Basketball Challenge Would Benefit Calvin Haynes and the Pac-10
Count Oregon State men’s basketball coach Jay John among those heartily endorsing the proposed challenge series being negotiated by Pacific-10 and Big 12 conference officials.
“I think it would be a great deal for the Pac-10,” John said Wednesday. “The media attention toward strength of schedule has become more heightened over the last four or five years, and the TV exposure” would be significant for the only Bowl Championship Series conference whose games aren’t televised by ESPN.
The series would be played in November and December, starting in 2007. The format would be similar to the established ACC-Big Ten Challenge on ESPN, except that two Pac-10 teams might have to play two games to account for the disparity in conference membership.
Pac-10 assistant public relations director Dave Hirsch told the Oregonian newspaper of Portland that negotiations are progressing and a positive resolution seems probable.
“It’s an opportunity to beef up the schedule and have another quality nonconference opponent,” Hirsch said.
John said reaction was favorable when the Pac-10 coaches discussed the series at their annual meeting this past May. It would especially help programs like OSU, Oregon and Washington State, which sometimes have problems attracting marquee non-league opponents because they’re not in major metropolitan areas.
“There’s been issues for us to get some non-conference exposure,” John acknowledged. “This assists in that. It’s also a guaranteed game on your schedule on an annual basis, which is a positive.”
It would also boost the entire conference’s Ratings Percentage Index, a complicated evaluation system used by the NCAA Selection Committee to help determine the at-large entrants in the NCAA tournament. Generally, the Pac-10 is regarded as softer and weaker than the other BCS conferences.
“The Pac-10 just doesn’t get the appreciation because people aren’t able to watch it,” John said, since many league games are played at 10 p.m. Eastern Time or later, and because Fox Sports Net plays second-fiddle to ESPN.
“Does this change it? It depends on what time slot the games are on. But it’s a good media thing, because you’re going to get television exposure.
“It’s going to get marketed in a way we don’t marketed in December.”
OSU played Colorado in 2004 and 2005, Kansas State in 2003 and 2004 and Texas in 1996, 1997 and 2002, but doesn’t really have an extensive regular-season history against the Big 12.
The Beavers begin practice for John’s fifth season in mid-October. They face St. Martin’s in a non-counting exhibition on Nov. 5, and then start the regular season against Portland on Nov. 10 in the opener of the Oregon Rain Invitational, a four-team, three-game round-robin at Gill Coliseum that also features Cal Poly and Southeastern Louisiana.
John said every scholarship player from 2005-06 with eligibility remaining is expected to return. Incoming freshmen Seth Tarver, Roeland Schaftenaar, Lathen Wallace and Calvin Haynes have all already been on campus, or will be on campus soon, for summer school classes or the school’s BRIDGE program for first-year students.
“It integrates them, at a less-intense pace, to what college involves,” John said. “Getting a sense of where the dorm is, where the classes and cafeteria are ... getting some of the university maintenance-type things in order.
“We get them on a schedule so there’s structure to the day, but it’s not the same demands and intensity” as when full-time classes begin in late September. “But there’s still a lifting component, there’s class, there’s study, and then they play their pickup games.”
The first-floor hallways and some offices at Gill Coliseum were renovated this past winter, and the arena ceiling was brightened considerably by a new coat of lighter paint several months ago. The ongoing locker room renovation project should be finished in early August.
“That’s a huge plus,” John said of the upgraded dressing quarters. “My intent is to have a locker room that no player will be able to say that they’ve seen anything better someplace else.
“It’s going to be as good as anyplace in the country.”
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