Soccer-wise - Nebraska is going to be plenty competitive in the Big10. They're a strong program on the rebound from a down period, IMHO
Media have been filing FOI requests to figure out exactly what went on. (there's a book in this somewhere) This is a letter from commissioner Dan Beebe to the Presidents of Big12 schools during the fracas, as published in today's Oregonian. This one presumably went to Colorado, judging from the name of the pdf. http://ht.cdn.turner.com/si/images/2010/06/14/colorado.pdf
I don't know if you guys listen to Colin Cowherd. He got a start in Portland, and he was fun in drive time. Now that he's National, I don't catch him much, but I though it might be fun to get his take, so I googled. http://www.mwcconnection.com/2010/4/20/1433157/audio-espns-colin-cowherd-says (thanks to Jeremy Maus) Listen to what he says about the Pac10 , then look at the date. HE NAILED IT IN APRIL! and today's follow up: http://sports.espn.go.com/espnradio/show?showId=theherd# (scroll down)
For all of us soccer people, how do you think the addition of Utah to the Pac12 will be? My first thought of Utah from what I perceive of them (meaning without looking at their history, just what I think I know) is that they are a solid program and an NCAA team. Seem to remember them being fairly solid. After that, I decided just now to look up their results against Pac10 competition in a reasonable time frame. 2009: One game (0-1) - Lost 1-6 to UCLA 2008: Four games (0-4) - Lost to Oregon (2-3), OSU (in OT), Arizona (0-4) and UW (0-3) 2007: Five games (3-1-1) - Defeated Arizona (2-1), Oregon (2-0), and UW (3-2), Lost to *Colorado (2-4) and drew WSU (3-3) 2006: Four games (3-1) - Defeated Stanford (2-1), WSU (2-1), Arizona (2-1), Lost to Colorado (1-2) 2005: Two games (0-2) - Lost to Arizona & Cal It's obvious the past two years Utah underachieved from program expectations. Rich Manning has been tremendous since getting there. Joining the Pac10 will in my mind help keep them as an NCAA team perennially. Recruiting will greatly improve by being in that conference and they've displayed the ability to compete at the highest level of Pac10 soccer. Any other opinions?
My guess is that right now, they aren't quite up to 12 PAC standards, but hey aren't far off. The entry into the 12 Pac will be a great recruiting draw, though. When they actually start playing a 12 Pac schedule, they will be middle of the Pac. They have good coaching. They will be competitive. I' m looking forward to it. It means that they will be in the mix of 12 Pac schools to play.
I think this is a very good analysis from top to bottom. I really appreciate that you went back and dug up the last 5 years' results. In 2006, which was one of their good years according to your data, I was in Salt Lake City for the opening two rounds of the NCAA Tournament, to watch Portland play. (That year, Portland reached the quarters without playing a home game.) After the opening round in which Portland beat BYU, a Utah fan commented on how much faster Portland's speed of play was than Utah's. That proved true when Portland won the next game against Utah. Based on that and their results against Pac 12 teams the last two years, I'm guessing that they'll struggle in the conference for a couple of years, but will improve as their recruiting opportunities begin to yield results. They have a very, very good club program in Utah, and this may help them hold on to some of their best local players.
One other issue is that Utah and Colorado are both at 5K feet, and only WSU is at altitude (2.4K feet) History has shown that when sea level teams go to altitude for two games on a weekend, they struggle in that second game. I think if you check on some of those Pac10 losses, that was the case. I know that when both UP and Stanford ignored that peril a while back playing Colorado and Denver, it bit them both. There are ways to train and prepare for the phenomenon, but you can't ignore it.
They did not make the NCAA tournament that past 3 years. Why do you think that by joining the Pac thatit will make Utah a perennial tournament team? The best players in Colorado don't necessarily stay. The best players in Arizona, Oregon, & Washington don't necessarily stay in-state. Why do you think that Utah will fare much better than the Arizona, Oregon, & Washington schools in keeping their kids in-state? The one advantage of the Utah/Colorado rivaly/travel partners is that teams will struggle to play against them because of the altitude and the travel distance. Much like Washington St. is a pain to play in in late autumn, and having to bus to/from Seattle. Going to SLC + DEN on the same weekend will be a grind, not to mention not having the time to acclimatize to the altitude. Probably the new dreaded roadtrip in the Pac, more so if it's late in the season. The nice thing about adding Utah/Colorado is that all the teams will probably end the season with a rivalry game. This was not possible with 10 teams before. With 12 teams, there is now the symmetry to make the last weekend a rivalry game for all the teams.
I followed you until that last part. Who gets left out now on rivalry weekend? <edit>(never mind, I now see you were focussing on all the rivalry games the same week.)
Cachundo, you're right about the best players in a state not necessarily staying there. So far as I know, that's true of the best players from every state. But, it seems to me that a soccer player might be more likely to stay in Utah if she was going to play for a Pac 12 team than for a Mountain West team. It's probably not a huge plus, but it might be of some benefit. Your point about traveling between Boulder and Salt Lake City (or Seattle and Pullman) is an interesting one. I'm wondering how long the bus travel times are between those cities. Do teams actually bus (vs fly) between Seattle and Pullman? Are we sure they will bus between Boulder and Salt Lake City?
I didn't mean starting with the first year, but that it's a program with the ability (based on their success under the current coach) to become a middle-tier Pac12 team - which any middle tier Pac12 or ACC team should be a lock for postseason play. If they aren't, I'd suppose it was a down year for those two conferences. I have two things with this. The first is that for whatever reason across the athletic board, kids in Utah have either a strong sense of pride or feeling of "obligation" to join one of the big in-state schools (BYU, Utah or Utah State). Their rosters are filled with Utah kids and their recruiting classes are filled with Utah kids. These programs "typically" have first pick of the crop in-state with the random top kids choosing to go elsewhere. To see if I was on to something, I checked the spreadsheet for 2010 and 2011. All of the Utah natives with "credentials" (taken to mean those perceived to be the top recruits) chose to either go to BYU or Utah. Only one (Kealia Ohai, the top recruit in the state) chose to go to a different powerhouse school, that being UNC. Bottom line, BYU and Utah are national programs and the kids in-state for whatever reason like the idea of staying there. Second, we believe recruiting will pick up because they've moved from an "eh" conference to THE conference. A lot of top kids want to play against the top competition. For Utah recruits, if you can stay home (which it seems a lot like to do) and play against Stanford, UCLA, Cal, USC, UW, etc., that makes the Utes very attractive. It also opens the school to out-of-state recruits who might get a better financial package at Utah than at one of the California, Arizona, Colorado kids, etc. You could argue that it also now opens up Utah recruits to think about these California schools, but to be honest the ones that have the opportunity already thought about whether or not they wanted to go t Stanford or UCLA or in Ohai's case, UNC. Utah already fought off the big programs for their own recruits ... now they're in the mix with recruits from other states who now have a new Pac12 option. That's my take, I love the debate. Makes me think of sides I never thought of
PAC 10 or Utah schools aren't the only choices. Portland has three pretty good Utah players on the current roster. One captained the last U17 team in their World Cup. Another was a key player in the u20 world cup, and the third will start in the net this year.
Oh yeah I know that. Top kids get recruited from all of the top programs. ND, SCU, Pilots, A&M, etc. I was meaning to go off the current and next batch of recruiting to illustrate my theory that kids from Utah generally have an overwhelming sense of pride in attending one of the major in-state schools. Like any recruit in any state, a better option pops up for that individual, but more often than not you see most of the top Utah kids stay in-state, which I think joining the Pac12 will only help solidify.
One of the issues here might not be so much State pride as religious affiliation. I have no doubts that Mormon kids have both strong feelings towards playing for BYU (and to a bit lesser extent Utah) and pressure in the community. That's a pretty big chunk of the state right there. I don't think you can ignore that, and I don't think it will change much regardless what conference they are in.
That's exactly what I thought about it. Didn't know if I should say that was the reason or not, not that anything is incorrect with bringing it up. I figured people would get it, and that's why I was trying to say to the other poster that they don't have a problem keeping kids instate
FYI -Stanford flies between the 2 washington schools. not sure what the rest do. I would assume that will be true for utah and colorado.
The faith-based reason occurred to me, but I did not see it as a compelling reason for the TOP player to stay in-state. If faith-based were the reason, I would suppose BYU would be the overwhelming choice for these kids, & Utah would be second. I guess what I'm trying to get at is as long as the TOP players decide not to stay in-state, as has been the case in Colorado, OR, WA, & AZ, the in-state team would be at a disadvantage. It doesn't matter if you still keep most of these kids in-state, but if you lose the top player every year, in 4 years, those 4 talented kids could have been the nucleus of a strong regional power. The state of Colorado comes to mind, AZ are second when I think about a talent drain. It's quite a ways to bus it between those 2 cities. I've travelled all over Utah and SW CO & from my recollection there is no direct interstate between the 2 cities. In all likelihood, teams will fly in between. The alternative is dreadful to think about - after playing an afternoon game in Boulder, teams will hop on a bus and overnight it across the spine of the Rockies and reach SLC mid-day Saturday. Who knows how treacherous those roads can be in late October?
Agreed. But for whatever reason, what's happening in CO and AZ isn't happening as big for Utah kids. And yeah, you lose the top player in-state for four years, you lose out on four great recruits. But that's the battle of recruiting. Only a few schools can grab the top kids, but a lot of other schools make due to become strong regional & national teams (although the NCAA Championship threatening programs sure are a select few.) Think of states not considered to mold too many of the top recruits in given years. In the Southeast, main one I can think of is the state of South Carolina. And even though SC rarely has many TOP recruits, the ones they do have rarely pick the University of South Carolina. Yet that program has become very strong regionally and even nationally to a point. Keeping your top in-state recruits isn't directly related to success if you can recruit strong players elsewhere that fit and execute your system.
Colorado consistently produces some of the best recruits in the nation...as evidenced by the impressive numbers we see on all conference and all american lists. I have heard from a lot of high school players that U of Colorado pretty much ignores them in recruiting. I do always wonder why more don't stay home and of course it is just awful that our own CSU has no team. But every year I do hear from players that they wrote or called Hempen and he did not respond at all. Some of those are pretty big impact players on their current college teams. Unkiemark, maybe you know more. But now with playing in the Pac, the stakes will get higher.
CA also should be included on the list. The very best players have a lot of choices. Some want to stay close to home, others want to get away from home. Good for them!
I honestly don't know the recruiting story with CU. I agree with multisport that there are always very good prosepects in Colorado, seemingly out or proportion for the population of about 5 million. It seems like the two out-of-state schools that many top prospects choose are Portland and Texas A&M. Hempen has repeatedly stated that recruiting instate is a top priority. The incoming class (HS class of '10) is all from Colorado. The three known commits from the class of '11 are all from Colorado. In terms of how he goes about rectuiting, I have no idea. The two best players in program history are both from Colorado. Fran Munnelly and Nikki Marshall both went to HS within 20 miles of CU. Many of my students at Boulder High talk about leaving the state for college. They just don't think much of CU, perhaps because they want to get out of town. Those that go to CU seem to have a great educational experience. I am guessing that many of the top soccer prospects are from middle class families and thus have the same attitude abotu college, but who knows. CU's soccer facility has been improved, but needs lights, permanent seats and a better locker room. Doing this would probably put CU on a par with many of the schools that recruit Colorado. It will be interesting to see how A&M does in Colorado with CU no longer in the Big 12.
It's about 9 or 10 hours driving time between Boulder and SLC. I would think that most teams in the Pac 12 will fly.
Wait!-- we're not done yet -Or so this guy sez: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/409540-now-its-the-big-twelves-turn-to-expand Dos this make any sense? Is this hot air or is the Big 10/12 is pushing back? Thoughts on what this does to women"s soccer? Anything?
Re: Wait!-- we're not done yet Would adding any of those four teams help Texas? Because that's what the Big 12 seems to be all about right now. I don't think they would add much to the equation in terms of more TV sets, and thus revenue. Just don't see that happening.