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Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - BillBradley - 08-04-2023
If a Power-4 option doesn't materialize and Stanford decides to go the Independent route for football, what would be the best conference choice for basketball, baseball, soccer, volleyball, etc? Haven't thought about this much, but is the WCC an option and how does it stack up vs. the Mountain West? The WCC just lost BYU, but still has Gonzaga and St. Mary's. in men's hoops. USF would be a local team and they are pretty solid year over year. Santa Clara is on the rise, also local. These teams are roughly comparable to SDSU, Boise St., Utah St. and Nevada. Massey ranks the MWC as the #7 conference and the WCC #9 overall based on last year. In women's hoops, the WCC is the stronger conference. Gonzaga is strong year over year and Portland is on the rise. Stanford women's basketball competing in the Mountain West would be pretty ridiculous. I really don't know much about baseball, soccer, volleyball in other conferences. The WCC member schools are private with most having strong academics, certainly way better than the MWC.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - Canalejas - 08-04-2023
I'm going to copy/paste my thought's from the poll thread:
Quote:I'm still hoping for the Big Ten, even in the face of this week's bitter news.
But if we do go independent, I'm going to cast a vote for joining the Big West. Maybe it won't do much for basketball or soccer, but it does have its strengths in baseball and volleyball. And, as a personal bonus for me, it is the conference that contains the schools that my siblings attended for undergrad and (starting in a few weeks) for med school. So I'd be able to replace my family's annual showdown that was Stanford-UCLA with matchups in other sports.
And if we care even a little bit about what used to be the Pac's brand (all R1, and mostly AAU universities,) the Big West is home to 5 UC campuses (all of them in the AAU) plus Hawai'i. That's not something we'd find in the WCC. And, finally, if Stanford and Cal can manage to stay linked, the Big West will probably be an even better fit for the school across the bay.
Anyway, I hope it all works out. Go Stanford.
I know that's more about what's good for me than what's good for Stanford. But it's my preferred direction in the absence of finding a good fit in a football-playing conference.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - Farm93 - 08-05-2023
It really doesn't matter.
Stanford men's basketball was destined to take at least 5 years to recover from the Haase era. Given recent attendance trends it is not like the Stanford community really cares about men's hoops. FWIW - The apathy thing applies to Cal too. There are many teams in group of 5 conferences that are better at men's basketball, so any conference will work.
For a number of other sports there are enough non-conference opportunities that one can build a decent pre-NCAA championship tournament/event season without a strong conference.
The Pac-12 schools in most MPSF sports today are very likely to remain in MPSF because most in the BigTen and the Big 12 do not field most of those sports. (Men's volleyball, men's gymnastics, men's and women's water polo)
A number of sports are not really about dual meets or conference games. They have large multi-sport invitationals that more or less define the season. (Fencing, M&W indoor track, M&W outdoor track, M&W cross country, M&W golf, sailing and rowing)
Existing Pac-12 Conference members are not particularly essential for beach volleyball, artistic swimming, field hockey, lacrosse and wrestling.
That leaves only a few sports where a quality conference schedule would be rather helpful. Softball, baseball, M&W basketball and football.
Looking just at the best landing spot for those 5 sports I think the best option would be MWC, especially if the MWC took all four remaining Pac-12.
If you look at Stanford just in terms of incremental TV in football revenue when a 4-8 to 8-4 type program it really is no better than Cal, OSU or WSU. Sure a 10-2 Stanford team might do OK getting ratings, but that's true for most D1 programs. The objective in this incremental TV revenue game is to find a program that will be accretive to a conference even at 6-6 or so. That means a team can still pack at the end of the season when is it 4-5 the house with a passionate and rowdy crowd. Best if a program can even do that if given 11AM or 9PM kick-off times and also get big chunks of a region to watch on TV. In other words NOT OSU, WSU, Stanford or Cal. That's why those four are where they are. It has been a multi-decade trend. Harbaugh's resurgence and Shaw's multiple 8+ win seasons hid the trend's impact for a bit, but ultimately the Pac-12 CG at Stanford Stadium managed to reveal the financial and ratings reality.
The super conferences do not want to add a football program that can't fill its own stadium for a CG game. Even if the kickoff game is on a Tuesday at 10PM on a rainy night, that stadium needs to be at 100% of capacity and also command a massive TV following to be the type of program that would win at this musical chairs game of incremental TV revenue.
FWIW - I suspect Northwestern & Vanderbilt wouldn't really do much better at filling a CG venue but they are already in the future super conferences. We haven't gotten to a place where schools get kicked out of conferences, but perhaps that will be the next step in this never ending drive for incremental revenue.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - grendalor - 08-05-2023
(08-05-2023, 06:42 AM)Farm93 Wrote: If you look at Stanford just in terms of incremental TV in football revenue when a 4-8 to 8-4 type program it really is no better than Cal, OSU or WSU. Sure a 10-2 Stanford team might do OK getting ratings, but that's true for most D1 programs. The objective in this incremental TV revenue game is to find a program that will be accretive to a conference even at 6-6 or so. That means a team can still pack at the end of the season when is it 4-5 the house with a passionate and rowdy crowd. Best if a program can even do that if given 11AM or 9PM kick-off times and also get big chunks of a region to watch on TV. In other words NOT OSU, WSU, Stanford or Cal. That's why those four are where they are. It has been a multi-decade trend. Harbaugh's resurgence and Shaw's multiple 8+ win seasons hid the trend's impact for a bit, but ultimately the Pac-12 CG at Stanford Stadium managed to reveal the financial and ratings reality.
The super conferences do not want to add a football program that can't fill its own stadium for a CG game. Even if the kickoff game is on a Tuesday at 10PM on a rainy night, that stadium needs to be at 100% of capacity and also command a massive TV following to be the type of program that would win at this musical chairs game of incremental TV revenue.
FWIW - I suspect Northwestern & Vanderbilt wouldn't really do much better at filling a CG venue but they are already in the future super conferences. We haven't gotten to a place where schools get kicked out of conferences, but perhaps that will be the next step in this never ending drive for incremental revenue.
It's the harsh reality.
I think that the recent, admittedly glorious, run of success both (1) was due to situational factors which were virtually impossible to sustain and (2) exposed the hard limits on why Stanford could never really be a true national power in that sport, or in the money sports generally. It doesn't really fit the university culture, the alumni culture as a whole.
Sure, enough alumni were happy to hop on the Rose Bowl bandwagon as a kind of luxury handbag, a seasonal fashion that was "cool" ('Hey, look, we're suddenly good at football, how cool is that!?!"), but the actual interest, year-in, year-out, for any sports, is not a part of the university's culture. The university community, alumni community, is extremely supportive of the idea of Stanford having very competitive athletics overall as an idea, as a concept (just like it's extremely supportive of the idea of Stanford having world-class competitive anything, frankly, academic or athletic), but it isn't actually terribly interested in showing up to watch the sports (whether money or not) in the kind of numbers you need to have that kind of fanbase, nor is the university capable of retaining a core of non-alumni fans to do that, either, due to the inherently exclusive nature of the university community.
All of that makes it just really hard to maintain this kind of thing in a way that seems to fit with an Oregon, a USC, a Michigan, etc. It doesn't even fit very well with a UW or a UofA either, really. Yes, it's more like Northwestern (my son graduated from there a couple of years ago, it's not that different in many ways from Stanford in terms of the attitude of its community, but of course it does not have anything close to Stanford's history of athletic excellence) or Vanderbilt, but they are lucky to be in conferences that are "winners" and not the one that was next on the block -- as you say it remains to be seen whether that tenure remains secure.
Really, it's not the worst thing in the world. Maintaining the success in football was proving extremely hard, Pac or no Pac. College sports are changing, college football is changing. In ways that really don't fit Stanford as an institution -- not just the values, but also the facts of how our alumni base actually is. Hopefully we can find a way to maintain a semblance of a football program, either as an independent or as a mid-major, but if not then that isn't a total disaster, either. It wouldn't be my preferred option, but it certainly wouldn't be shocking, either, given the way that the wind has been blowing for a while now.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - BillBradley - 08-05-2023
(08-05-2023, 06:42 AM)Farm93 Wrote: That leaves only a few sports where a quality conference schedule would be rather helpful. Softball, baseball, M&W basketball and football.Volleyball and soccer are important sports at Stanford. Those should be in the mix/discussion too. I know the WCC has had some great success nationally in women's soccer. Just don't know about men's soccer, baseball, volleyball, etc.
Looking just at the best landing spot for those 5 sports I think the best option would be MWC, especially if the MWC took all four remaining Pac-12.
Other than football, the Mountain West just doesn't feel right to me. The optics of Stanford's association, both athletically and academically, with Utah St., Fresno St, San Jose St, Nevada,...I don't think that's going to happen. And really tough to recruit for the non-football sports, trying to sell athletes on our great road trips to those schools. Ugh.
The more I think about this, the more I think we fit way better with the WCC. From a branding perspective, it's better to be associated with the likes of Gonzaga, Santa Clara, St. Mary's, USF vs. the MWC schools. If Cal joined too, we could have 5 Bay Area schools - Stanford, Cal, Santa Clara, USF, St. Mary's in the same conference. Actually might be kind of cool - longer term it could create rivalries along the same lines as the Philadelphia Big 5 :> I realize this is all comes down to the TV money, so it's probably a stretch for football to go independent. But I've decided I don't want all our other sports to end up in the MWC.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - Spiny_Norman - 08-05-2023
(08-04-2023, 10:38 PM)BillBradley Wrote: If a Power-4 option doesn't materialize and Stanford decides to go the Independent route for football, what would be the best conference choice for basketball, baseball, soccer, volleyball, etc?
I think the question to ask before that one is "Which sports will Stanford drop because it can no longer afford 36 sports"?
The 11 sports that Stanford dropped in 2020 are obvious candidates - men’s and women’s fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, men’s rowing, co-ed and women’s sailing, squash, synchronized swimming, men’s volleyball and wrestling.
Beyond that, men's gymnastics and men's water polo could go. More men's sports will have to be sacrificed to save football. There are very few men's gymnastics and water polo teams across the country anyway. Men's swimming might be next. UCLA gave up on men's swimming a while ago.
What would be left?
Men's sports - football, baseball, basketball, golf, tennis, cross country, track and field, soccer
Women's sports - basketball, beach volleyball, volleyball, softball, cross country, track and field, gymnastics, golf, tennis, water polo, soccer, lacrosse, rowing, swimming
Some of these women's sports might also have to go.
Once you decide how many teams remain, you can speculate on where they land, conference wise.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - StanfordMatt - 08-05-2023
Every school in the WCC has a religious affiliation. I don’t see that working culturally.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - Canalejas - 08-05-2023
(08-05-2023, 12:14 PM)StanfordMatt Wrote: Every school in the WCC has a religious affiliation. I don’t see that working culturally.
I thought Pacific might be the exception but Wikipedia says they are Methodist. So you're right. The others are all Catholic except for Pepperdine, whose affiliation is with the Church of Christ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Conference
I don't think Stanford fits in a church league.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - gocard14 - 08-05-2023
I can almost guarantee that after realignment has sorted out, the next step (especially when media rights deals stop exponentially rising Im which is already happening), will be the conferences turning on themselves.
First the sharks eat the little fish. Then they eat the smaller sharks. The true blue bloods will ask why Purdue is getting the same TV money as Ohio state. They will threaten to form "super leagues" unless the little guys agree to unequal revenue splits. Perhaps driven by tv ratings, prime time slot %, etc.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - 82lsju - 08-05-2023
(08-05-2023, 12:29 PM)gocard14 Wrote: I can almost guarantee that after realignment has sorted out, the next step (especially when media rights deals stop exponentially rising Im which is already happening), will be the conferences turning on themselves.
First the sharks eat the little fish. Then they eat the smaller sharks. The true blue bloods will ask why Purdue is getting the same TV money as Ohio state. They will threaten to form "super leagues" unless the little guys agree to unequal revenue splits. Perhaps driven by tv ratings, prime time slot %, etc.
like this
Quote: Florida State President Richard McCullough told his board of trustees during a meeting Wednesday that the university would have to "very seriously" consider leaving the ACC unless there is a radical change to the conference's revenue distribution model.
...
The ACC recently changed its revenue distribution model to reward success on the field in football and basketball. But Florida State has also pushed for changing the model to reward programs that generate higher television revenue and marketability, areas where FSU believes it has an advantage.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/38122958/florida-state-consider-leaving-acc-due-revenue-distribution
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - Snorlax94 - 08-05-2023
(08-05-2023, 12:29 PM)gocard14 Wrote: I can almost guarantee that after realignment has sorted out, the next step (especially when media rights deals stop exponentially rising Im which is already happening), will be the conferences turning on themselves.In terms of the big sharks eating the little sharks (or the old, dying medium shark eating some minnows), How feasible would it be to reconstitute a Pac-8 by raiding the MWC?
First the sharks eat the little fish. Then they eat the smaller sharks. The true blue bloods will ask why Purdue is getting the same TV money as Ohio state. They will threaten to form "super leagues" unless the little guys agree to unequal revenue splits. Perhaps driven by tv ratings, prime time slot %, etc.
Stanford, Cal, Oregon State, Washington State, then try to get SJ State, Boise State, UNLV, Fresno State and SD State?
I think a CA-based conference, plus some historical Pac 12 teams, plus Las Vegas, would be a viable offering.
Would Apple+ still pay? Presumably, it’d be lot more than what the MWC pays. Would the MWC teams all have to pay massive payouts to exit?
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - johnbar - 08-05-2023
My primary interest in women's volleyball. The Big Ten would clearly be the best option there.
For beach VB...? Maybe MPSF could pick it up?
Seen elsewhere: https://pac-4.com/
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - chrisk - 08-05-2023
Right now, Stanford has between 7-9 open dates on its 2024 football schedule. Whatever plan it chooses, it will need to move expeditiously to fill those holes.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - BillBradley - 08-05-2023
(08-05-2023, 12:23 PM)Canalejas Wrote:Crap. I knew there were a lot of Catholic schools in the league, but I thought it was more of a "private school" conference vs. a religious school conference. They probably wouldn't even invite us.(08-05-2023, 12:14 PM)StanfordMatt Wrote: Every school in the WCC has a religious affiliation. I don’t see that working culturally.
I thought Pacific might be the exception but Wikipedia says they are Methodist. So you're right. The others are all Catholic except for Pepperdine, whose affiliation is with the Church of Christ.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Coast_Conference
I don't think Stanford fits in a church league.
This really stinks. Stanford has enjoyed so much national success in many of the non-football sports and I loved so much of it as a fan - watching our baseball team in the CWS, our women's volleyball team win the natty 3 out of 4 years, of course our women's hoops team that has been great for a long, long time. If we join the MWC, kiss all of that goodbye. Few top recruits will want to come to Stanford and play the MWC schools when they could instead go to great schools in the Power 4 conferences (and get a bunch of NIL money too).
We have to get into the B10. Do whatever it takes.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - Spiny_Norman - 08-05-2023
(08-05-2023, 01:41 PM)BillBradley Wrote: We have to get into the B10. Do whatever it takes.
I agree. It's the only path I can see to save Stanford Athletics. B12 or ACC would also be a lifeline, but those options seem very unlikely.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - stopandpop - 08-05-2023
Regarding basketball, if you want to think outside the box, Canada has and is producing some excellent players, both men and women and the Canadian national U19, U21, U23 women's teams historically give our girls a tough battle.
What about expanding the PAC-12 into Vancouver, BC or Calgary, Alberta?
If we're going international, let's bring in a strong university from Mexico?
You would likely have stronger teams from those universities than Santa Clara, Boise State, etc. That would also incent international HS players in taking an interest in Stanford.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - StanfordMatt - 08-05-2023
(08-05-2023, 01:53 PM)stopandpop Wrote: What about expanding the PAC-12 into Vancouver, BC or Calgary, Alberta?
Last year, Simon Fraser (the only current Canadian based NCAA member as a member of the GNAC in D2) went 1-9 in football but they did push Texas Permian Basin to overtime. I could see them fitting in the middle of the PAC-5.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - cardcrimson - 08-05-2023
(08-05-2023, 01:53 PM)stopandpop Wrote: Regarding basketball, if you want to think outside the box, Canada has and is producing some excellent players, both men and women and the Canadian national U19, U21, U23 women's teams historically give our girls a tough battle.
What about expanding the PAC-12 into Vancouver, BC or Calgary, Alberta?
If we're going international, let's bring in a strong university from Mexico?
You would likely have stronger teams from those universities than Santa Clara, Boise State, etc. That would also incent international HS players in taking an interest in Stanford.
Curling fits in well with our culture, too.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - msqueri - 08-05-2023
(08-05-2023, 02:41 PM)cardcrimson Wrote:(08-05-2023, 01:53 PM)stopandpop Wrote: Regarding basketball, if you want to think outside the box, Canada has and is producing some excellent players, both men and women and the Canadian national U19, U21, U23 women's teams historically give our girls a tough battle.
What about expanding the PAC-12 into Vancouver, BC or Calgary, Alberta?
If we're going international, let's bring in a strong university from Mexico?
You would likely have stronger teams from those universities than Santa Clara, Boise State, etc. That would also incent international HS players in taking an interest in Stanford.
Curling fits in well with our culture, too.
Curling up like a ball? Yes, yes it does.
RE: Best conference for Stanford basketball and other sports - 82lsju - 08-05-2023
what could go wrong...
Quote:“Florida State University is working with JPMorgan Chase to explore how the school’s athletic department could raise capital from institutional funds, such as private equity, according to multiple people familiar with the plans.
“PE giant Sixth Street is in advanced talks to lead a possible investment, said the people, who were granted anonymity because the specifics are private. Institutional money has poured into professional sports in recent years, from the NBA and global soccer to F1 and golf, but this would break new ground by entering the multibillion-dollar world of college athletic departments.
“The school is considering a structure similar to many of those pro sports investments, where commercial rights are rolled into a new company, the private equity fund invests in that entity, and then recoups its money via future media/sponsorship revenue. That’s how Silver Lake structured its investment into the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, and how CVC organized its $2.2 billion Spanish soccer deal with LaLiga.”
https://www.tallahassee.com/story/sports/college/fsu/football/2023/08/04/fsu-acc-what-we-know-jpmorgan-chase-unc-paul-finebaum-sec-big-10/70528956007/