(11-09-2018 05:54 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  

(11-02-2018 01:09 AM)Stugray2 Wrote:  JDGaucho,

Why doesn't your beloved UCSB join the WAC and play all those non-California schools you so desperately want to play. You'll have your Seattle, your Grand Canyon and your New Mexico State.

You are seriously out of touch with your own alumni base.

Stugray, look at it this way: how did you feel when the Big Ten invited Maryland & Rutgers?? If you didn’t like it, guess what?? JDGaucho feels the same way about Cal State-Bakersfield & UCSD!! It’s because they dilute the quality of the league until they can get up to par, which can take awhile. Also, one state leagues are, in a way, kinda high-schoolish, IMO.

Incorrect POV. First I supported Rutgers and Maryland. It had nothing to do with dilution. Both bring huge amounts of HS talent into the B1G. There are always cellar dwellers. Some day Rutgers will get their act together, which will be frightening for everyone else given the instate talent of New Jersey. But for the next decade that seems unlikely.

JDGaucho lives in the very distant past and is out of touch with Californians today. We are a shockingly insular people. But with 40 million residents, over 12% of the entire American population we can be. Our rivalries, excepting say Washington and Oregon in the Pac-12 and Notre Dame for USC and Stanford, are all instate. Recruiting is not against other states but against other UC or CSU schools. Even though UCs recruit a different student/athlete than the CSU, they come from the same High Schools.The rivalries are built in. That is the way Californians see things.

JDGaucho's world is more than a generation past. Back when the Big West had football, was the 3rd leg on ESPN's Big Monday Basketball (Big East and Big Ten the early games) and UNLV was #1 in the nation. The Boise State and San Diego State flirtation with the Big East, and looking to park Olympics in the Big West whetted his desires.

But conferences have evolved, especially in the West, to become more similar institutions. These are proving far more stable than the hodgepodge athletics first conferences. Whether the WCC, MWC, P12, or Big Sky you see very similar schools. The Big West is no different.

The truth is JDGaucho wants his school to join a higher profile conference, to go back to the days when a 3.2 GPA student with an 1800 SAT could get into his school, not a 3.8 GPA 2100 SAT, when the campus was 80% White, not 45%. When UCSB had meaningful Basketball games against UNLV, Long Beach and New Mexico State. And the last thing he wants is another UC in the league to dilute even further the pool of UC eligible athletes who can play at a D1 level.

Were this the Midwest the strategy he'd back would be different. He'd push for his school to follow Valparaiso and Loyola Chicago into the MVC. But there is no such path here in the West. The MWC is a Football conference at FBS level. And in fact the problem is the conferences in the West have specialized into very defined niches. Niches that students and alumni are comfortable with. This makes JDGaucho a loner, even among UCSB alumni. He does not like the insular attitude of Californians who see college more like HS these days, rivals are across town, not across state lines.

I just call JDGaucho out for being out of touch with his own school and even the alumni of that school (save perhaps for some old dudes in their 60's and 70's who still are into '70s and 60's music).