UCLA and Big 12 expansion

Los Angeles has a lot of football teams now… even for a huge city.

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I like ladies “beach” volleyball . . . . .

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Like I have said we can’t really throw stones at attendance problems. But the estimated 10,000 people in the Rose Bowl is startling. Those are Rice numbers.

The TV viewership is really startling.

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The ratings is the “eye” opener for me and is real news. When I was with the Galaxy and U.S.Soccer we had many, many games at the Rose Bowl. The stadium “officially” can seat 92,000. Even at 90k plus there were still a bunch of seats available. The record is at 106k. I have been in bigger stadiums and my thoughts is that it could easily seat 110k. We did games with 60k and it looked as if we had maybe 40k. The “looks” are very deceiving. We did games at the same time as this past one and I can tell you firsthand that it is brutal. The Rose Bowl by its location is in a lower elevation than homes around it. The temp is usually in the 100’s to 115, exposed 100% to the sun. It is a beautiful site but not so much in sizzling heat. No excuses though. There are huge Hawaiian, Samoans, Pacific islanders communities around Southern California and they love football.

or a b12 conference that everyone is looking to leave?

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The Bruins host LSU on Saturday.

Will The Rose Bowl have only Tiger fans?

Leave where?? The ONLY conference with an interest is the American…

This isn’t about liberals.

  1. UCLA football has been pretty bad lately
  2. The Rose Bowl is far from campus
  3. School hasn’t started

Add to that that the Dodgers are everything now, there’s a new NFL stadium waiting for fans, and even San Diego State is playing in LA County this year.

Yeah, it’s getting to the point where a reconstituted Big 12 without Texas and Oklahoma may be better for us than the PAC 12. There’s little interest in the conference out on the West Coast, USC and Oregon are about all they’ve got, and adding UH and maybe Tech very likely wouldn’t change the numbers all that much. The new Big 12 won’t have a true blueblood like other P5s, but top to bottom it’s going to be very solid, maybe the third-best power conference in football in some years and definitely one of the best basketball leagues.

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This article seems to imply it’s not a “liberal” thing,

Between the 2000 and 2016 seasons the sport’s annual participation rate fell off by one quarter. Last year, just under 11 percent of high schoolers in the state—167,428 students—played UIL-sanctioned football and six-man football in Texas. That’s a big drop from 2000, when the number stood at 14.5 percent.

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West Brook is my HS alma mater and where I played my HS football at. UH has had some solid players from my HS. The Golden Triangle takes their football pretty seriously down there

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That being said, when UCLA is good they draw a big crowd.

For some reason, a lot of people on this board want exactly that.

And they want us to stay up until 9:00pm to watch west coast conference games in a lesser basketball conference.

Could someone please explain to me exactly what would be appealing about that, or if anything else, more appealing than the Big 12?

I don’t see it.

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Stability and the 9pm time slot might not even be relevant. Their new media contract will tell us at what time the PAC12 will play. Right now it is dictated by the stinky rodent and FOXsports. Let’s envision amazon getting it and obviously that is a big if. amazon will position its product at the best possible time to make money for amazon.

Only reason would be $$$ aside from possibly concern over losing P5 status, but the latter isn’t happening, and based on the way the PAC is going I’m not sure the money differential will be all that significant, especially for UH when you add in all-sports road trips to three Texas schools and Oklahoma as opposed to Washington, Oregon, and the California Bay Area.

If we have assurance that our Big12 acceptance comes with a TV contract extension, I 100% endorse the move.

My previous stance was with no guarantee that the Big12 would get a TV extension but that appears to be a moot point.

And once we are a member of the Big 12, my support goes to the conference we are in and I will be looking for angles to possibly steal a Arizona or/and Colorado from the PAC and add them to our conference.

I think an even better question is why the heck does UCLA play its home games at the Rose Bowl? The school has a huge endowment and access to numerous deep pocketed donors, they can’t build an on campus stadium?

I think it just proves the point that UCLA does not really care about football.

They are more concerned with being America’s PREMIER urban public research university, with an annual research budget of over $1 billion, and an endowment of over $5 billion.

They don’t need football in order to improve their “brand name.”

You follow the trend. Right now alot of the younger generation is deep into social media. So you follow the trend which is most of the west coast schools and Texas. Alot of people here want to stay here but feel the opportunity is elsewhere. If the media were more heavily invested inside Texas and Houston it would keep more people here. It would also bring more eyes to UH. That’s why schools like USC UCLA UC Stanford Oregon and Washington are so popular.

Top that with Washington housing some of the biggest companies created, Cali having Silicone Valley and Us having Energy and Food we become social media big not just football big.

Then there’s the games in Vegas, it doesn’t matter who’s playing in Vegas but if you can bet on it or go see it you can be sure that it would be full and if this MGM guy can get 4 games there every year then you can be sure the amount of money made would be bigger than Texas kickoff and more fun.

Bonus: the time. If we have night games they would be easier to go to without traffic and we wouldnt be roasting outside. If they were at 2 they wouldn’t be so early unless we played over there, but atleast our team wouldn’t be cooking over there. Then atleast to me, staying out late wouldn’t be a problem and i think for alot of the students it wouldn’t either if it was worth it.

Just my reasoning.

There is a vibe (mythos might be a better word)around that venerable stadium that is hard to understand outside of Southern Cal. They love it.