The Pac-10 and the eastern mafia
Richard Linde, 11 September 2007

The eastern mafia has been on the Pac 10 conference’s case ever since John Wooden made a mockery of the NCAA basketball championship back in the 60’s, kind of like Dennis Dixon’s two statue-of- liberty plays that mocked powerful Michigan and jolted the Big House last week with the force of a 7.0

Burn those two plays into TIVO, you west coast fans. I’m keeping them for the rest of the season, and I am a Washington fan, have been for years. Note that Oregon beat heavily favored Michigan 39-7.

Because of its misdirection, Dixon's trick play and nonchalance may well have resembled "Wee" Coyle and Gil Dobie's bunk play, the one they used against Oregon in 1911. (*)

All that bumbling blue blubber chasing Jonathan Stewart, while Dixon has the ball and waltzes into the end zone, champions the notion of taunting once again, so let’s bring back taunting in the face of eastern media bias. In other words, let’s kill the excessive celebration rule.

Back to reality: Even more galling than Dixon's run in the minds of the green-eyed mafia is that the Pac-10 has won more NCAA championships than any other conference.

If there were a real playoff system in football, it is logical to assume that the Pac-10 would be the national leader in the number of football championships won. Really, the national championship, as it has always been, is nothing but a mythical championship, which depends heavily on won/lost records during the season. The BCS formula is anathema to common sense, laughing at it from the bowels of six mysterious computers, whose programs and algorithms may need some independent auditing or, at the least, a drop kick in their hard disks.

Media negativity is all about trying to get an edge (in recruiting, refereeing and BCS voting) over the Pac-10, which has the strongest recruiting base of any other conference. The conference’s treasure-trove of athletes in California is appalling to the sports media.

How do other forms of bias work besides the constant drumbeat of negativity?

Focusing on one team more than the other during a telecast is a good example of bias. What does team A need to do to catch up? What does team A need to do to keep its lead? Forget team B. The most blatant example of that kind of bias occurred in the 1996 Rose Bowl when Northwestern, cast as a Cinderella team, played USC. The announcers totally focused their attention on Northwestern, which, fortunately, lost to USC, 41-32.

Counter that one with the oh-hum play? When Washington took an insurmountable lead against Syracuse this season, the ESPN announcers lost total interest in the game; ESPN even switched away to a baseball game for a period of time.

The other form of bias involves double standards. The media’s expectations for the Pac-10 are much higher than the ones they set for other conferences. Each Pac10  team must win each week against out-of-conference opponents, no exceptions allowed; otherwise, the Pac-10 is just a run of the mill football conference to them.

I thought that journalists were objective.

No one in the sports media is objective. Each one in the media has a soft spot in his heart for the team/conference/region he or she followed and rooted for in their formative years. They are sports nuts, like all of us. So, the more people west of Arizona hired by the media, the more west-coast prejudice you have. They've grown up to hate the Pac-10, just as we west-coast kids have grown up to love the conference. I was born and raised in Seattle and admit I am a Husky honk, even though I have lived in California for years and have taken graduate classes at UCLA.

Is there a conspiracy goin’ on? No, the truth of the matter is that there are more people living outside the four states that comprise the Pac-10 than living within them. The bad guys have a numbers' advantage.

This season when teams in the Pac-10 begin to beat each other up in their 9-game round-robin format look for the media to tag the conference with its usual canards: soft, pass-happy, can’t run the ball, can’t play defense, can’t play physical football, can’t referee…and the list goes on.

They all will be laughing at the Pac's self-inflicted wounds, while circuitously trying to weave their gobbledygook into a questionable reality.

Because of its strength, no team will go unbeaten in conference play this season, including USC.

LSU, out of the overrated SEC, is a lock to play in the BCS championship game – maybe even playing Wisconsin out of the soft Big Ten. How about them Badgers? Here we go again, the overrated Big Ten.

Certainly, USC won’t be playing in the big game, unless Joe McKnight morphs into Reggie Bush. You can take that to the bank.

USC stole McKnight from LSU, kind of a Lew Alcindor kind of thing back in the 60’s. Blame John Wooden back then, and, now, Pete Carroll for the latest run of unashamed bias.

Carroll uses Wooden’s formula for recruiting. Take the best out of California's  treasure-trove of athletes, and then cherry pick the rest of the country.

While the excessive celebration rule is in effect, at least we west-coast fans can do some taunting of our own and point out the hypocrisy of the eastern mafia. It’s only fair.

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(*) The story in our link is dedicated to the memory of William "Wee" Coyle, who played quarterback for Gil Dobie from 1908 until 1912. He is no longer frightened of his coach. It is said they have been seen walking across Denny Field on moonlit nights, arm-in-arm, always smiling, always laughing, always upbeat. "Run it for me, kid, just one more time. Come on, kid, just one more time, one more time for Gloomy Gil." It is said that Coyle tucks his leather helmet into his stomach and runs the Dobie-Bunk Play…over and over and over. Dobie can't get enough of it, never wanting it to end. As a cloud covers the moon, the mystical twosome slowly fades from view. There'll be another night to practice the bunk play--for it is a friendship made in heaven.