Loser: Us old farts who grew up with the Bruins from the 60's with the West Coast rivalries with Stanford, Washington, and Cal, and the periodic, exciting intersectional games with Big 10 teams like Penn State, Ohio State, and Michigan. Would also be concerned about the Rose Bowl, but it's such a distant memory!
-----the UCLA football brand is not exactly the strongest thing in the world. Sure, they are a historically-strong program,-----
Under what metric has UCLA football been a historically-strong program?? Basketball yes, football, not even close!! At least Colorado and Washington have won national championships outright. In the last two decades, UCLA football has been a disaster. In the Big10, UCLA will be lucky to even be considered middle of the pack at best! The decision to move to the Big10 will bring in revenue but any hopes of winning even a Division title are practically NONE! The competition there will be brutal.
Loser - The Rose Bowl. At least in the sense of the traditional Pac-10/12 vs. Big 10 rivalry. I imagine they'e still going to have a Big 10 team each year, but I'm curious to see who they prioritize playing against.
Thank you for your analysis, Dimitri! Although I agree with most of your points, I think you are wrong to list UCLA Olympic sports as a winner.
First, you mention the possibility of some Olympic sports being eliminated as a consequence of UCLA's debt. You then reference Stanford's recent effort to cut 11 Olympic sports (men's and women's fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, men's rowing, coed and women's sailing, squash, synchronized swimming, men's volleyball and wrestling). This deserves some context to understand clearly what Stanford attempted.
Stanford has 36 varsity sports compared to UCLA's 21. When the cuts were announced, Stanford AD Bernard Muir said "We came to this decision only [after] exhausting all other viable alternatives. It recently became painfully clear we would not remain financially stable and support 36 varsity sports at a nationally competitive level." So, to be clear, Stanford's AD insisted that cutting these programs was the ONLY viable path to financial stability. Then student-athletes, parents and alumni complained. Two lawsuits were filed. Suddenly, Stanford found a solution and all 11 programs were saved! To be fair, the miraculous survival of these sports coincided with Stanford squeezing additional funds from boosters, but the bottom line is that Stanford's AD's claim that cutting these programs was the only viable option was untrue. The claim proved to be a tool, not a goal.
Second, as San Diego State discovered, cutting programs in a manner consistent with a university's Title IX obligations is not simple and straightforward. In that regard, if UCLA were to attempt to cut some of its teams, the men's Olympic sports programs would be at far greater risk than the women's teams. With this consideration in mind, it's hard to see UCLA's women's teams as being significantly more secure in the Big Ten than in the Pac-12.
Third, in a comment in your previous blog post, I attempted to quantify the step down in quality for baseball and softball in moving to the Big Ten. Based on the metric I used, the Pac-12 is quite substantially better than the Big Ten in these two sports. Now, as you note, this may not have much of an impact in terms of UCLA's post-season seeding, but it will certainly have an impact when it comes to recruiting. If you were a softball recruit, would you be more interested in competing against Arizona, Oregon, Stanford and Washington, or would you prefer April road trips to Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana and Ohio? Recruits care about these things. If they are considering UCLA, they want to compete against the best. This consideration may work in our favor for men's basketball and football, but for many of our Olympic sports, the prospect of playing Big Ten opponents instead of Pac-12 opponents works against us in recruiting.
Lastly, to the extent that our student-athletes spend more time travelling and less time learning, the student-athletes and the university lose. For football players, this is perhaps less of a problem as they play once a week and will have about half a dozen road trips. It becomes a bigger concern for teams that play several times a week and have more road trips. It will certainly be to our benefit if UCLA can negotiate a favorable schedule to minimize the extra travel, but I don't see how additional time spent travelling can be seen as anything but a negative.
Overall, I am still struggling to see any substantial benefits for UCLA's women's teams by moving to the Big Ten. The security of these teams rests primarily with Title IX, not increased funding. Moving to the Big Ten diminishes the quality of competition and consequently the appeal of our program to recruits. Additional travel time is a negative for all student-athletes.
I concede that, in principle, our men's non-revenue sports *could* be somewhat more secure against threats of elimination with additional revenue for UCLA Athletics. However, given the historical incompetence in the financial management of the department, and given the fact that Olympic sports have seen no substantial benefit from past revenue boosts, it's difficult to imagine a change in the balance between revenue and non-revenue sports in the budget process. The security of these programs rests with competent financial management and recognition of the value of these programs beyond the revenue they produce.
the big ten cannot add stanford unless its understood they would not play football in a 50k seat stadium. stanford has to add a tier or something like that, as ND did (beautifully I might add) or agree to play at Levi Stadium whenever a real team shows up. incidentally the small stadium size - commensurate with lack of interest - is a big part of the reason you'd look first to UW for another add.
Loser - Bill Walton - The former conference of champions!
All good except I despise effing Norte Dame, I hope they do go ACC. I hope Bill Walton will continue to do Ucla games.
Loser: Us old farts who grew up with the Bruins from the 60's with the West Coast rivalries with Stanford, Washington, and Cal, and the periodic, exciting intersectional games with Big 10 teams like Penn State, Ohio State, and Michigan. Would also be concerned about the Rose Bowl, but it's such a distant memory!
-----the UCLA football brand is not exactly the strongest thing in the world. Sure, they are a historically-strong program,-----
Under what metric has UCLA football been a historically-strong program?? Basketball yes, football, not even close!! At least Colorado and Washington have won national championships outright. In the last two decades, UCLA football has been a disaster. In the Big10, UCLA will be lucky to even be considered middle of the pack at best! The decision to move to the Big10 will bring in revenue but any hopes of winning even a Division title are practically NONE! The competition there will be brutal.
Loser - The Rose Bowl. At least in the sense of the traditional Pac-10/12 vs. Big 10 rivalry. I imagine they'e still going to have a Big 10 team each year, but I'm curious to see who they prioritize playing against.
Thank you for your analysis, Dimitri! Although I agree with most of your points, I think you are wrong to list UCLA Olympic sports as a winner.
First, you mention the possibility of some Olympic sports being eliminated as a consequence of UCLA's debt. You then reference Stanford's recent effort to cut 11 Olympic sports (men's and women's fencing, field hockey, lightweight rowing, men's rowing, coed and women's sailing, squash, synchronized swimming, men's volleyball and wrestling). This deserves some context to understand clearly what Stanford attempted.
Stanford has 36 varsity sports compared to UCLA's 21. When the cuts were announced, Stanford AD Bernard Muir said "We came to this decision only [after] exhausting all other viable alternatives. It recently became painfully clear we would not remain financially stable and support 36 varsity sports at a nationally competitive level." So, to be clear, Stanford's AD insisted that cutting these programs was the ONLY viable path to financial stability. Then student-athletes, parents and alumni complained. Two lawsuits were filed. Suddenly, Stanford found a solution and all 11 programs were saved! To be fair, the miraculous survival of these sports coincided with Stanford squeezing additional funds from boosters, but the bottom line is that Stanford's AD's claim that cutting these programs was the only viable option was untrue. The claim proved to be a tool, not a goal.
Second, as San Diego State discovered, cutting programs in a manner consistent with a university's Title IX obligations is not simple and straightforward. In that regard, if UCLA were to attempt to cut some of its teams, the men's Olympic sports programs would be at far greater risk than the women's teams. With this consideration in mind, it's hard to see UCLA's women's teams as being significantly more secure in the Big Ten than in the Pac-12.
Third, in a comment in your previous blog post, I attempted to quantify the step down in quality for baseball and softball in moving to the Big Ten. Based on the metric I used, the Pac-12 is quite substantially better than the Big Ten in these two sports. Now, as you note, this may not have much of an impact in terms of UCLA's post-season seeding, but it will certainly have an impact when it comes to recruiting. If you were a softball recruit, would you be more interested in competing against Arizona, Oregon, Stanford and Washington, or would you prefer April road trips to Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana and Ohio? Recruits care about these things. If they are considering UCLA, they want to compete against the best. This consideration may work in our favor for men's basketball and football, but for many of our Olympic sports, the prospect of playing Big Ten opponents instead of Pac-12 opponents works against us in recruiting.
Lastly, to the extent that our student-athletes spend more time travelling and less time learning, the student-athletes and the university lose. For football players, this is perhaps less of a problem as they play once a week and will have about half a dozen road trips. It becomes a bigger concern for teams that play several times a week and have more road trips. It will certainly be to our benefit if UCLA can negotiate a favorable schedule to minimize the extra travel, but I don't see how additional time spent travelling can be seen as anything but a negative.
Overall, I am still struggling to see any substantial benefits for UCLA's women's teams by moving to the Big Ten. The security of these teams rests primarily with Title IX, not increased funding. Moving to the Big Ten diminishes the quality of competition and consequently the appeal of our program to recruits. Additional travel time is a negative for all student-athletes.
I concede that, in principle, our men's non-revenue sports *could* be somewhat more secure against threats of elimination with additional revenue for UCLA Athletics. However, given the historical incompetence in the financial management of the department, and given the fact that Olympic sports have seen no substantial benefit from past revenue boosts, it's difficult to imagine a change in the balance between revenue and non-revenue sports in the budget process. The security of these programs rests with competent financial management and recognition of the value of these programs beyond the revenue they produce.
the big ten cannot add stanford unless its understood they would not play football in a 50k seat stadium. stanford has to add a tier or something like that, as ND did (beautifully I might add) or agree to play at Levi Stadium whenever a real team shows up. incidentally the small stadium size - commensurate with lack of interest - is a big part of the reason you'd look first to UW for another add.
Great work, Dimitri. Thanks for keeping us up to date with all of this.
Off topic.
Class of 2023 might be a loser.
29 offers and no commits.