In Part one, we examined the crazy circumstances that the PAC twelve overcame in order to play its fall football season.
We are announcing and introducing a regional.
Stay at home order in the state of California, fundamentally predicated on the need to stop gathering with people outside of your household. In fact, playing any version of a season was a huge accomplishment.
California doesn't have the minimum number of scholarship players available for the game because multiple players have to quarantine due to contact tracing protocol.
Now we look ahead, what did players and coaches learn from the experience and what can we as fans take away from it? From the solid verbal This is a special production, So now.
What Welcome back?
I'm Ty Hildebrandt, joined as always by Dan Rubinstein, our resident Pack twelve afficionado.
Dan.
Part one, we looked at just a few of the odd quirks that the PAC twelve had to deal with during the twenty twenty college football season. Now we look ahead, what did we learn? What can the PAC twelve, what can college football do better in twenty twenty one and beyond? Our interview subject again Yogi Wroth from the PAC twelve Networks. A podcaster himself a documentary filmmaker, he found it to be a rather educational experience.
I learned a ton.
I probably learned more about players this year than ever before because you saw their actions, you know, really speak loudly.
You are the resident PAC twelve expert here, Dan Yogi learned a lot about players. What did you learn?
I remember thinking that the PAC twelve never felt farther away, further away than the set of the college football conversation. And you know, USC has you know, long dominated with Oregon their place in the broader college football conversation. USC, you know, under Pete Carroll, and then you have you know, Sark and Lane Kiffin, and you know a lot of interesting talent at SC, but they can't really put it together.
And Oregon has their own ups and downs. But those two schools have carved out parts of the college football conversation that the rest of the conference has struggled to do consistently. And so with teams playing four or five games or whatever, while other conferences are playing more games, and the PAC twelve has this reputation for having a commissioner that is bumbling his way through for four or five years or however long Larry Scott is there and
just falling further and further behind. It definitely felt that that became more and more apparent last fall, where the PAC twelve didn't cancel, but they just decided to delay as long as possible, and a lot of it is out of their hands, right, A lot of it is, you know, the states and the counties making calls about
players gathering and groups of people gathering. But there definitely was that part of like, you know, Oregon wins the first couple games, and nobody's talking about Tyler Shuck, nobody's talking about Noah Sewel or any of these guys that are you know, popping early on, and it's a shame. It's a shame to me as an Oregon fan. Shame to me that, you know, people aren't talking about Jimmy Lake and Dylan Morris or you know, Davis Mills is a couple of good games after he comes back with
the false positive stuff. And I don't have a reason why, I just know that the Packed weelve was already pretty far behind, and there was that element of being marooned on an island even further.
I think what I learned, and I'm sure part of this at least was by design. You know, every conference claimed to have player safety in mind, and I'm sure at the core they all did. They all cared about player safety, no doubt about it. Maybe it's simply by virtue of being last to come back to football, but there was certainly a layer of authenticity to the PAC twelve's desire for players' safety that maybe didn't exist elsewhere. Everyone said it, but the PAC twelve it seemed like
they were practicing what they were preaching. And that's certainly not the kind of thing that you're going to be able to use looking forward as recruiting tool. Players aren't
going to care about that a year from now. Maybe that's a feather in the cap of administrators, who knows, but at least from afar looking back seeing how this whole thing played out, the PAC twelve, to some extent, sacrificed potentially greater prominence as part of the college football playoff or postseason and opted instead for this whatever we saw through the month of November, this odd, quirky season that didn't really benefit any of its programs on a
national level, but benefited players to the extent that they at least had games to play. Yeah, they had games to play, and I'll echo myself if that's allowed. It's just that a lot of this was out of their hands. A lot of this is not just you know, Stanford deciding, yeah, we don't want to play until November, or Arizona State or UCLA saying we want to hold off until November.
That's what all you know, four hundred people involved in this decision, are involved in the program, feel that it is just out of their hands, and you know, state by state, it's just we just have different situations.
And so it ended up to me hurting the PAC twelve on a national level. I'm certainly glad the PAC twelve played, and it's not necessarily the playoff thing. To me, it's we didn't get to see and we didn't get to see this across college footble as a whole because we didn't have, you know, a non conference light like we're used to having.
We're not.
We don't didn't have a crowd, a full crowd in every game like we're used to having. But it's there is that element of narrative and storyline, like what does the college football nation at large think of you know, Jaden Daniels, or think of ZTF at Washington, Like there are certain sides of the ball, or certain players, or certain systems or certain coaches or certain narratives that are allowed to take hold. And even like Colorado's this unexpected
success story near one of Carl Derel. But like, no, I mean, if I put you on the spot, could you name Colorado's Like I know you could probably name their leading rusher, but like their quarterback was a converted safety, and like there was just there was no time for people to familiarize themselves with PAC twelve storylines with such a shortened, delayed season, it just started right right, it just began. It almost ended as quickly as it began.
And that's what I mean. It's an attention economy that everybody is fighting for attention. We know who's going to end up in the postseason by and large, right it's going to be whoever wins the SEC going to be probably Ohio State out of the Big Ten. Oklahoma stands a good chance most seasons. Clemson certainly has a flag plant that people aren't removing it seems anytime soon. But there's always that element of Oh, we're falling in love with Wazoo's Run and Shooter. We're falling in love like
Chip Kelly's UCLA has taken a nice step forward. I'm going to pay more attention to them. The PAC twelve just didn't have a seat at that table that's sort of attention table, and that's what I think is damaged that. And this is, you know, we have a new commissioner to pay attention to in the PAC twelve, and you know, maybe that's a nice new step forward and there will be some sort of innovative thinking in terms of broadcasting
and marketing whatever. But yeah, the twenty twenty season, and the subtext of all of this is the PAC twelve losing attention is not equally important to COVID nineteen, Like this is all far below the most important thing that happening in America. But this is the sort of lasting element of the PAC twelve making the decisions that they did nationally, is that there's just a vacuum in terms of notoriety, in terms of storyline and terms of awareness with the conference.
We asked Yogi, what specifically did you learn about players?
Right?
Every player I talked to to a man in the fall prior to November seventh, and or now in the spring value the game at a greater level.
They value us sprint.
I remember talking to her Edwards and he talked about his Hey, my players love just running sprints now because we get to do something. We get to be together, we get to be around each other. They love waking up at six am for a workout or a team workout. So I think there was that, like a real appreciation for the craft. I think you learned that you were maybe done with college right. Stanford had one of their starting safeties just retire. He just got a great job,
and he's like, I'm good. I know I can get a bonus year, maybe start again, but I've been here for five years. Keep it moving. I think you learned a lot of principles that you'll apply when you're our age, right when you're family men. I think all of these young men will learn how much they love the game, how much they love their teammates, and how college football
fed their soul or didn't. To be really honest with you, you know, were they just playing because they loved the crowd, or they just planned because they had a scholarship, or man did they really did it? Did it matter if there was one fan in the stands or sixty five thou. I think that's something that every player, when reflected upon in their own journey, they'll say, Yeah, I learned that.
I learned how much I loved it.
And I also learned how somebody and how some teams unite, and how a leader all of the head coach leads imide dramatic chaos and adversity.
And what's really interesting to me, Dan is we came up with the idea to do this type of look back, I want to say, at the end of last year and the thought process for so now what was always we're going to take a look in general, look back at what happened around a certain topic, and then we're going to take a look forward in part too, try to figure out what we learned. That's what we're doing now.
What did we learn And at the time, to me, I was expecting that there will be more big picture things that we learned, a lot that we could take away from this, a lot that we could learn from and grow from. In Part one, we didn't really find that. With conference decision making, the takeaway was we didn't learn anything.
We didn't formulate a playbook. We learned a lot about the powers that be and the people who make decisions and how they make them, but ultimately it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot that we can glean from this that's going to make things better. I think we learned more from the player and coach level than we did,
certainly at the conference level. But what strikes me is that players and coaches mirrored to large extent what went on around the rest of society, and that is maybe there weren't any great takeaways that applied to everybody in the conference or on the team. It was on a very individual level that I think is going to resonate with a lot of people listening to this.
Frankly, you know what I took away from talking to Yogi something I thought about a little bit but not a good amount, is I went in thinking, Okay, he's going to talk about how players had a really tough time just being on campus but not being in classrooms in the facility. The fact is college football players, more
than a lot of people. Now, it's not a blanket a lot of people, but a lot of people were able to have human contact with even if it's just a position group, even if it's just you know, Friday walk through Saturday games, a lot of people are working from home, you know, maybe seeing each other if they're more conservative in terms of their COVID precautions. You know, you see somebody on a driveway or a backyard or
something like that, but you're not eating at restaurants. That I think college football players and college coaches were afforded an obviously successful human thing, of human contact for prolonged periods of time, and treasured those times that a lot of people, depending on what you do for a living, if you're working an office job, you were probably working from home and not seeing your coworkers and maybe not seeing extended family members if they were across the country
for a good amount of time. That college football players were still leading even if it was just amongst themselves and not on campus or at you know, bars and restaurants around a college town. They're still seeing each other, and they grew to appreciate those moments in the way that I think a lot of us have as things have opened up and we see more friends and family
members and things like that. That they were some of the first people to be able to appreciate human contact and having a social life and having you know, camaraderie with friends or in this case you know, fellow players or coaches or whatever staff members. I thought that was really telling that they were one of those groups of people who were able to just hang out with a few other people at a time. That was telling.
A lot of the stuff is very relatable. Yeah, unrelatable to all of us who have had to go through this over the last year.
If you talked to Stanford players, not surprisingly, right, they told David Shaw when he said, hey, how would you describe the year? They were ones that didn't go to a bowl game, They were off of their campus, They
practiced in a park in Bellevue. They won four straight games, and they probably got hit hardest by COVID in terms of on the field, in terms of their potential for the season, because they were false positives before the Oregon game with their starting quarterback, so it impacted their season. And they said the word gratitude, right, They were so grateful that people did whatever they could to get them to play.
Just to be out there, Dan, just to be out there, Yeah, to get out there to play the game. That they love was a big deal to these kids. And you know, despite the fact that it was an oddly shapen PAC twelve season, a college football season really wasn't just the Pac twelve. I think, despite our ambivalence, despite some of the guilt that I know I referenced in our first episode, it was good to have those games. It was meaningful
to us too. We share that gratitude to get those kids out there, just to give us something to watch, to distract from, you know, at the time, which was not a great time in the country.
And most certainly wasn't. And it's one of those things where we are hoping that normal also means watching games at home with friends and family, are going to games themselves more often, or in bigger stadiums or more packed stadiums. That's it's one of those things that is always going to be more meaningful than the football itself, is the football experience. And that's long been the case with college football.
And I'm positive people are you know, chomping, champing at the bit to get back to that experience.
Yo.
You mentioned David Shaw in that last clip. He told a really good story about David Shaw and just how coaches approached this whole thing what they learned.
You know, David Shaw told me a great story and he said he read this book called Radical Acceptance that I immediately of course picked up because anything he says, I kind of just do it. And it's all about just like accepting what's in front of you and not fighting it. But Davids Mills is out. Okay, that was five hours before the game. Jack West, you're going to start, Tanner McKee, you just came off a mission in Brazil the last couple of years.
You might play.
Oh and our top receiver can't go either, Okay, John Huffreys, you're a true freshman. You might have to play like or we're going to play a bunch of two three tight end personnels. Like I just think that that leader, that coach who didn't fight it.
I think those were brilliant examples.
Playing the cards you're dealt, Dan, playing it as it lies was about all you could do as a coach. That was the most preparation you could really afford yourself because things changed. As we said in our last episode, was a very fluid situation, right, Everything was changing at a moment's notice.
And of course not exclusive to the PAC twelve. Every team in every conference who played was dealing with the exact same issues, and the coaches and the players were able to adjust to whatever degree of success, you know, without three or four offensive linemen, without starting receivers, without whatever the situation. It was just a reality of the
twenty twenty season. And the PAC twelve did what it thought was the right thing, and with the availability of the rapid testing and then okay, we're gonna have a PCR test once at least once a week. And then the PCR test, did somebody test positive with the I
think it was called point of care testing. They did what they absolutely thought they should do, and it didn't always work, But I mean that the moral of everything was it was a season more than ever, of everybody just needing to roll with unexpected circumstances, rolling.
With unexpected circumstances, rolling with the rules that the conference, in this case the PAC twelve, had put in place. As Yogi said in Part one, coaches were awesome about it.
But nobody pretended to be a doctor. Nobody pretended to have an opinion on what you should or shouldn't do. Nobody pretended to call out a school on a false positive or a positive or a late positive. Like nobody was riding like that. Like everybody had great respect for
what they were going through. But man, they're not trying to go through it again, you know, I obviously, and I think they probably learned a lot about like the consistent nature of what successful coaches do, which is they're uncommonly consistent.
One thing I know that is of particular interest to you and I, especially with regard to coaches moving forward, is this whole issue of roster management. Now, keep in mind that there are a lot of guys who qualified for a bonus here be a six year senior. In some cases, freshmen coming into programs may have a little bit more of a log jam than they once expected. In many cases, kids couldn't visit the schools that they committed to, so there are a lot of zoom calls
zoom recruiting became a thing. We talked to our friend branded Hoffman about that time, and again there's a lot of concern that this could have some longer lasting repercussions. Like we asked Yogi, is transferring going to be more of a problem.
I don't think it'll happen immediately. I think in a year or two we'll see it. I think the super seniors, it's kind of like the general term we're all giving everybody who has a sixth year or a fifth year or took that bonus year of eligibility. You know they're going to come, they're gonna play, They're gon do the thing that the challenge will be freshmen this year and freshmen next year. To me, and that's why I think
you're seeing teams signed small classes, right. Jonathan Smith often says they want to do common things in uncommon ways.
Roster management is one of them.
I think they signed eleven last year, maybe less than that, but they know they're going to work the portal, and they wanted to split up some of the bottom portion of their roster when it comes to age and experience and academic grades. And I think that's a smart move. You know, getting some veterans, excuse me, getting some transfers like Arizona to State's doing a great job to me, as good of a job as anybody in the country with roster management and making sure that there isn't a
dramatic logjam. Like I'm so curious because I think Oregon is the most talented roster top to bottom out here in terms of sheer talent. If you went in a field and paths or shorts and a T shirt, you'd.
Be like, WHOA, these guys are loaded.
Now the management of that is going to be really interesting because of the last two classes, two best classes in the history of Oregon football ever, right, So what does that do for upperclassmen? Do they bolt? Or do some of the young guys say, Man, I don't really want to sit anymore. So I think it's a wait
and see for me. And probably the thing I'm most excited about this coming year and coming years is watching these head coaches manage their roster almost like they're an NFL team and free agency, because we all know that's basically what the portal even is.
So Organ's got a challenge in front of it, Dan doesn't it.
So I was looking while Yogi was talking about that when we spoke to him. Oregon had two seniors started wide receiver last year, Johnny Johnson and Jalen red They both decided to come back. So Oregon, who has been recruiting receivers as if there were going to be normal cycle after normal cycle, now has like six or seven
starter quality receivers. If you look at some of the promising younger players and now the seniors who've decided to come back, there's you know, three or four I think good to really good looking tight ends, which is very strange. You know, whatever position group. I'm sure Notre Dame has a specific position group. You're like, well, there are more good players here than there normally are. And I don't know what that is for Notre Dame, but it's definitely.
I mean, Anthony Brown is, like is he thirty old? Anthony Brown is, but he's taking advantage of an extra year of eligibility, and you know, it's it's going to be fascinating to watch because recruiting has continued for a lot of these schools who have recruited at high levels, and it's like, what happens now is going to be fascinating, just like Yogi said, especially after springball, after fall camp, just you're going to see flurries of transfers, after depth charts come out.
It will be interesting to follow. I think the recruiting aspect of this is probably what we'll learn save five years from now, what the ramifications were they We're a little bit too close to it at the moment to fully gauge what kind of effect that we'll have on college football and on programs out west and around the country. That is one area where my attention is very much trained, you know, moving forward and back, I guess to my
earlier point. For whatever reason, the PAC twelve is able to speak with the level of authenticity around the subject of player safety. It may not entirely be by their own doing, granted, but I think Yogi agrees from the standpoint of the way that they handled it. Baby didn't raise the national profile of the conference, but it is something that looking back at least the administrator class will be proud of money.
A lot of money was lost, but nobody was forced to play, and I think we're looking back on that that'll be a really proud moment for this conference.
In a bunch of regards, one important takeaway, though, Yogi says, there was a missed opportunity.
And I think in football, in our jobs, we can get so caught up with, well, they just got this guy in the portal, they're running this system, or this coach is so hot, or this team deserves me in the playoff, like a PAC twelve shit on the SEC and vice versa, and everybody just attack each other versus Like the one miss to me from COVID and college football is there was a real chance to unite around
the game. There was a real chance and it was missed because every conference is going to do in their own thing.
Doggie dog Dan, everyone out for themselves. Conferences taking a stand, not taking a stand, trying to play, not trying to play. As we talked about in part one, it got very murky on the conference level.
It's the playing field is going to level more and more as things open up, as you know, the number of people vaccinated goes up, and as places are more comfortable hosting fans and official visits, and with regard to college football programs, we are going to see the PAC twelve be in charge to whatever degree it can be. Now they have a new commissioner. I don't I think
his name is George. I don't know how his last name is pronounced, but he comes over from He's another outside higher so I'm sure he's going to be tasked with raising the conference's profile to whatever degree the conference can control things, not individual teams, players and coaches, but Yeah, the PAC twelve will be more in charge of its
narrative than it was in twenty twenty. But so will the SEC, so well, the Big Ten, So will the ACC, sold the Big twelve, so the MAX, so well, you know every conference, so well, you know the American Mountain West. So I just it'll be a fascinating year and years moving forward because everybody is going to be trying to stuff as much football and as much football experience into the normal timeframe as possible. And I can't wait for it.
I honestly I cannot wait for it because seeing conference ideology and state ideology pitted against one another, with college football players largely caught in the crosshairs not super fun. Not fun as a fan, not fun as somebody who covers the sport, not fun for somebody who just likes sports in general. Have everything seep into the conversation, all of these variables, so I am. I'm as excited as I have ever been and am hoping for the best.
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