2025 College Football Season

[SEWIGuy]

Gotta be honest...I never have considered Indiana football worthy of hate.

[1995hoo]

Indiana ducks out of a nonconference home and home with Virginia. They now play no power conference opponents outside the B1G for the rest of the decade.

Absolute chicken shit from that meathead coach. Putting on the tough guy act then doing this is so deplorable. I'd be fine with it if he could just come out and say he's willing to be a chicken if it means winning more games, but the ego is too big.

There is no team in the country I hate more than Indiana right now. Might have to make the trip to Bloomington when my Gophers play them in 2026.

Heh. While UVA is part of what is defined as a "power conference," it's debatable whether our team is really of "power conference quality," so to speak, at least based on its performance the last few years.

Apparently Indiana replaced us with Kennesaw State in 2027, Austin Peay in 2028, and Eastern Illinois in 2029.

[gonealookin]

Gotta be honest...I never have considered Indiana football worthy of hate.

Cal's QB for the last couple years, Fernando Mendoza, who has developed into a solid player who could go high in the NFL draft, entered the transfer portal after last season and wound up at Indiana.

It shows that even a bottom-of-the-barrel Big Ten program like Indiana (yes, I know they had a rare good season in 2024) has the money to make big NIL offers to players that a low-end Pac-12 ACC school like Cal doesn't have.  Cal, and really most schools in the ACC outside of Clemson, Florida State and North Carolina, are rapidly becoming baseball-style farm teams for the SEC and Big Ten.

[SEWIGuy]

From a football perspective, I think Cal and Stanford would have been wise to stick with the downgraded Pac-12. I really can't see them ever competing in the ACC, which may end up blowing up anyway.

I understand why they wouldn't want to do that from an "institutional" perspective however.

[NWI_Irish96]

From a football perspective, I think Cal and Stanford would have been wise to stick with the downgraded Pac-12. I really can't see them ever competing in the ACC, which may end up blowing up anyway.

I understand why they wouldn't want to do that from an "institutional" perspective however.

Ever since the explosion of games on cable in the 90s, money has been the driving factor for just about every decision.

It was inevitable that a conference based entirely in the Mountain/Pacific time zones and therefore unable to have games in the noon ET window, could not survive. I'm one of the biggest college football junkies there is, but even I couldn't manage to maintain interest in "PAC 12 After Dark"

The PAC 12 should have seen this coming and have been aggressively courting Texas and Oklahoma long before the SEC came for them.

[1995hoo]

....

The PAC 12 should have seen this coming and have been aggressively courting Texas and Oklahoma long before the SEC came for them.

They did. In the 2010–2012 realignment cycle, the Pac-10 tried to become the Pac-16 by adding Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Colorado. Colorado joined. Texas balked. There were multiple reports at the time that a major reason was that Texas wanted to establish its own TV network—which it did in 2011 when the Longhorn Network debuted—and that the Pac-## would not allow that but the Big 12 would. After Texas declined to move, the other Big 12 schools (except Colorado) decided to stay put as well.

It's interesting that later Texas did shut down the Longhorn Network as part of the move to the SEC, but I guess that just underscores the difference between the SEC's market presence and the Pac-10's.

[SEWIGuy]

From a football perspective, I think Cal and Stanford would have been wise to stick with the downgraded Pac-12. I really can't see them ever competing in the ACC, which may end up blowing up anyway.

I understand why they wouldn't want to do that from an "institutional" perspective however.

Ever since the explosion of games on cable in the 90s, money has been the driving factor for just about every decision.

It was inevitable that a conference based entirely in the Mountain/Pacific time zones and therefore unable to have games in the noon ET window, could not survive. I'm one of the biggest college football junkies there is, but even I couldn't manage to maintain interest in "PAC 12 After Dark"

The PAC 12 should have seen this coming and have been aggressively courting Texas and Oklahoma long before the SEC came for them.

1995hoo detailed their courtship of Texas and Oklahoma.

But the Pac 12 would likely still be around had they taken ESPN's 2022 deal of $30 million per school. The president of ASU, based off of an "analysis" from a member of his Economics faculty, convinced the others to turn it down thinking they were more like a $50 million per school conference. So ESPN turned to the Big 12 and extended that deal instead.

Now would that have been enough to hold onto USC and UCLA? That's the question.

[NWI_Irish96]

....

The PAC 12 should have seen this coming and have been aggressively courting Texas and Oklahoma long before the SEC came for them.

They did. In the 2010–2012 realignment cycle, the Pac-10 tried to become the Pac-16 by adding Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Colorado. Colorado joined. Texas balked. There were multiple reports at the time that a major reason was that Texas wanted to establish its own TV network—which it did in 2011 when the Longhorn Network debuted—and that the Pac-## would not allow that but the Big 12 would. After Texas declined to move, the other Big 12 schools (except Colorado) decided to stay put as well.

It's interesting that later Texas did shut down the Longhorn Network as part of the move to the SEC, but I guess that just underscores the difference between the SEC's market presence and the Pac-10's.

Should have given Texas whatever they wanted.

[SEWIGuy]

....

The PAC 12 should have seen this coming and have been aggressively courting Texas and Oklahoma long before the SEC came for them.

They did. In the 2010–2012 realignment cycle, the Pac-10 tried to become the Pac-16 by adding Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Colorado. Colorado joined. Texas balked. There were multiple reports at the time that a major reason was that Texas wanted to establish its own TV network—which it did in 2011 when the Longhorn Network debuted—and that the Pac-## would not allow that but the Big 12 would. After Texas declined to move, the other Big 12 schools (except Colorado) decided to stay put as well.

It's interesting that later Texas did shut down the Longhorn Network as part of the move to the SEC, but I guess that just underscores the difference between the SEC's market presence and the Pac-10's.

Should have given Texas whatever they wanted.

There was no way the big dogs of the Pac-12 were going to go with that. Which is also why the SEC insisted that the LHN get shut down as part of their merger into that conference. Once you start acting like one school is better or more important than the others, that's when things fall apart.

The Big 12 is only still around because the Pac-12 got greedy, but that's the reason Nebraska and Colorado left.

[NWI_Irish96]

....

The PAC 12 should have seen this coming and have been aggressively courting Texas and Oklahoma long before the SEC came for them.

They did. In the 2010–2012 realignment cycle, the Pac-10 tried to become the Pac-16 by adding Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Colorado. Colorado joined. Texas balked. There were multiple reports at the time that a major reason was that Texas wanted to establish its own TV network—which it did in 2011 when the Longhorn Network debuted—and that the Pac-## would not allow that but the Big 12 would. After Texas declined to move, the other Big 12 schools (except Colorado) decided to stay put as well.

It's interesting that later Texas did shut down the Longhorn Network as part of the move to the SEC, but I guess that just underscores the difference between the SEC's market presence and the Pac-10's.

Should have given Texas whatever they wanted.

There was no way the big dogs of the Pac-12 were going to go with that. Which is also why the SEC insisted that the LHN get shut down as part of their merger into that conference. Once you start acting like one school is better or more important than the others, that's when things fall apart.

The Big 12 is only still around because the Pac-12 got greedy, but that's the reason Nebraska and Colorado left.

Texas was more important than the others. No shame in admitting that.

The difference with the SEC is that Texas needed them just as much as they needed Texas. There was no leverage there.

[SEWIGuy]

....

The PAC 12 should have seen this coming and have been aggressively courting Texas and Oklahoma long before the SEC came for them.

They did. In the 2010–2012 realignment cycle, the Pac-10 tried to become the Pac-16 by adding Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, and Colorado. Colorado joined. Texas balked. There were multiple reports at the time that a major reason was that Texas wanted to establish its own TV network—which it did in 2011 when the Longhorn Network debuted—and that the Pac-## would not allow that but the Big 12 would. After Texas declined to move, the other Big 12 schools (except Colorado) decided to stay put as well.

It's interesting that later Texas did shut down the Longhorn Network as part of the move to the SEC, but I guess that just underscores the difference between the SEC's market presence and the Pac-10's.

Should have given Texas whatever they wanted.

There was no way the big dogs of the Pac-12 were going to go with that. Which is also why the SEC insisted that the LHN get shut down as part of their merger into that conference. Once you start acting like one school is better or more important than the others, that's when things fall apart.

The Big 12 is only still around because the Pac-12 got greedy, but that's the reason Nebraska and Colorado left.

Texas was more important than the others. No shame in admitting that.

The difference with the SEC is that Texas needed them just as much as they needed Texas. There was no leverage there.

You're making my point. Texas needed them because they ran out of options due to insisting on the Longhorn Network.

The powers of the P12 are in a better place now in the B10 then they would have been in an inequal marriage with Texas in the P12. They're not as important as you think they are.