Greg Hansen column: You'd like to think the Pac-12 could do better than San Diego State, whose recent success in men's basketball (and, to some degree, football) overshadows an otherwise underwhelming résumé.
Greg Hansen No matter how you spin San Diego State’s inspiring run to the Final Four, inviting the Aztecs to join the Pac-12 is something that never would’ve been considered at this time a year ago. Never, never, never.A year ago at this time the Aztecs were coming off back-to-back seasons ranked Nos. 106 and 105 in the Learfield Directors Cup standings, the measure of an NCAA athletic department’s all-around success in men’s and women’s sports..
But once UCLA and USC announced plans to bolt for the Big Ten, San Diego State’s stock shot into the stratosphere. The Aztecs’ SoCal footprint — geography and the potential to add more than a million TV sets to the Pac-12’s inventory — overcame their status as a school whose athletic department can’t match the overall year-to-year success at Oregon State and Washington State.
San Diego State hasn’t produced an abundance of sports Hall of Famers, although Tony Gwynn, Marshall Faulk and Don Coryell offer instant historic credibility. The most prominent Aztec I ever met was golf’s Gene Littler, the 1961 U.S. Open champion who won 29 PGA Tour events. Even in their signature sport, men’s basketball, the Aztecs are 65-150 against the Pac-12, including 7-25 against Arizona. with a winning record against just one team, Cal, 7-6.So I ask: How does adding San Diego State to the Pac-12 make it anything but dilutive to the overall product ?When the Pac-8 added Arizona and ASU in 1978, the Sun Devils were probably one of America’s 10 leading athletic programs.
When the Pac-10 expanded again, in 2011, adding Colorado and Utah, it again improved the competitive product.
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