Not to gravitate your attention away from all things Dawgs right now, but considering there has been some attention given recently here on the board to USC's plight as an athletic entity, I thought I'd post an article from June 4, 2019, that resonates very profoundly.
Did you know.....the legendary Trojans coach, John McKay, actually wanted to leave the then Pac-8 conference and go independent? He sure did! I remember it. Why? Because USC was getting screwed over every year by the conference. How does this relate to today?
I've copied/pasted an article written by Dan Weber here...it hits the nail on the head, explains a lot of things from way back in those days, and why John McKay's words and desires really do ring true for today.
USC & UCLA leaving the Pac-12? The conference actually losing Los Angeles as a market? Read on...it's long, but it's an enjoyable and a very interesting read (if you're curious about what's going on @USC). Note that the money dollars mentioned back in those days were just a pittance compared to today.
We Trojans old-timers sure do miss McKay and wish we had him or someone like him to run the program today....one of college football's greatest coaches (he and Dooley were good friends, btw). Again, this is rather long (forgive me).
********
He was a man of many words -- smart, insightful and bitingly funny sayings we all remember. John McKay could do more than coach football.
He could talk it. Which is why we remember the tough and smart, even self-deprecating, words from the son of a West Virginia coal miner turned Hall of Fame college football coach almost as much as for what he did in winning four national championships with his USC Trojans.
"It's not about the Xs and O's," he famously said, downplaying his own coaching, "it's about the Jimmy's and Joe's." You'd better have the players, he knew. Try coaching without them.
And sure, OJ Simpson could be asked to carry the ball 45 to 50 times a game if need be, he'd reassure questioners. After all, "It's not heavy," he would say of the football with a laugh knowing he'd said something no one could refute.
But John McKay was more than just a Hall of Fame coach. He eventually became USC's athletics director. And continued to say the same kinds of tough, insightful -- and very much unafraid -- things.
Like this LA Times story when he declared how "It's economic stupidity for us to stay in the conference under its present format," that Trojan fan Jon Lieberg of Temecula handed us this past weekend at the State of Troy event. The story was headlined: "McKay urges USC to quit the Pac-8."
This was in the years before the conference expanded to include the two Arizona schools in 1978 and then Colorado and Utah in 2011. And while the numbers have changed, in terms of the schools and the dollars they're playing for, the fundamental issues remain the same.
Or maybe they're getting worse as 11-time national champion USC, with the rest of the Pac-12, falls farther and farther behind college football's big boys capable of winning it all.
We say that knowing how the Big Ten, whose members will each be getting more than $50 million a year from their various TV deals, and the SEC, which distributes more than $44 million per school, are ahead of the game now with no prospects of the Pac-12 catching them.
No, what pushes us into the John McKay place was the news last weekend that the Big 12, with teams in towns like Lubbock, Tex.; Ames, Iowa; Lawrence and Manhattan, Kan.; Norman and Stillwater, Okla.; and Morgantown, W. Va.; will be distributing more than $40 million each to its 10 programs.
And doing so without a TV network and with no championship game until last year. And even more so, doing that while allowing teams to keep all their Tier 3 local TV and radio money which for schools like Texas means another $15 million, for Oklahoma another $10 million and even for an Iowa State, some $7 million to $8 million.
In the Big 12, if you want one of your schools' soccer games on TV, you televise it yourself. You don't need an independent "network" to do that like the Pac-12 says it does. No one watches those games. Nor does it generate significant revenue. Nor would you need your commissioner's salary to be doubled up because he's a TV mogul in addition to running the conference.
Nor would you need to buy back all your local media rights, something that's still costing UCLA more than a million dollars a year. After 47 years, USC finds itself in pretty much the same place it was when McKay pointed out how the Pac-8 was doing more harm than good for USC. Only without Trojans teams winning two national championships as it did in three seasons in 1972 and 1974.
USC was "being robbed of a lot of money" by the Pac-8's round-robin schedule causing them to play every other year at the smaller stadiums in the Northwest like Oregon State, Oregon and Washington State, McKay said, where "we lose a fortune." McKay was clearly worried then about the financial impact of recently passed Title IX requiring women's sports to be added to each school's programs.
Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott was just eight-years-old when McKay was voicing his opinion about what he thought USC's response to a conference holding the Trojans back. One can only guess what McKay would have said if he'd have ever learned that a future Pac-12 commissioner would one day be paid $5.1 million a year when his Rose Bowl teams took home barely $300,000 from the legendary New Year's game.
No question McKay had a right to voice his concerns. His Trojans had been working hard to win four titles in 13 seasons.
McKay pointed out how the requirement that every school in the conference share every gate 50-50 was just plain unfair to USC, as was the equal-share distribution in the Rose Bowl, where more often than not, it was USC playing there.
"The Rose Bowl is good for our conference," McKay said, "but we need more money than we're getting." But doesn't USC get money from the other schools? McKay was asked.
And in a perfectly McKay way, he responded: "We prefer not to take UCLA's or Stanford's money, we'd prefer to keep ours."
As an example, USC had cleared just $164,000 from its most recent Rose Bowl appearance, McKay said, while that same year, Notre Dame made $630,000 from the Orange Bowl.
"Believe me, I don't disagree with dividing money in the Pac-8," he said, "but it makes more sense for us to become an independent so a much larger share of the money can be ours."
As an example, USC had cleared just $164,000 from its most recent Rose Bowl appearance, McKay said, while that same year, Notre Dame made $630,000 from the Orange Bowl.
"Believe me, I don't disagree with dividing money in the Pac-8," he said, "but it makes more sense for us to become an independent so a much larger share of the money can be ours."
One can only imagine what McKay's reaction would be to the current state of affairs in the conference where every other season, USC gets to play just four home conference games to five on the road. "The league is all wrong population wise," he said, "it's too heavy in the south -- in California."
McKay gave one example of how in three games (1968, 1970 and 1972), USC's trips to Oregon produced $34,000, $39,000 and $37,000 -- a total of $110,000) for the Trojans while Oregon, in just one trip in 1971 to the Coliseum, took away $95,000.
So here was McKay's alternate solution to keep USC in the Pac-8. The Northwest schools would be required to play three games in LA for every one USC returned.
Luckily for the conference, McKay stayed at USC just through 1975 before departing for Tampa Bay and the significantlly more money the NFL offered. And while the problems might not be exclusively with the Northwest schools, maybe no more than a poorly led Trojans program can USC get itself back in the national championship run as part of a woefully underperforming Pac-12.
Financially, probably not. Sharing equally with Oregon State the little money the Pac-12 offers makes no sense.
Competitively, USC must approach the Pac-12 the way Pete Carroll & Co. did. The Pac-12 was the place you have to dominate and then use that as a jumping off point to national titles. Run the table in the Pac-12 and get into the College Football Playoffs almost every year, as Pete would have done in a four-team playoff, and you have a chance.
Then you make it clear what the Pac-12 has to do to keep you. Or you cut a deal with the Big 12. Think the Big 12 wouldn't be interested in adding USC and UCLA to actually get to a 12-team league?
Or does USC try for the same deal with the Pac-12 that Notre Dame has with the Atlantic Coast Conference -- full membership in all other sports with a half-schedule and half-share of conference revenues in football while keeping an independent deal with NBC?
Think the Pac-12 might be willing to change the way it does business if LA were about to be no more a part of the conference's footprint?
But none of what McKay would surely be recommending for USC right now happens unless USC gets its act in order on the field as McKay did.
Then someone would have to speak up for USC -- and maybe UCLA -- to let the rest of the Pac-12 know that they're on the way to becoming the Mountain West II if they don't come around and lean LA's way on things like the schedule, revenue-sharing, even the Pac-12 Networks' silly choice to studio up on San Francisco's Embarcadero.
McKay noted one simple way he'd like to see this go: "They take all the money when they play at home, we keep all the money when we play at home," that would have to translate into much more than gate revenues now. TV, as it was beginning to back then, means more than anything.
As McKay noted about the Notre Dame game at the Coliseum in 1972 that after USC's 45-23 win over the 10th-ranked Irish that led to a national championship, Notre Dame walked away with $426,000 to USC's $319,000 including $203,000 from TV revenue to USC's $96,000 after splitting it with the other seven conference schools.
"We lost $107,000 in TV money in one day by being in the Pac-8," McKay said. Notre Dame "had a better day than Anthony Davis did (in 1972) with his six touchdowns."
And as a semi-independent in control of its own fortunes, Notre Dame continues to have better days.
John McKay, as he so often did, called it.
***********
Did you know.....the legendary Trojans coach, John McKay, actually wanted to leave the then Pac-8 conference and go independent? He sure did! I remember it. Why? Because USC was getting screwed over every year by the conference. How does this relate to today?
I've copied/pasted an article written by Dan Weber here...it hits the nail on the head, explains a lot of things from way back in those days, and why John McKay's words and desires really do ring true for today.
USC & UCLA leaving the Pac-12? The conference actually losing Los Angeles as a market? Read on...it's long, but it's an enjoyable and a very interesting read (if you're curious about what's going on @USC). Note that the money dollars mentioned back in those days were just a pittance compared to today.
We Trojans old-timers sure do miss McKay and wish we had him or someone like him to run the program today....one of college football's greatest coaches (he and Dooley were good friends, btw). Again, this is rather long (forgive me).
********
He was a man of many words -- smart, insightful and bitingly funny sayings we all remember. John McKay could do more than coach football.
He could talk it. Which is why we remember the tough and smart, even self-deprecating, words from the son of a West Virginia coal miner turned Hall of Fame college football coach almost as much as for what he did in winning four national championships with his USC Trojans.
"It's not about the Xs and O's," he famously said, downplaying his own coaching, "it's about the Jimmy's and Joe's." You'd better have the players, he knew. Try coaching without them.
And sure, OJ Simpson could be asked to carry the ball 45 to 50 times a game if need be, he'd reassure questioners. After all, "It's not heavy," he would say of the football with a laugh knowing he'd said something no one could refute.
But John McKay was more than just a Hall of Fame coach. He eventually became USC's athletics director. And continued to say the same kinds of tough, insightful -- and very much unafraid -- things.
Like this LA Times story when he declared how "It's economic stupidity for us to stay in the conference under its present format," that Trojan fan Jon Lieberg of Temecula handed us this past weekend at the State of Troy event. The story was headlined: "McKay urges USC to quit the Pac-8."
This was in the years before the conference expanded to include the two Arizona schools in 1978 and then Colorado and Utah in 2011. And while the numbers have changed, in terms of the schools and the dollars they're playing for, the fundamental issues remain the same.
Or maybe they're getting worse as 11-time national champion USC, with the rest of the Pac-12, falls farther and farther behind college football's big boys capable of winning it all.
We say that knowing how the Big Ten, whose members will each be getting more than $50 million a year from their various TV deals, and the SEC, which distributes more than $44 million per school, are ahead of the game now with no prospects of the Pac-12 catching them.
No, what pushes us into the John McKay place was the news last weekend that the Big 12, with teams in towns like Lubbock, Tex.; Ames, Iowa; Lawrence and Manhattan, Kan.; Norman and Stillwater, Okla.; and Morgantown, W. Va.; will be distributing more than $40 million each to its 10 programs.
And doing so without a TV network and with no championship game until last year. And even more so, doing that while allowing teams to keep all their Tier 3 local TV and radio money which for schools like Texas means another $15 million, for Oklahoma another $10 million and even for an Iowa State, some $7 million to $8 million.
In the Big 12, if you want one of your schools' soccer games on TV, you televise it yourself. You don't need an independent "network" to do that like the Pac-12 says it does. No one watches those games. Nor does it generate significant revenue. Nor would you need your commissioner's salary to be doubled up because he's a TV mogul in addition to running the conference.
Nor would you need to buy back all your local media rights, something that's still costing UCLA more than a million dollars a year. After 47 years, USC finds itself in pretty much the same place it was when McKay pointed out how the Pac-8 was doing more harm than good for USC. Only without Trojans teams winning two national championships as it did in three seasons in 1972 and 1974.
USC was "being robbed of a lot of money" by the Pac-8's round-robin schedule causing them to play every other year at the smaller stadiums in the Northwest like Oregon State, Oregon and Washington State, McKay said, where "we lose a fortune." McKay was clearly worried then about the financial impact of recently passed Title IX requiring women's sports to be added to each school's programs.
Pac-12 Commissioner Larry Scott was just eight-years-old when McKay was voicing his opinion about what he thought USC's response to a conference holding the Trojans back. One can only guess what McKay would have said if he'd have ever learned that a future Pac-12 commissioner would one day be paid $5.1 million a year when his Rose Bowl teams took home barely $300,000 from the legendary New Year's game.
No question McKay had a right to voice his concerns. His Trojans had been working hard to win four titles in 13 seasons.
McKay pointed out how the requirement that every school in the conference share every gate 50-50 was just plain unfair to USC, as was the equal-share distribution in the Rose Bowl, where more often than not, it was USC playing there.
"The Rose Bowl is good for our conference," McKay said, "but we need more money than we're getting." But doesn't USC get money from the other schools? McKay was asked.
And in a perfectly McKay way, he responded: "We prefer not to take UCLA's or Stanford's money, we'd prefer to keep ours."
As an example, USC had cleared just $164,000 from its most recent Rose Bowl appearance, McKay said, while that same year, Notre Dame made $630,000 from the Orange Bowl.
"Believe me, I don't disagree with dividing money in the Pac-8," he said, "but it makes more sense for us to become an independent so a much larger share of the money can be ours."
As an example, USC had cleared just $164,000 from its most recent Rose Bowl appearance, McKay said, while that same year, Notre Dame made $630,000 from the Orange Bowl.
"Believe me, I don't disagree with dividing money in the Pac-8," he said, "but it makes more sense for us to become an independent so a much larger share of the money can be ours."
One can only imagine what McKay's reaction would be to the current state of affairs in the conference where every other season, USC gets to play just four home conference games to five on the road. "The league is all wrong population wise," he said, "it's too heavy in the south -- in California."
McKay gave one example of how in three games (1968, 1970 and 1972), USC's trips to Oregon produced $34,000, $39,000 and $37,000 -- a total of $110,000) for the Trojans while Oregon, in just one trip in 1971 to the Coliseum, took away $95,000.
So here was McKay's alternate solution to keep USC in the Pac-8. The Northwest schools would be required to play three games in LA for every one USC returned.
Luckily for the conference, McKay stayed at USC just through 1975 before departing for Tampa Bay and the significantlly more money the NFL offered. And while the problems might not be exclusively with the Northwest schools, maybe no more than a poorly led Trojans program can USC get itself back in the national championship run as part of a woefully underperforming Pac-12.
Financially, probably not. Sharing equally with Oregon State the little money the Pac-12 offers makes no sense.
Competitively, USC must approach the Pac-12 the way Pete Carroll & Co. did. The Pac-12 was the place you have to dominate and then use that as a jumping off point to national titles. Run the table in the Pac-12 and get into the College Football Playoffs almost every year, as Pete would have done in a four-team playoff, and you have a chance.
Then you make it clear what the Pac-12 has to do to keep you. Or you cut a deal with the Big 12. Think the Big 12 wouldn't be interested in adding USC and UCLA to actually get to a 12-team league?
Or does USC try for the same deal with the Pac-12 that Notre Dame has with the Atlantic Coast Conference -- full membership in all other sports with a half-schedule and half-share of conference revenues in football while keeping an independent deal with NBC?
Think the Pac-12 might be willing to change the way it does business if LA were about to be no more a part of the conference's footprint?
But none of what McKay would surely be recommending for USC right now happens unless USC gets its act in order on the field as McKay did.
Then someone would have to speak up for USC -- and maybe UCLA -- to let the rest of the Pac-12 know that they're on the way to becoming the Mountain West II if they don't come around and lean LA's way on things like the schedule, revenue-sharing, even the Pac-12 Networks' silly choice to studio up on San Francisco's Embarcadero.
McKay noted one simple way he'd like to see this go: "They take all the money when they play at home, we keep all the money when we play at home," that would have to translate into much more than gate revenues now. TV, as it was beginning to back then, means more than anything.
As McKay noted about the Notre Dame game at the Coliseum in 1972 that after USC's 45-23 win over the 10th-ranked Irish that led to a national championship, Notre Dame walked away with $426,000 to USC's $319,000 including $203,000 from TV revenue to USC's $96,000 after splitting it with the other seven conference schools.
"We lost $107,000 in TV money in one day by being in the Pac-8," McKay said. Notre Dame "had a better day than Anthony Davis did (in 1972) with his six touchdowns."
And as a semi-independent in control of its own fortunes, Notre Dame continues to have better days.
John McKay, as he so often did, called it.
***********
