Official realignment thread - SEC formally invites OU and Texas to join the conference in 2025

[The Alabaster Yak]

I bet Chuck Klosterman cringes every time this diatribe gets trotted out. After all, he wrote it in 2003, in a world of pre-Trumpian politics, and Chuck is hardly on the side of the Glenn Becks and Ann Coulters of the world.

That's right, hating soccer is a passion of the ugly American right. With its hipster (i.e. intelligent) fanbase, its emphasis on nuance, and its appeal to all those damn foreigners. Do you really want to be on their side?

I love the "emphasis on nuance" argument from soccer fan as if that's anything other than a fancy way of excusing the mind numbingly boring pace of play

 

[NWD Buff]

Can someone, for the love of Ralphie, prune this soccer discussion from this thread?

I think soccer is incredibly boring because it is. It has nothing to do with politics, xenophobia or who I voted for...honestly, is there any opinion safe from the smug, self-appointed moral superiority of the PC crowd?

Sorry. I didn't even notice what thread this was in. I just saw the Klosterman article, and I reacted specifically to it. I sort of just assumed that we were in the soccer thread.

How did this veer to soccer anyway? I have gone back at least five pages, and I can't find the connection?

OK. Back to imposing my smug, self-appointed moral superiority in other threads.

 

[leftybuff]

Sorry. I didn't even notice what thread this was in. I just saw the Klosterman article, and I reacted specifically to it. I sort of just assumed that we were in the soccer thread.

How did this veer to soccer anyway? I have gone back at least five pages, and I can't find the connection?

OK. Back to imposing my smug, self-appointed moral superiority in other threads.

Ok, maybe I was a little harsh. I just am pretty enthused about the realignment stuff. I keep checking thinking there is going to be news and I get....soccer.

 

[PAHIBuff]

Sorry. I didn't even notice what thread this was in. I just saw the Klosterman article, and I reacted specifically to it. I sort of just assumed that we were in the soccer thread.

How did this veer to soccer anyway? I have gone back at least five pages, and I can't find the connection?

OK. Back to imposing my smug, self-appointed moral superiority in other threads.

Thread went from P5 upheavals to Effects of Same on CU to CU facilities to CU athletic fields to CU soccer to generic soccer. Voila. Not exactly a breathtaking Hegelian transformation but here we are. At least the general P5 stuff seems to have run its course.

Now can we just get back to analyzing the Wyoming vs Ball State matchup of Sept 18?

 

[UtahaluminTX]

While I came here for some insights into potential conference realignment etc. I walked away seeing generational conflict and discussion about the ever 'on the cusp of being popular' soccer. While initially disappointed by such, it just reinforces how much the PAC12 is just not the SEC. We are unable to focus on one thing only and support some state run 'institution of higher learning' that we never even attended - at a level of fanaticism that is their normal. Oh well, indeed we've better things we could be doing most every Saturday than tailgating and all that. And yeah, soccer will be big when 50,000 people show up in Lincoln ... in late November ... to watch a bad team lose yet again.

 

[PAC MAN]

I think realignment has run its course for the summer but you have that NCAA constitutional convention in November that could very well spark another around of realignment. I think the B1G will make the next realignment move armed with a new media rights deal. And the B1G has nine schools playing men's soccer by the way.

 

[Creebuzz]

While I came here for some insights into potential conference realignment etc. I walked away seeing generational conflict and discussion about the ever 'on the cusp of being popular' soccer. While initially disappointed by such, it just reinforces how much the PAC12 is just not the SEC. We are unable to focus on one thing only and support some state run 'institution of higher learning' that we never even attended - at a level of fanaticism that is their normal. Oh well, indeed we've better things we could be doing most every Saturday than tailgating and all that. And yeah, soccer will be big when 50,000 people show up in Lincoln ... in late November ... to watch a bad team lose yet again.

In fairness, the thread is 92 pages and was on point for 85 pages. The discussion has run out of steam because most of what needs to be said has been said. CU fans are realistic about what maneuvers CU can make, while also knowing that they are not a power broker in realignment (nor a bottom feeder like Utah).

 

[Not Sure]

Truth.

The realignment speculation has just about run its course. Until the next domino falls, there really isn’t much to discuss.

 

[dio]

While I came here for some insights into potential conference realignment etc. I walked away seeing generational conflict and discussion about the ever 'on the cusp of being popular' soccer. While initially disappointed by such, it just reinforces how much the PAC12 is just not the SEC. We are unable to focus on one thing only and support some state run 'institution of higher learning' that we never even attended - at a level of fanaticism that is their normal. Oh well, indeed we've better things we could be doing most every Saturday than tailgating and all that. And yeah, soccer will be big when 50,000 people show up in Lincoln ... in late November ... to watch a bad team lose yet again.

 

[SpacemanSpiff]

This excerpt from Chuck Klosterman's Sex Drugs and Coco Puffs seems appropriate both for the GenX and the Soccer components of this conversation. I highly recommend the entire article if you can find it.

I've spent the last fifteen years of my life railing against the game of soccer, an exercise that has been lauded as "the sport of the future" since 1977. Thankfully, that dystopia has never come. But people continue to tell me that soccer will soon become part of the fabric of this country, and that soccer will eventually be as popular as football, basketball, karate, pinball, smoking, glue sniffing, menstruation, animal cruelty, photocopying, and everything else that fuels the eroticized, hyperkinetic zeitgeist of Americana. After the U.S. placed eighth in the 2002 World Cup tournament, team forward Clint Mathis said, "If we can turn one more person who wasn't a soccer fan into a soccer fan, we've accomplished something." Apparently, that's all that matters to these idiots. They won't be satisfied until we're all systematically brainwashed into thinking soccer is cool and that placing eighth (and losing to Poland!) is somehow noble. However, I know this will never happen. Not really. Dumb bunnies like Clint Mathis will be wrong forever, and that might be the only thing saving us from ourselves...

Soccer unconsciously rewards the outcast, which is why so many adults are fooled into thinking their kids love it. The truth is that most children don't love soccer; they simply hate the alternatives more. For 60 percent of the adolescents in any fourth-grade classroom, sports are a humiliation waiting to happen. These are the kids who play baseball and strike out four times a game. These are the kids afraid to get fouled in basketball, because it only means they're now required to shoot two free throws, which equates to two air balls. Basketball games actually stop to annihilate them.

That is why soccer seems like such a respite from all that mortification; it's the one aerobic activity where nothingness is expected. Even at the highest levels, every soccer match seems to end 1-0 or 2-1. A normal eleven-year-old can play an entire season without placing toe to sphere and nobody would even notice, assuming he or she does a proper job of running about and avoiding major collisions.

Soccer fanatics love to tell you that soccer is the most popular game on earth and that it's played by 500 million people every day, as if that somehow proves its value. Actually, the opposite is true. Why should I care that every single citizen of Chile and Iran and Gibraltar thoughtlessly adores "football"? Do the people making this argument also assume Coca-Cola is ambrosia? Real sports aren't for everyone. And don't accuse me of being the Ugly American for degrading soccer. That has nothing to do with it. It's not xenophobic to hate soccer; it's socially reprehensible to support it. To say you love soccer is to say you believe in enforced equality more than you believe in the value of competition and the capacity of the human spirit. It should surprise no one that Benito Mussolini loved being photographed with Italian soccer stars during the 1930s; they were undoubtedly kindred spirits. I would sooner have my kid deal crystal meth than play soccer. Every time I pull up behind a Ford Aerostar with a "#1 Soccer Mom" bumper sticker, I feel like I'm marching in the wake of the Khmer Rouge.

That said, I don't feel my thoughts on soccer are radical. If push came to shove, I would be more than willing to compromise: It's not necessary to wholly outlaw soccer as a living entity. I concede that it has a right to exist. All I ask is that I never have to see it on television, that it's never played in public (or supported with public funding), and that nobody -- and I mean nobody -- ever utters the phrase "Soccer is the sport of the future" for the next forty thousand years.

I stopped reading after "eroticized, hyperkinetic zeitgeist" because I had to go register that name for my new band. But I'm pretty sure I agree with all of it. Thanks!

 

[somebody]

They don’t watch soccer. Is this hard to understand ?

Hard, no, impossible. I'm old and I don't watch soccer. When I die, soccer nets 0 viewers - no more, no less.

 

[hokiehead]

Hard, no, impossible. I'm old and I don't watch soccer. When I die, soccer nets 0 viewers - no more, no less.

That is true.

Also true that when you die, the population of tv viewers decreases by one person who never watches soccer.

From a ratings POV, your death has no effect on the numerator but does in the denominator.

 

[Not Sure]

Hard, no, impossible. I'm old and I don't watch soccer. When I die, soccer nets 0 viewers - no more, no less.

But the percentage of soccer viewers compared to viewers of other sports will increase.

And **** your all for sucking me in to this stupid soccer conversation. May you all die in a fire.

 

[Denver_sc]

I've really come around on this- I happen to like watching the occasional soccer game (match), and it's been a fun way to bond with my younger son. I also appreciate watching American football.

What I don't understand is why people have to denigrate either sport in order to lift up their preferred sport- all of you arguing on either side here are going to do exactly nothing to change the other sides' mind.

If you don't like soccer, that's ok. If you love soccer, that's also ok. It doesn't impact me at all, so my personal wish for you is that you do what truly brings you the most personal enjoyment.






Except if you're a boomer. **** all y'all.

 

[hokiehead]

I've really come around on this- I happen to like watching the occasional soccer game (match), and it's been a fun way to bond with my younger son. I also appreciate watching American football.

What I don't understand is why people have to denigrate either sport in order to lift up their preferred sport- all of you arguing on either side here are going to do exactly nothing to change the other sides' mind.

If you don't like soccer, that's ok. If you love soccer, that's also ok. It doesn't impact me at all, so my personal wish for you is that you do what truly brings you the most personal enjoyment.






Except if you're a boomer. **** all y'all.

There was a movement in my youth where soccer fans made t-shirts and bumper stickers attacking American football.

"Girls play volleyball
Men play football
Intelligent men play soccer"

I used to be part of the "denigrate soccer" crowd, mostly because I felt it was a fair "punch back".

 

[BuffsNYC]

There was a movement in my youth where soccer fans made t-shirts and bumper stickers attacking American football.

"Girls play volleyball
Men play football
Intelligent men play soccer"

I used to be part of the "denigrate soccer" crowd, mostly because I felt it was a fair "punch back".

I played soccer in junior high and high school. In fact, it was the only "organized" sport I played after elementary school. I picked it up when I lived in Germany for three years when my dad was stationed there.

It was always club teams in the spring and fall and we weren't well-funded. One year our uniform was t-shirts with iron-on numbers. We usually had decent players, though. A mixture of kids from military families who had picked the game up in Europe and Mexican-Americans (and Mexicans).

My senior year of high school, they made soccer a varsity sport. The ****ing uniforms came with a collared shirt, shorts, and socks! We practiced on a field next to the football practice field and one of the knuckle-dragging PE instructor/football coaches just lost his **** every time we kicked the ball onto their field. I mean literally called us f-a-g-g-o-t-s. Good times.

 

[Buff fanatic]

I hate Trump. I hate soccer. I like the Big 10.

 

[CUAviator]

Not surprisingly, making sure USC wants to stay in the league is Kliavkoff's priority:

With the future at stake, the Pac-12 must keep football powers USC, UW and Oregon happy

To secure enduring West Coast harmony, Kliavkoff must keep the most valuable, most desirable football schools, starting with USC and including UW and Oregon, happy.

www.seattletimes.com

Perfect, they will try so hard to keep USC that UCLA, Cal, and Stanford will stay so the B1G be like, “well then we want CU!”

 

[CUAviator]

If that’s the case, it’s the increase in interest in soccer among young people causing an increase in ratings, not the death of boomers. And probably it’s more likely immigrants from poorer countries where soccer is one of the only sports they can play that are really driving the supposed increase in popularity.

You are operating under the mistaken impression that every boomer dying will be replaced with a soccer fan and that is not the case. It literally does not work that way.

Also, I googled MLS ratings. The average MLS game gets 250-300 viewers per game. The Alabama spring game got over 547,000 viewers.

So while soccer might be getting more popular, Americans would literally still rather watch an elite football teams practice than a real soccer game.

As far as the generation x debate goes, they were raised by baby boomers. If your parents were from a generation that’s proudest achievement was a rock concert and who are responsible for the absurd 40 is the new 20, 60 is the new 30 idiocy, you’d probably be a little disaffected and weird too.

Can’t. Stop. Laughing.

 

[leftybuff]

There was a movement in my youth where soccer fans made t-shirts and bumper stickers attacking American football.

"Girls play volleyball
Men play football
Intelligent men play soccer"

I used to be part of the "denigrate soccer" crowd, mostly because I felt it was a fair "punch back".

You misspelled degenerate.

 

[FChairbanks]

While I came here for some insights into potential conference realignment etc. I walked away seeing generational conflict and discussion about the ever 'on the cusp of being popular' soccer. While initially disappointed by such, it just reinforces how much the PAC12 is just not the SEC. We are unable to focus on one thing only and support some state run 'institution of higher learning' that we never even attended - at a level of fanaticism that is their normal. Oh well, indeed we've better things we could be doing most every Saturday than tailgating and all that. And yeah, soccer will be big when 50,000 people show up in Lincoln ... in late November ... to watch a bad team lose yet again.

You're new here, right?

 

[UtahaluminTX]

You're new here, right?

I just check in once or thrice a season. Since we're 'rivals' and all. Really have appreciated the former Big 8, 12 etc viewpoint that y'all have. Utah viewpoint is still just very much glad to not be in the MWC, so you're a barometer of sorts for me on the PAC12... And as an added bonus, I hate Nebraska, Texas Austin and Bailer.

 

[Highlander]

I just check in once or thrice a season. Since we're 'rivals' and all. Really have appreciated the former Big 8, 12 etc viewpoint that y'all have. Utah viewpoint is still just very much glad to not be in the MWC, so you're a barometer of sorts for me on the PAC12... And as an added bonus, I hate ****braska, Texas Austin and Bailer.

1) Not rivals
2) CU has totally kicked the dog in terms of capitalizing the move to the Pac 12
3) Utah (in football) has done massively better (which is annoying, but still doesn't make us rivals)

In short, Utah is sort of like an annoying fly. It bothers me occasionally, but I don't recognize its existence most of time.

 

[FChairbanks]

I just check in once or thrice a season. Since we're 'rivals' and all. Really have appreciated the former Big 8, 12 etc viewpoint that y'all have. Utah viewpoint is still just very much glad to not be in the MWC, so you're a barometer of sorts for me on the PAC12... And as an added bonus, I hate ****braska, Texas Austin and Bailer.

You're good egg Noonan

I recommend you stay clear of the Politics and Religion forum...

 

[Buffnik]

As a generation we're pragmatic and reasonably resilient apparently. So yeah, sitting around for a year at home watching reruns of The Little Rascals felt oddly nostalgic.

Growing up with little supervision while the adults tried to keep us out of trouble by scaring us straight & make us patriotic rule followers by scaring us with nuclear war drills & after school specials like The Day After... well, it has a certain effect on a generation.

 

[Highlander]

2023 College Football Rankings - ESPN

Find the 2023 NCAAF rankings on ESPN, including the Coaches and AP poll for the top 25 NCAAF teams.

www.espn.com

The Coaches Poll is out.

In its current configuration, the SEC has 3 of the top 6.

With OU and UT, they have 7 of the top 20.

I have zero doubt that they understand their manipulation of the conversation to be SEC! SEC! SEC! being the #1 conference brand by far led to them subsequently manipulating the rights to OU and UT to joining the SEC.

I resisted switching to Fox Sports when I was pissed at ESPN a few years ago, because well, the Fox Sports website sucks and at the time, it was within the same company as Fox News. Since then, ESPN's free coverage has eroded massively. Their website is now the same "article about a tweet" and/or regurgitation of AP articles if you don't pay for premium access.

I need a new home. I just don't know what that is right now.

 

[The Alabaster Yak]

2023 College Football Rankings - ESPN

Find the 2023 NCAAF rankings on ESPN, including the Coaches and AP poll for the top 25 NCAAF teams.

www.espn.com

The Coaches Poll is out.

In its current configuration, the SEC has 3 of the top 6.

With OU and UT, they have 7 of the top 20.

I have zero doubt that they understand their manipulation of the conversation to be SEC! SEC! SEC! being the #1 conference brand by far led to them subsequently manipulating the rights to OU and UT to joining the SEC.

I resisted switching to Fox Sports when I was pissed at ESPN a few years ago, because well, the Fox Sports website sucks and at the time, it was within the same company as Fox News. Since then, ESPN's free coverage has eroded massively. Their website is now the same "article about a tweet" and/or regurgitation of AP articles if you don't pay for premium access.

I need a new home. I just don't know what that is right now.

What happens to their rankings when they all start playing and beating each other?

 

[hokiehead]

What happens to their rankings when they all start playing and beating each other?

Eventually, rankings become less meaningful and standings become more relevant?

 

[onealcd]

What happens to their rankings when they all start playing and beating each other?

SEC moves to a 5 game conference schedule

 

[Highlander]

What happens to their rankings when they all start playing and beating each other?

SEC moves to a 5 game conference schedule

1) They aren't moved down because "they lost to a high quality ranked team!"
2) This.