Warren Grimes
With conference realignment foremost on our minds, it is
appropriate to ask what will befall the non-football programs – programs that are central to Stanford regularly winning the Directors Cup and supplying the
Olympics with gifted athletes. A focus
on football money streams is, unfortunately, unlikely to adequately address the
interests of non-football programs and their student athletes.
Stanford’s realignment has yet to be resolved, but most
possible outcomes will raise concerns for Stanford Women’s Basketball as well
as 30 plus other non-football programs, including men’s basketball, baseball,
softball, women’s volleyball, and men’s and women’s soccer, tennis, swimming,
gymnastics, and track and field. Realignments
may force time-consuming and expensive travel and the loss of traditional
rivalries that motivate fans and players.
Dismantling the Pac-12 conference will make it difficult to
preserve regular contests with traditional opponents. Stanford has decades of storied contests with
the three other California-based Pac-12 members: California, UCLA, and
USC. And four other Pacific Coast schools
(each a member of the old Pac-8) are regular rivals (Oregon, OSU, Washington,
and WSU).
Why is it important to maintain these traditional
rivalries?
Well, for one, the fans and the players value these
rivalries. Historical ties make for
sharper focus and more intense competition.
The regional rivalries also make economic and environmental sense. Why spend the time and money on long-distance
cross-county treks when the competition is as good or better close to
home. Finally, there is the recruitment
value of playing in a region where Stanford finds most of its recruits.
To be sure, Stanford recruits nationally and
internationally. For WBB, all three of
our incoming freshman recruits are non-West Coast people. Two others on the roster are from Greece. That said, seven of the team’s upperclassmen
are West Coast people – one from Oregon and six from California. This season’s starting line up could well be
made up solely of Pacific Coast players (Brink from Oregon and Iriafen,
Demetre, Lepolo and Jump from California).
There is an advantage in recruiting players who feel at home
on the West Coast. Was it an accident
that all three players who transferred out of the program last year were
non-West Coasters? I can’t answer that,
but it’s simply good advertising to have Stanford perform in areas where most potential
recruits live. Southern California has
long been a key recruiting ground for Stanford WBB.
Football and men’s basketball provide most of the revenues
for college athletics, but the bulk of an athletic department’s personnel are
involved in non-football sports. These coaches
and staff are not just potted plants. For
any given sport, coaches have close ties to others in their sport, especially their in-conference colleagues. These
non-football coaches, while acknowledging the need for football generated
revenues, will push for what is best for their sport and their program. One might expect that they will push in the
direction of freeing their sport from the ties of football conferences. Failing that, if a conference schedule requires
long and expensive journeys to faraway places, they will push to lighten the
conference schedule, broadening their discretion to schedule nearby
rivals. These coaches and administrators
already have substantial control over scheduling non-conference contests.
What’s good for Stanford is also good for our rival
schools. UCLA and USC, for example,
doubtless see advantage in maintaining a non-football sport rivalry with
Stanford, including the relatively short one-hour flight from Los Angeles to
the Bay Area. It is likely that every school
leaving the Pac-12 will share Stanford’s interest in maintaining regularly
scheduled contests among Pac-12 rivals.
Taking one additional step, it may be in the non-football
programs’ interest to formalize these rivalries in a way that can ensure their long-term
survival. Schools in different conferences could still
agree to regularly schedule games with one another. For example, UCLA and USC could still agree
to play one women’s BB game against Stanford each year, alternating home and
away. More broadly, an agreement between
women’s BB programs could keep all the original Pac-8 schools on a once-a-year
contest schedule. Assuming Stanford was
in a different conference from each of the other seven schools, this would mean
7 non-conference games each year, each against a traditional rival and each
involving relatively manageable travel (If Cal, OSU, and WSU end up in the same
conference with Stanford, that will mean only four non-conference games).
This kind of agreement would preserve longstanding
relationships among the schools and their coaches. The agreements should be sport specific. Baseball or women’s soccer, for example,
would have to work out scheduling arrangements suitable for their sport.
Stanford could take the lead in proposing such agreements,
which arguably are in the interests of all the Pac-8 schools (and could even be
broadened to include all schools currently in the Pac 12). Cooperation among the Pac-12 coaches and
administrators in non-football sports, in the longer term, could pave the way
for separating football and non-football conferences. There is precedent for that separation. Stanford sports such as men’s volleyball,
soccer, and water polo are part of conferences that have participants not conforming with Pac-12 membership.
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