“All very eloquent. But here is what Stanford and Cal administrators aren’t saying: They could have avoided this situation by caring less about the overall financial windfall during last year’s expansion/television negotiations.”

“The Big Ten, for example, has faced a similar realignment. Michigan and Ohio State were even put in separate divisions of the revised league. But both schools demanded that their annual November matchup be declared a ‘protected crossover’ game that would always be the final regular season game. The Big Ten assented.”

“Stanford and Cal could have firmly made the same demand — although it likely would have cost the conference some major revenue because UCLA-USC and Oregon-Oregon State would have surely made similar stipulations. But the television people were offering huge money and wanted as much flexibility as possible. Or else the money would be less huge. Guess what the decision was?”

“Hope the Stanford and Cal presidents are proud and happy. They lost a wonderful tradition. But they gain ‘national clearance’ and fuller bank accounts. The pleasure becomes more guilty. Every year.”

Here’s the whole article if you want to read it, which is quite good and discusses some of the other problems which the new Pac-12 and its TV contract has caused.

http://www.marinij.com/ci_19677681

What I would like someone to answer is this — other than the TV contract that was signed, why couldn’t Pac-12 teams have committed to play their traditional rivals 20, 30, or even 50 years in advance on specific days during the year and then leave it for the future to schedule the remainder of their games.

If this were done, then maybe it would make it more difficult for Stanford to play Notre Dame every other year (or every other year, I forget which) and USC to play Notre Dame every year. But if you asked Stanford fans if they would be willing to give up playing Notre Dame to assure that they could play Cal every year the last week of the season, I think they would overwhelming choose to the latter. I also think USC would prefer to lock in UCLA as the last game of the year even if it meant hurting their yearly rivalry with Notre Dame, though that might be a closer call, given USC’s domination of UCLA in recent years and its closer match-ups with Notre Dame, a game which has a colorful history.

I’m looking forward to what other readers think of Mr. Purdy’s comments.

Moving forward, Scott needs to not let Furd and SC lock those games in, otherwise the P12 is appeasing those 2 teams for out of conferences games of little importance (trust me, most SC fans couldn’t care lessa about ND), while also bending over for Notre Lame. Further, I think all the tirades against Scott are bunk, he’s the exact opposite of Hansen (who did nothing), and everything will work out. I willing to bet that in 2013, the Big Game will be back in November.

I agree with you that Stanford playing Notre Dame after Cal set the precedent for this, though I’m not sure it had anything to do with moving the Cal – Stanford game to October.

As far as I remember, and I’m in my sixties, the Texas – Oklahoma game is always played during the middle of the season, so that is not a precedent for moving the Cal – Stanford game, nomally played at the end of the season, to October.

I agree with you will survive, but that is not the point. We can survive anything, as long as we play in the Pac 12 Conference. We could survive not playing USC and UCLA, too, but fortunately that has not come to pass, YET. The question is whether we should have to survive this. I don’t think so, especially when it has not been explained as to why this has to happen.

I am looking forward to reading the story of how this came about to happen from some writer up to the task. I don’t think that Faraudo is up to it, as I doubt it’s his thing — Jon Wilner may have to do it. He seems to be more of a detail guy.

Assuming the Pac12 stays with 9 conference games, how are the furd going to incorporate ND and a Big10 game into their schedule? My guess is they don’t, and we’ll have the Big Game back where it belongs in the long term.

On the other hand, Texas-Oklahoma is a great rivalry, and they play in October. We will survive. F___ Stanfurd, and F___ Larry Scott.