Washington State president Kirk Schulz says WSU athletics will have “temporary freeze on all current & future vacant positions until further review, as well as a pause on non-essential travel, purchases & new professional development” because of “significant decrease in Pac-12…

— Brett McMurphy (@Brett_McMurphy) May 23, 2023

Lol welcome to the club. A lot of us are dealing with the same thing at our jobs.

Why would a conference HQ even be in SF in the first place?

About the dumbest idea I've heard in a long time.

AGAZ03 said:

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Why would a conference HQ even be in SF in the first place?

About the dumbest idea I've heard in a long time.

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Administrative egos are huge.

AGAZ03 said:

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Why would a conference HQ even be in SF in the first place?

About the dumbest idea I've heard in a long time.

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Where would you put it given the geography of Pac-12?

Winnemucca, NV

Conference HQ locations:

Big 12: Irving
SEC: Birmingham, AL
Big 10: Rosemont, IL (right next to Chicago O'Hare)
ACC: Greensboro, NC
Pac: San Francisco -> moving to East Bay

Yeah. SF is definitely the outlier there. There should be a Harvard business review case study about how badly that conference was mismanaged the past two decades.

*corrected spelling on Irving

TX_COWDOC said:

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Winnemucca, NV

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So much dust and sand ...

I don't see why the remains of the Big12 and the PAC don't combine to make a new conference.

Aggie_Journalist said:

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Conference HQ locations:

Big 12: Irvine
SEC: Birmingham, AL
Big 10: Rosemont, IL (right next to Chicago O'Hare)
ACC: Greensboro, NC
Pac: San Francisco -> moving to East Bay

Yeah. SF is definitely the outlier there. There should be a Harvard business review case study about how badly that conference was mismanaged the past two decades.

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Now I get it .... so that's why it became a BDF ....

BIg12 12 HQ is in Irving, TX.

The ACC is planning to move their HQ from Greensboro to Charlotte. This means the SEC will be the only P5 conference HQ not located near a major airport.

Larry Scott got a huge severance package for running the Pac 12 in the ground. He could have moved the HQ to LA, a huge city for media, but he wanted to be close to Silicon Valley and saw Asia Pacific as the growth area for the "Conference of Champions". He also put the office in one of the most expensive markets in the US. There are two schools, Washington State and Oregon State, which have small football stadiums. It could get ugly for for these schools.

I absolutely hate what the money has done to college athletics. Yes, it's always been a component but now, that is the SOLE interest/concern and there's no attempt to even pretend otherwise.

I feel bad for the Wazzus and Oregon States of the world.

The Zookeeper said:

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Aggie_Journalist said:

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Conference HQ locations:

Big 12: Irvine
SEC: Birmingham, AL
Big 10: Rosemont, IL (right next to Chicago O'Hare)
ACC: Greensboro, NC
Pac: San Francisco -> moving to East Bay

Yeah. SF is definitely the outlier there. There should be a Harvard business review case study about how badly that conference was mismanaged the past two decades.

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Now I get it .... so that's why it became a BDF ....

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How is SF an outlier? Are you talking cost?

If they were leasing, then yes.

p8aggie said:

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I don't see why the remains of the Big12 and the PAC don't combine to make a new conference.

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it would seem to make sense in some form
or fashion. there are enough quality programs between the two conferences to make one very strong conference.

TX_COWDOC said:

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Winnemucca, NV

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If you're going to Winnemucca, Mack, with me you can ride

And the contraction begins...

Last 11 years of rent (and renovation expenses) for conference headquarters:

Pac-12: $92M
Big Ten: $15M
SEC: $350,011

Bring on Las Vegas…

Column: https://t.co/yWr2Wz8VxG

— John Canzano (@johncanzanobft) March 13, 2022

p8aggie said:

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I don't see why the remains of the Big12 and the PAC don't combine to make a new conference.

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They will, but it won't be PAC 12 centric.

Is some of this Pac 12 studios related? I believe that was built into their SF HQ.

Not sure how hard they tried, and how flexible the B12 was as well as Oregon and Wash, but seems they should have rebuilt/formed a new conf immediately after USC exit instead of just a hunker down and hang in there attitutde. you knew Wash and OR were leaving eventually if there wasnt something big keeping them there.

p8aggie said:

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I don't see why the remains of the Big12 and the PAC don't combine to make a new conference.

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For the last decade, I would not have guessed that that B12 may be the one picking up the Pac 12 leftovers, and not the other way around. Who knew the B12 losing schools early may end up being beneficial?

akm91 said:

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AGAZ03 said:

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Why would a conference HQ even be in SF in the first place?

About the dumbest idea I've heard in a long time.

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Where would you put it given the geography of Pac-12?

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If you ask The Raiders and now the A's, they would tell you that Vegas is an entirely better option than the bay area

And to think, in 2009 Bill Byrne told me at a banquet when I was sitting next to him that our future is with the PAC schools because they are our peers. When I asked him why not the SEC? He bristled and said that all the SEC schools have the worst, most backward fans in the country.

I guess he didn't tell that to his son.

What a dumb@$$ Bill was. I couldn't stand the guy.

AGAZ03 said:

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Why would a conference HQ even be in SF in the first place?

About the dumbest idea I've heard in a long time.

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why put any headquarters in that overpriced hellhole? Detracts people from working there. We had to make a list of where around the country my family was willing to relocate to and that was one of the few that was a firm no.

The Chicken Ranch said:

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And to think, in 2009 Bill Byrne told me at a banquet when I was sitting next to him that our future is with the PAC schools because they are our peers. When I asked him why not the SEC? He bristled and said that all the SEC schools have the worst, most backward fans in the country.

I guess he didn't tell that to his son.

What a dumb@$$ Bill was. I couldn't stand the guy.

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One of the bigger blowhards in the history of college athletics. Straight up clown.

The state of Washington is really just Seattle and it's major suburban areas to include Tacoma. Whatever happens to Washington State is of no interest to the woke snobs in Seattle.

NIL was hatched in California and now their athletic conference is no more. Doesn't that remind you of everything else coming out of California.

Why would improper documentation create over expenditures? Are they saying the budget was never controlled after the rev reduction became evident?

All those brilliant progressive ideas at work.

Lol

Aggie71013 said:

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Is some of this Pac 12 studios related? I believe that was built into their SF HQ.

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So…almost certainly they had to build from scratch an ESPN Charlotte equivalent. And it hosts not one "national" network but also six regional sports networks. The SECN deal provides investment to each school that was about $15 million per school which wildly exceeds the $92 million. But I don't know if there was also per school studio spend on top.

I just thought the framing showed the insensitivity to spend that was Larry Scott's mentality.

The Chicken Ranch said:

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And to think, in 2009 Bill Byrne told me at a banquet when I was sitting next to him that our future is with the PAC schools because they are our peers. When I asked him why not the SEC? He bristled and said that all the SEC schools have the worst, most backward fans in the country.

I guess he didn't tell that to his son.

What a dumb@$$ Bill was. I couldn't stand the guy.

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Bill had that kind of brilliant forethought. And it ultimately cost him his well paid gig to oversee Olympic sports success while letting money sports languish.

WestAustinAg said:

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The Chicken Ranch said:

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And to think, in 2009 Bill Byrne told me at a banquet when I was sitting next to him that our future is with the PAC schools because they are our peers. When I asked him why not the SEC? He bristled and said that all the SEC schools have the worst, most backward fans in the country.

I guess he didn't tell that to his son.

What a dumb@$$ Bill was. I couldn't stand the guy.

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Bill had that kind of brilliant forethought. And it ultimately cost him his well paid gig to oversee Olympic sports success while letting money sports languish.

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Bill's view on sports was probably due to who picked the football, basketball, and baseball coaches…it likely wasn't him.

But he did attempt to retain Gillispie. But the combination of the slow roll on McFerrin-Cox and what Gillispie and Turgeon saw as insufficient fan support (probably made worse by Blair's retail glad handing which was how he built the wbb fan base) doomed both BCG and Turgeon to…mediocrity.

Bill focused on what could build an environment that promoted a championship mentality a month all the athletes. That did not HURT Texas A&M. Despite the grubbing here about the costs that essentially Title IX doubled it tripled to do that.

Is Learfield Directors's Cup just virtue signaling on women's sports? No: it also defends the school against lawsuits for inadequate funding.

Was $Bill right? When he said that money is the oxygen of intercollegiate athletics he put the finger on Texas A&M's traditional underspend due to fans wanting shortcuts to fame and celebrity. It's better now in part because he focused on improving revenue but "fans" on this board despise him because he set in motion prices increases that continue to rise.

He was wrong on moving to the SEC but mainly because he was a hired gun.

Byrne was an egotistical man of mediocre skills. He chose Sherman all by himself. And he worked more closely with Dodds at tu than he did with our own school leadership and Board on the conference realignment saga. He kept the pact with Dodds to go to the Pac12 quiet until Loftin figured it out with a private talk with Powers who bragged about the plan. Can you imagine not hearing about a plan for our athletic department which committed us to join tu in the PAC 10 through it's President's private inferring of the plan and not directly from your athletic director?

Or how about how Byrne was the source that gave Kirk Bohls the instantaneous news that Sherman was fired before Sherman had even been notified so that Bohls could get a quick story out that would embarrass our program? Was he also the insider source that gave Chip Brown of Orangebloods so much correct info before the source was later given inaccurate info regarding the SEC? Most likely.

Lastly he talked down to the fans in a not so subtle passive aggressive manner every week in his fan newsletter. Many problems were solved by his firing.

Anyone remember his unprofessional call to a fan offering to fight him?