tech starting RB Keith Burnell, whose prospects for playing time had grown slim with the return of stars Lee Suggs and Kevin Jones, will transfer to I-AA Delaware. ... At last week's league meetings, Mountain West commissioner Craig Thompson shot down rumors of an imminent expansion involving Fresno State and Hawaii. In particular, the Bulldogs aren't likely to be added anytime soon after the league voted to join the ACC, Big 12 and Pac-10 in banning the recruitment of academic non-qualifiers, something Fresno coach Pat Hill has banked heavily on in building his program.

Stewart Mandel covers college football for CNNSI.com.

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