With the smoke clearing from the ransacking of the Pac-12 Conference, four different weekend conversations with college administrators came back to the same place: a mingled bewilderment and indignation at the status of Stanford and California. Can two elite academic institutions and all-sports titans, located in a populous and affluent area, really be kicked to the Power Five curb?
As of today, the answer is yes. We’ll see about tomorrow. Regardless, there are no convenient solutions for the two Bay Area universities.
“We must find a home for Stanford and Cal,” one prominent administrator with no ties to either school tells SI. “This is shameful.”
Says another: “My respect for what they achieve is off the charts. Cannot imagine them without a legit home.”
In a world where TV revenue guides every decision and football steers all TV revenue discussions, Stanford and California are not near the top of the viewership food chain. They’re also not at the bottom, with one compilation of 2022 football viewership data listing Cal as the 45th most-watched program in the nation and Stanford 47th. That still ranked ahead of 16 Power Five conference teams (20 if you count the 2023 Big 12 newcomers).
“Our system is about tribalism—how big is the tribe you bring to the stadium and to watch on TV?” observed a fifth administrator, more dispassionate than others about the plight of the Bay Area schools. “They don’t have very big tribes.”
But here is the looming downside to downsizing Stanford and Cal: the impact on the American Olympic movement. These are two of the most vital feeder schools for Team USA.
Does that matter to Mr. and Mrs. America? Seemingly so. Outside of the almighty NFL, the biggest tribe in American sports convenes for the Olympics. Average viewership for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021 was 15.6 million per night. That’s like having an Ohio State-Michigan football game for 17 straight nights—and the ratings from Tokyo were far lower than most Summer Games.
Now consider that 32 American Olympians in Tokyo were current or former Stanford students. Sixteen were current or former Cal students. Both schools produced many other Tokyo Olympians who competed for other countries.
Those participation numbers are a continuation of historic trends. A 2017 study by the painstaking researchers at OlympStats.com says Stanford had produced more American Olympians than any other university to that time with 289—a distinction that almost assuredly holds true through Tokyo and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. UCLA was second with 277, USC third with 251 and Cal fourth with 212.
Some of the Cal and Stanford Olympians are obscure. And some of them are named Alex Morgan, Collin Morikawa, Holly McPeak, Helen Wills, Ryan Murphy, Nathan Adrian, Matt Biondi, Natalie Coughlin, Missy Franklin, Anthony Ervin and Mary T. Meagher (Cal). Some are named Katie Ledecky, Bob Mathias, Julie Foudy, Jennifer Azzi, Simone Manuel, Kerri Walsh Jennings, Maggie Steffens, Jessica Mendoza, Summer Sanders, Jenny Thompson, Janet Evans and Pablo Morales (Stanford).
As College Sports Inc., is kneecapping the athletic departments at Stanford and Cal in one fell swoop, it likely is heavily damaging two of the primary American Olympic farm systems. Maybe that will resonate with someone.
Academics clearly do not, regardless of the public pronouncements of the craven university presidents who then roll over for football revenue. Among Power Five universities, Stanford is the highest-rated in both the U.S. News & World Report national rankings and those of the Center for World University Rankings, which are more research-based. Cal is tied for sixth in the former and second in the latter, higher than any other public university.
Darren Yamashita/USA TODAY Sports
Living in a world where Oregon and Washington are more highly valued conference members/expansion targets leaves the Bay Area schools in quite a predicament. The options for surviving it are slim, and largely unappealing. A look at five of them:
- Join the Mountain West Conference.
What might work for Oregon State and Washington State doesn’t necessarily work for Cal and Stanford. This would be a geographic fit but a massive step down in terms of all-sports competition and total revenue.
Stanford and/or Cal would be joining relative peers in terms of their current football and men’s basketball standing, but would be far better than every other MWC school in almost every Olympic sport. The academic profiles would be disparate as well.
- Make a pitch to the Atlantic Coast Conference.
This would be the best move in terms of academic alignment and Olympic sports prowess. But it’s an even worse fit than the Pac-12 schools joining the Big Ten geographically. If it’s an unjustifiable athlete burden for USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington to be trudging off to play six schools in the Central time zone and eight in the Eastern time zone, then it would make no sense for Cal and Stanford to join a league that is entirely operated on Eastern time.
Also, there is no offer to join at this point. Cal and Stanford are more likely to dilute profit than enhance it, unless the adding of members would open the ESPN vault for a media-rights renegotiation. While the ACC has studied potential partnerships with the once-robust Pac-12, an agreement of some kind to work with just Cal and Stanford might not be something that conference’s members are interested in.
- Going independent in football and joining a league in other sports.
Where this would lead, who knows. Notre Dame has pulled it off thanks to a massive national following and its own TV deal. BYU survived it before jumping to the Big 12, also aided by a national audience and BYUtv. They both also put big crowds in their home stadiums and draw well on the road—Cal and Stanford, not so much of late. Scheduling would be a major challenge.
In terms of non-football sports, the West Coast Conference would be geographic fit that also offers universities of similar profile—at least to Stanford. They’re all private schools with relatively small enrollments. But they would provide no competition beyond basketball. Most of the Stanford and Cal Olympic sports would be wasting their time playing a full WCC schedule.
- De-emphasize football and focus on everything else.
This would be something of an Ivy League approach, dropping to FCS in football while maintaining quality programs in other sports. (As with a potential WCC move, it would probably appeal more to Stanford than to Cal.) But actually joining the Ivy League would be an even bigger geographic stretch than anything else, with none of the potential revenue advantages.
- Find a unique source of revenue beyond evaporating TV money.
A few Hail Marys, which probably would fall incomplete: Ask the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee to step up and help fund the sports in which Cal and Stanford regularly supply American Olympians (which doesn’t help football); find your own T. Boone Pickens alumni rainmaker; and, in Stanford’s case, beg for a tiny slice of that massive endowment.
About 75 percent of Stanford’s $36.3 billion endowment (not a misprint) is restricted by donors for a specific purpose. If athletics could get its hands on even a small annual share of the other 25 percent for department funding, it might be able to make ends meet while still competing at a high level.
Again, unlikely. Because the athletic tail never wags the dog at Cal and Stanford, no matter how successful they’ve been in many areas (including football within this century). The current college sports market abhors the intrusion of academic perspective, and they have a lot of that in the Bay Area.
But the one thing that could be lost—or at least greatly diminished—if Cal and Stanford are cast out of the power circle is their role as vital American Olympic feeder schools. When the impact of the latest money grab in college sports impacts the medal table, maybe the nation will care.
