I just thought this was very interesting, and being unaware of the situation, I have come across articles going back at least a couple of years about this subject. Apparently the NCAA will now allow schools from Canada to participate in NCAA sports. The schools in question seem to be primarily in British Columbia, and UBC is a huge school. Now, they seem to be initially interested in D-II participation, but if they could grow their currently measly Canadian athletics budgets, D-I is not out of the question. And maybe the Pac would be interested in what have been described as top quality academic institutions? Here's the link to a story from earlier this year:

B.C. universities looking to join NCAA sports league

MWC will be calling very soon. It would open a new market to their footprint.

Unfortunately, (I think) the Canadian institutions of higher education don't put as much emphasis (and money) on the collegiate athletics as their U.S. counterparts. Otherwise the University of Toronto would be an athletic power in the east. The other problem is they play a funny style of football up there.

The Pac-10 will never expand because schools like Oregon State, Oregon, etc want to make sure they play USC and UCLA every year, and expansion would make that impossible. It also requires a unanimous vote.

The budgets are small in Canada, but that is the reason some schools there want to be in a US organization, to promote their schools and retain/acquire great athletes. The Pac seems perfect for such west coast institutions. Could the BE possibly find some future members to the north?

The better ? is would the MAC or big 10...First U of Toronto would need to join the mac, than after a few years, maybe they move up to the big 10 if they show progress. As for pac 10 expansion, i think it only happens if the big 10 goes to 12, if at all. If the big 10 picks off missouri, than colorado if ripe for picking by the pac 10...which might lead to texas or more reasonable utah being team 12. If the big 10 goes east for its team 12, than i think the pac 10 is reduced to the byu/utah option if they ever want to go to 12, i wouldn't rule it out but it probably doesn't happen.

texasorange Wrote:The other problem is they play a funny style of football up there.

Canadian football is a better game, and this is coming from a lifelong Packers fan who was born in Wisconsin and had season tickets. Its a more exciting brand of football. Speed is much bigger part of the game. Size is minimized, because of the wider field. Now, the NFL has significantly more talent than the CFL (however, the talent gap isn't as large as many believe). But, if you watch a lot of CFL games, the American game tends to be a bit slow. The NFL has improved since 70s when more teams ran 2 dive plays into the line and tried to throw a pass on third down. However, the league could learn a few more things from the CFL. Three downs, the wider field, the no fair catches, the deeper endzones, all make the game more fun for the fan to watch.

Interesting in theory, but we're forgetting the obvious here: expansion is largely about getting significantly larger TV contracts with the major networks in US - the TV market in Canada for college sports, particularly football, is non-existent. The addition of a Canadian team to any conference would do nothing to add to the ABC/CBS/ESPN/own conference network contracts while providing tepid coverage in Canada at best. Heck, D-1 hockey teams in the U.S. schedule major Canadian college teams such of the University of Toronto as warm-up exhibition games and that's the one sport that Canadians actually care about, so the thought that any US conference (much less a BCS conference like the Pac-10 or Big Ten) would add Canadian schools for football, of all sports, is just not going to happen.

Not trying to hate on Canadian athletics at all. But the only sport that I see Canada winning a title in is Hockey. I just don't see the talent pool there for Football and Basketball or even Baseball for that matter. Lacross could be another sport where they can be a little competive.

Forget about the University of Toronto. They haven't won a football game since 2001: Linky. Western Ontario is actually one of the better football programs in Canada and they got only 5,000 people to show up for that game. That should give you an idea of how big college sports are in Canada.


From what I've read the University of British Columbia doesn't want to play football in the NCAA. They're never going to get into the Pac-10 that way.

It sounds like their best move is the GNAC: Linky. They don't have to play football but they can play D-I hockey.