As I type this, Game 1 of the ALDS between the Minnesota Twins and the New York Yankees is on the television in the background. Take a wild guess which
team Bud Selig and his cronies want to win that series.
Game 1 of the ALDS between the Oakland A's and the Boston Red Sox gets
underway tonight. I wonder which team FOX would rather see advancing to baseball’s
next round.
They probably wouldn’t admit it in public, but once they go behind closed
doors, I’m sure the bigwigs at FOX and at MLB headquarters are probably
sporting their Yankee caps and their Pedro jerseys. I’m picturing Selig
watching the game tonight at home with a brew (Miller, of course) in one hand, a
remote in the other hand, and a ratty El Guapo jersey on his back.
No one on the FOX studio lot is rooting for Torii Hunter to rob Derek Jeter
of a game-changing home run. Not a soul at 245 Park Avenue is rooting for Barry Zito to ring up David Ortiz. For those folks, it’s all about an ALCS featuring
Boston and New York.
Could you imagine the tizzy the East Coast media would be in if that
happened? It’s a great rivalry to be sure, and there would be a few intriguing
subplots in that matchup, but man, you’d never hear the end of it. If the East
Coast sports media makes it seem like the world is at stake when these two teams
meet in May, how in the world are they going to act when the World Series is at
stake if they meet next week?
I don’t want to admit this, being an A’s fan and all, but any ALCS
featuring either Oakland or Minnesota won’t generate as much buzz nationwide.
Buzz, of course, equals ratings. Ratings, of course, equals money. Therefore, it’s
not in baseball’s best financial interest to have the A’s or the Twins move
on. Sad, but true.
Such logic isn’t limited to Major League Baseball, as the same kinds of
things are probably at work in Walnut Creek, where the folks at Pac-10
headquarters couldn’t have been too happy about last week’s results in the
first real weekend of conference play. The Pac-10’s two glamour programs took
one on the chin, as Oregon got drubbed by Washington State in the most
convincing fashion possible, and U$C was upset by cal in one of the more
dramatic Pac-10 games in recent memory.
It was great to see two of the Pac-10’s perceived "haves" knocked
off by two of the Pac-10’s perceived "have-nots" (and certainly the
tough losses couldn’t have been dealt to two nicer programs). It’s just
further proof that the Pac-10 has the most parity of any major conference in
college football. While the Pac-10’s best team might not beat the best teams
in the SEC, Big XII, and Big 10, I promise you that in a normal year, the Pac-10’s
worst team would handle the worst teams in the SEC, Big XII, and Big 10. Well,
maybe not this year, since Arizona is all-time bad, but the gap between first
and worst in the Pac-10 is generally nowhere near as wide as it is in the other
major conferences.
While parity is great for the fans, when it comes to college football,
parity has got to be a commissioner’s worst nightmare. Parity has allowed
seven different Pac-10 schools to experience a trip to the Rose Bowl over the
past ten years, but what has it gotten the conference as a whole? It hasn’t
gotten a Pac-10 team in a winner-take-all national championship game, especially
since the BCS was formed. Arizona State had their near-miss in 1996. Since then,
that’s been it. No other Pac-10 team, save for maybe the 2001 Oregon Ducks,
has come as close to a national championship during that time span. It’s a
factoid that all the commissioners of the other BCS leagues probably remind
Pac-10 honcho Tom Hansen of every time they cross paths.
So while "Big C" played all through the night in Berkeley and Coug
fans were humming "Fight Fight Fight for Washington State" all the way
back to the Palouse, Hansen couldn’t have been in much of a singing mood last
Saturday afternoon. It’s not in the Pac-10’s best interests for cal or Wazzu
(or Stanford) to win right now, especially when they’re knocking off the
league’s big boys. Why should it be? U$C was probably the conference’s best
shot at a national title. Oregon, even with all of their flaws on the field, is
the Pac-10’s elite program, fresh off a Sports Illustrated cover declaring
them "rich, cool, and 4-0." And both of them were eliminated from the
Sugar Bowl hunt within hours of each other.
The fact that it was cal and Washington State recording the big wins couldn’t
have sat well in Walnut Creek, either. Both the Bears and Cougars share some
similarities with the A’s and the Twins: they’re all programs that have
overachieved recently, but are still hindered by limited resources, middling fan
support, and less-than-favorable stadium situations.
The Bears could be a sleeping football giant (man, I don’t like typing that
sentence), but even with Jeff Tedford, they are nowhere near the Pac-10’s big
boys right now. Worse, they have done next to nothing of note since their Citrus
Bowl win back in the 1991 season.
But at least cal can claim the nation’s fifth-largest television market as
their home base. Spokane is the nation’s 77th largest, smaller even
than such cosmopolitan burghs as Toledo and Paducah. Aside from the great
quarterbacks that have come out of Pullman since Jack Thompson, there is almost
no tradition attached to Washington State football.
And, perhaps most damning of all, the Cougars failed to even come close to
selling out their allotment of Rose Bowl tickets last winter. That was a major
embarrassment for the Cougars, who were asked by the Pac-10 to come up with ways
of reimbursing the conference for all the unused ducats, and to the Rose Bowl,
which couldn’t have been happy with the rare empty seats that greeted TV
viewers on New Year's Day. That fiasco won’t be lost upon bowl committees,
as they can’t look upon Washington State as an attractive candidate for their
game right now.
I love rooting for the underdog. Maybe that’s why I want to see the A’s
and the Twins meet in the ALCS. Maybe that’s why I felt pretty good about U$C
and Oregon losing like they did this past weekend. But underdogs generally don’t
help the bottom line, and that’s why, as the Pac-10 season and the baseball
playoffs develop, the overdogs will have plenty of support in high places.
RANDOM PAC-10 THOUGHTS
Washington made just two big plays, but it was enough to beat Stanford. The
Card made a bunch of little plays, though, and that is certainly encouraging…
Find someone who has the tape of last weekend’s game and grab it, if only
to fast forward past the untimely penalties to the third quarter and check out
Mark Bradford's awesome dash through most of the Huskies defense on a botched
lateral. Maybe one of the greatest nine-yard runs of all time. Don’t forget
Mark’s super block downfield later in that game, either…
Who knew Stanford would have the best winning percentage of any major Bay
Area football team heading into October?
Congrats to Adimchinobe Echemandu for winning the Pac-10 Offensive Player of
the Week award, but the conference should have shelled out for five more awards
to give to cal’s offensive line. There’s no way that offensive line was
supposed to do that to The Wild Bunch II…
If you had told me immediately after last weekend’s Arizona-TCU game that
one of the head coaches would wake up the next morning unemployed, I would have
cast my vote for Gary Patterson. Sure, Mackovic had to go, but how in the world
does a top-20 team need overtime to beat a bottom-10 team?
How boring is UCLA football? Let’s just say that once the Arizona
State-Oregon State game got out of hand, instead of watching the Bruins’
snoozefest against San Diego State, I checked out Eastern Washington-Weber State
instead. Yes, UCLA is that unwatchable…
E-MAILBAG
Mallory from Tualatin, Oregon writes on last week’s winner of my Quote of
the Week award:
"Lamb not-so bright! Couldn't call a play if his life depended on it…
Thug masquerading as a football coach. No thanks. If Neu didn't have his team
conditioned and tough, how the heck did they engineer so many come from behind
4th quarter wins a couple of years ago?"
I also seem to remember Tricky Rick taking his team to a Rose Bowl, just like
Jim Lambr... oh, oops...
PAC-10 PICKS
Not my best weekend, but there are some cases where I’m happy to be wrong.
I’m glad I was wrong about U$C and Oregon, and I wish I could have been wrong
about Washington…
U$C @ Arizona State. High expectations for both teams coming in, but the
loser here drops to 0-2 in conference play. Remember when Stanford gashed UCLA’s
hopes for an awesome season a couple years ago? Will U$C go into the dumper like
the Bruins did? I don’t know, but, unlike this time last week, I think it’s
possible. Problem is, I don’t think the Sun Devils have quite enough to pull
it off. I like U$C by 5.
Arizona @ Washington State. Arizona will be full of emotion for this
game, but emotion can only carry a team so far. Usually it carries them to about
midway through the second quarter. Unless Matt Kegel still has problems handling
the exchanges from his backup centers, I like Washington State by 21.
Washington @ UCLA. The only reason to watch this game is to see what Cody
Pickett and Reggie Williams will do next. Since the Bruins have such a
suffocating front seven, those two will hold the key to this game. It’s the
Huskies’ first road game in a while, so I think they’ll struggle a little
bit. But at least I know Washington can get into the endzone…I can’t say the
same about UCLA right now. I like Washington by 6.
Oregon State @ cal. The Beavers, keyed by their defense, got their grove
back last week against the Sun Devils. The Bears’ offensive line, fresh off a
masterful performance against U$C, has to do it again versus an emerging Beavers
defensive line. I like the Bears chances here, but I like Steven Jackson and
Dwight Wright even more. I like Oregon State by 8.
Last week (straight up): 2-2, (ATS): 3-1.
This year (straight up): 3-2, (ATS): 4-1.
Last year (straight up): 27-13.
Got a thought on this column or on Stanford sports? E-mail me at gocardinal@knbr.com!
The ones I like best will end up in next week’s E-Mailbag…
Troy Clardy is a reporter for the Stanford Cardinal Farm Report, which airs
Saturday mornings at 8:30 on Fox Sports Bay Area.
Are you fully subscribed to The Bootleg? If not, then you are
missing out on all the top Cardinal coverage we provide daily on our website, as
well as our full-length feature articles in our glossy magazine. Sign up today
for the biggest and best in Stanford sports coverage with TheBootleg.com
(sign-up)
and The Bootleg Magazine (sign-up)!