I Will Miss

This weekend represents the last of the regular season basketball games in the Pacific-10 Conference. With the addition of Colorado and Utah to the conference, I imagine new scheduling will be required.

One thing that really made sense about the conference was it's 18-game basketball scheduling for the season. The 10 schools were paired off (typically by rivalry).

• Washington-Washington State


• Oregon-Oregon State


• California-Stanford


• USC-UCLA, and


• Arizona-Arizona State

For each weekend (Thursday and Saturday games), one of the 5 pairs would play another of the 5 pairs (one game on Thursday and another on Saturday). For example, this weekend, the Southern California Schools go north to play the Washington schools (Thursday Night: USC@WSU and UCLA@UW; Saturday: USC@UW and UCLA@WSU). This same weekend, the women's basketball teams from Washington went down south to play the women's basketball teams from the Southern California Schools. Only 4 pairs can play in a given weekend. This leaves the 5th pair to play eachother with a night off.

Also, earlier this year, the men's basketball Washington Schools went south to play the Southern California Schools at the same weekend the women's basketball Southern California Schools travelled north to play the women's basketball Washington Schools. To me, this was quite simple. Each team in the conference played eachother twice (once at home and once on the road) to make the 18 game season.

Can the ACC schedule be as simple? In my opinion . . . NOT!

I will miss this scheduling when Colorado and Utah join the conference. It was nice to say that WSU was going to play at the Oregon schools this weekend. The price of expansion? Perhaps. Oh, I wonder if since the conference becomes the Pac-12 next year, will this highly dramatic commercial go away (my favorite part is the eagle)?