Listen. Can we talk about the Pac-12 Networks? Now you, dear reader, like me, you love the Pac-12 Networks. You may have had another cable or satellite TV provider before the networks were announced and may have even been relatively pleased with the service they provided. But when push came to shove and these networks were live and showing exclusive Pac-12 football and basketball games, you went out of your way to dump your old provider and find a new one that offered you this network instead. There was no way in hell you were going to go through a season missing games simply because DirecTV or whoever your provider was couldn’t come to an agreement with the conference on carrying its programming. So you’ve been enjoying the hell out of it for the past three seasons, watching all the games you want to see from your favorite conference, including most recently, last week’s Arizona vs. Utah top-10 clash and last Saturday’s triple-header of conference games. So, for you and for me and other like-minded fans of the conference, this development has been nothing but good.

For Die-Hards, The Pac-12 Networks Have Been A Positive Development

The problem is that we’re not everybody. The most recent numbers I cared to look for showed DirecTV with 20.231 million subscribers in the United States at the end of the second quarter in 2014. As you may well know, DirecTV does not carry the Pac-12 Networks. Both sides carried on negotiations about the possibility of a deal, but many years later, there’s no sign of ever getting anywhere. And there are other cable providers with similar stances, which is why you get criticism of the conference when big games – like that Arizona/Utah game – are shown only on the Pac-12 Networks. Our own Shane Connolly fired a shot across the bow when he noted on the RTC Podcast last week that he was happy that the second Utah/Arizona match-up (on February 28) will be shown on a “real channel” (namely ESPN). Ouch. And, you know what? Those criticisms are fair. In this day and age of media saturation, not having access to a channel and its games is unacceptable.

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1. Thursday night the Pac-12 race got even tighter as California’s Justin Cobbs took advantage of Oregon’s 5’8” point guard Jonathan Loyd in the waning moments of their meeting, knocking down a game-winning jumper over the smaller man’s outstretched arms. As we head into the weekend, we’ve got three teams atop the conference with four losses while a pair of teams, including those Golden Bears, lurk just one game back in the loss column. The game itself wasn’t pretty, as Cobbs turned the ball over eight times, the teams combined to shoot 3-of-21 from deep and nobody on Oregon shot better than 50% from the field, but Cal continues to be the hottest team in the conference with six victories in its last seven games. As for Oregon, this current group of Ducks still remains winless in their careers against California.
2. In the wake of Washington State’s seventh straight conference loss on Wednesday night, the talk about whether head coach Ken Bone is the man for the job in Pullman for the long term has reached a fever pitch. The talk has been slowly bubbling up since way back before the season began as Reggie Moore got booted from the team and incoming transfer Brett Kingma ran afoul of the law, highlighting some off-the-court issues that have troubled Bone’s program for some time. But, as CougCenter pointed out a couple weeks back, if the university hopes to go a different way, they’ve got to figure out a way around Bone’s hefty contract, which promises the coach $2.55 million over the remaining three years. Given the amount of money the WSU athletic department already has tied up in paying current and former football coaches, that amount of money may be too much to bear at this point. And, as I pointed out back before the season, expectations in Pullman have to be realistic. The fact of the matter is that prior to this season, Bone had the second-highest winning percentage of any coach in school history who had coached at least 20 games. Unfortunately for him, however, the one guy ahead of him was his predecessor.
3. USC will take a crack at earning a season sweep of crosstown rival UCLA at the Galen Center on Sunday afternoon. And if they’re going to get it done, they’ll need to lean heavily on senior point guard Jio Fontan who, after dealing with ACL surgery last year and the heavy-handed offensive structure of former head coach Kevin O’Neill, is now thriving with more freedom under interim coach Bob Cantu and more confidence in a knee that gets stronger by the game.
4. One thing we haven’t talked a lot about here this season is the Player of the Year race in the Pac-12. No worries though, as Pachoops has got you covered on that mark. Adam Butler scouts the candidates out and narrows the race down to two guys: Arizona State’s Jahii Carson and Cal’s Allen Crabbe. I wanted to quibble (Carrick Felix anyone?) but in the end decided that yes, those are the two guys atop the leaderboard right now and somebody from the next pack back (some combination of Solomon Hill, Shabazz Muhammad, Spencer Dinwiddie and Felix) would have to go absolutely nuts for that to change. In my mind, however, Carson is the favorite, as he has been for at least a month; but as Cal has heated up, Crabbe has made a big time charge to the point where it is just about even money right now.
5. Lastly, in case you forgot, DirecTV has still not come to an agreement with the Pac-12 conference to carry the Pac-12 Networks. I’m sure all of you have done the right thing and dropped DirecTV like a hot potato, but apparently there are people out there sticking with the satellite television behemoth instead of watching tons of Pac-12 action this season. And, if you’re somehow still among that crowd, you’ve missed the 20 out of Arizona State’s 27 games this season that have aired on the Pac-12 Networks. Don’t hold your breath on a deal getting done any time soon as both sides appear entrenched in their positions.

From the moment it was first rumored, the relocation of the conference tournament to Las Vegas has created quite a buzz among Pac-12 basketball fans. Adam Butler (@pachoopsAB) of PacHoops will be here every week as he offers his unique perspective along our March to Vegas.

Were you to Google the name Larry Scott, you’d find numerous results – and a quick bio of the 1960s body builder. This naturally makes sense as Larry Scott the athletic administrator has been doing some heavy lifting on behalf of fans of his conference. It began with aspirations of a 16-team mega-conference that never came to be. Whether you’re for, against, or ready to just hand realignment over to Bane, Scott’s foresight was such that he got what he wanted: $20-plus million annually for each of his teams. And from where did he garner that payday? The Pac-12 Networks. This is the centerpiece of realignment and, again, whatever your stance on the subject is, the net result is exposure.

With Larry Scott Leading The Way, The Pac-12 Landed A Television Contract Approaching $3 Billion Over 12 Years

Based on surface research and anecdotal evidence, approximately two-to-three basketball games were blacked out each week last season. Before The Networks, I’ve watched experienced my beloved Wildcats in each of the following manners:

• Outside of Arizona Stadium for an untelevised football game
• Via radio broadcast in my apartment, just me and my buddy Johnny Black
• On headphones in a Starbucks via the Idaho State radio broadcast

We don’t have to do that anymore. It’s been about four full months of Comcast Bay Area channel 823 and on such I’ve seen Sendek’s speedsters, Albany knock off Washington, UCLA squeak past in-state opposition, and Tad’s third season develop. It’s 2013 and the monopolization of broadcast television is swiftly dissolving. If I had the net savvy of the average Silicon Valley-ian (I live in the Bay Area) I’d be all over things like Hulu and its ilk. Alas, my 10,000 hours were dedicated to a fruitless baseball career so I need things like Larry Scott putting every game I’d like to see in my lap.

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1. It’s roughly 16 months away, but when is discussing the tropical paradise of Maui a bad thing?  The Maui Invitational released its roster of invited teams for its November 2012 island tournament, and one of its attendees, Butler, is still basking in the glow of a report stating its last two NCAA Tournament championship game runs were worth over a billion dollars in media publicity.  Well, the publicity train continues to roll, as Brad Stevens’ Bulldogs will join North Carolina, Illinois, Marquette, Mississippi State, Southern California, Texas, and host Chaminade in what promises to be another strong field.  It’s difficult to project any team two seasons out these days, but you can more than likely expect that, at a minimum, UNC, Butler, Texas and Marquette will all have strong squads in 2012.
2. Get ready to see a whole lot more Pac-12 hoops on your television no matter where you live.  Starting about a year from now, the Pac-12 Networks will launch seven new channels for its fans, starting with a national network (presumably similar in scope to the Big Ten Network) but also with six regional networks featuring the six geographic areas where two schools are located (Washington, Oregon, NorCal, SoCal, Arizona, Mountain).  The national network will be available on the digital sports tiers outside of the local markets, which means that if you get the Fox Regionals, you’ll probably get the Pac-12 Network.  The networks will show roughly 35 football games and 100 basketball games each season in addition to the games already picked up by ESPN as part of its new $3B, 12-year deal.  Commissioner Larry Scott has crafted some innovative, forward-thinking deals to get his conference more notoriety; now he just needs to ensure that the product is something that people will want to see.
3. Last season the NCAA Tournament debuted its “First Four” games, and Brad Brownell’s Clemson Tigers was one of the participants.  After defeating UAB in Dayton in the late game on Tuesday night, his team had to fly to St. Petersburg, Florida, to get to its Second Round game against West Virginia on Friday afternoon where they lost a close one down the stretch.  His primary beef is in having to play in an early afternoon slot on Friday after traveling all night after the Tigers’ first game, and it makes sense.  A few extra hours to recuperate that afternoon could have gone a long way in terms of tired and travel-weary legs, and after all, what’s the harm?  We know that CBS/Turner has heavy involvement in the selection of game tip times, but it shouldn’t be all that unreasonable to slot four teams into the sixteen late games on Thursday and Friday nights — the ratings will be fine regardless.
4. We’re quite certain that if UCLA head coach Ben Howland could get a do-over on his 2008 recruiting class that was rated #1 in the nation, he’d take it in a heartbeat.  Jrue Holiday had one lackluster season before he was 1-and-done; Drew Gordon fell out with Howland and eventually transferred to New Mexico; J’mison Morgan never produced and landed at Baylor; Malcolm Lee played three semi-effective seasons before bailing to the NBA Draft without a guarantee.  That left Jerime Anderson as the lone survivor going into his senior season in Westwood.  A role player in the backcourt who similarly never lived up to his prep on-court hype, he was recently arrested on campus for stealing another student’s Macbook Pro.  A tracking device within the computer led police to Anderson, who was immediately suspended from the team and will miss at least the Bruins’ opener against Loyola Marymount on November 11.  If this allegation turns out to be true, we wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the final nail in the coffin of the illustrious UCLA Class of 2008.  Wow.
5. This is one of those things that is so disheartening that you sometimes stop to wonder why you bother even to get up in the morning.  Earlier this week former Kentucky guard Desmond Allison was murdered in Columbus, Ohio, in an incident so completely senseless and illogical that it strains credulity.  According to the Columbus Dispatch, friends of Allison reported that the dispute that may have led to his murder involved a baseball cap that he was wearing while talking on the phone.   You read that correctly.  A baseball cap.  Reportedly, an ex-girlfriend of Allison’s removed the cap from Allison’s head which led to an argument between that woman and Allison’s current girlfriend.  Allison got involved in the dispute involving the cap, but soon walked away.  A bit later, three men (still unidentified) approached Allison when one of them (possibly a relative of one of the two women) began arguing with him and soon thereafter, shooting.  Allison died at a local hospital later that evening.  It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it?