Hansen's Sunday Notebook: USC, UCLA athletes may find Big Ten move isn't to their liking

The Star's longtime columnist checks in with news on what's ahead for USC and UCLA once they leave the Pac-12, why the Bulls are so high on Dalen Terry and the death of UA's No. 1 basketball fan.

Trojans, Bruins athletes may suffer with Big Ten move

When Sean Miller was negotiating with Maryland to become its basketball coach after leading UA to the 2011 Elite Eight, he hit Arizona athletic director Greg Byrne with some expensive leverage.

Miller was no longer willing to fly to and from games at Washington State or Oregon State via commercial airlines. For Miller to remain Arizona’s coach, he insisted on charter jets for the trips to Washington and Oregon.

That wasn’t anything new. Lute Olson stopped traveling with his UA basketball team on return trips from Washington and Oregon about 10 years earlier. He would fly home on a private jet with Tucson boosters Paul Weitman or Jim Slone, leaving his team and staff to navigate a two-hour midnight bus ride to Portland or Spokane, and then awaken early Sunday for what would be a “lost day’’ connecting on two (or sometimes three) flights back to Tucson.

Miller’s wish was granted. Except for a few nonstop flights to San Diego and Los Angeles, the UA basketball team henceforth flew on private jets. Rival coaches at ASU were envious; they didn’t have Miller’s leverage and were stuck on the long road to and from Pullman and Corvallis.

I don’t know if Miller did so selfishly, or if he had the mental health of his ballplayers in mind. But when USC and UCLA announced they were leaving the Pac-12 to join the Big Ten, one of my first thoughts was “those poor UCLA and USC athletes involved in non-revenue sports."

Their return trips from Rutgers and Minnesota, among other distant locales, will soon become more numbing than Arizona’s old basketball journeys to play the Cougars, Beavers and Ducks.

Speaking of the burdensome travel schedules for USC and UCLA athletes in the Big Ten, one Arizona head coach last week told me that he thinks “it might take a year for the student-athlete to experience the hardships that go with that type of schedule'' before the grasp the burden of it. He told me it wouldn’t be unexpected if student-athletes at USC and UCLA ultimately create a partnership to challenge travel issues in the Big Ten.

"The real power lies within the student-athlete agenda," the UA coach said. "If the student-athletes from the LA schools state publicly that it is not in their best interests to travel four-to-six hours every other week, to go three time zones away, missing class time, disrupting their scheduling, mental health and social lives, it changes the game.

"The question is whether the student-athletes would be organized enough to do it. If they did, the powers-that-be would have to capitulate to their demands, one would think.’"

That’s one issue USC and UCLA administrators have clearly put behind TV media rights income. Are college sports about the money made or the students involved?

Last week, USC and UCLA both released well-rehearsed statements from coaches endorsing their move to the Big Ten. UCLA baseball coach John Savage said, "It will help us maintain our excellence on the national level."

Or will it? The Pac-12 is the nation’s No. 2 baseball conference, behind the SEC. His Bruin baseball players might get sleepy playing lesser Big Ten foes. Since 2000, Big Ten baseball teams have only made five total appearances at the College World Series. Titles: none. In the same period, Pac-12 teams have made 27 CWS appearances and won five national championships.

USC swimming coach Lea Maurer said: "New places and new people and new rivalries motivate me and will energize our team."

That’s baloney. The Pac-12 has won 17 NCAA women’s swimming titles since 1983. The Big Ten? None. USC swimmers will be a Triple-A team in a Single-A league.

USC and UCLA will get the money they seek but the honeymoon soon will end. The troublesome logistics of playing in the Big Ten and the impact on their athletes will soon surface.

For the first time in forever, the parents of a five-star soccer recruit from Orange County or a coveted softball player from SoCal might realize a better option would be for their son/daughter to play at San Diego State or Arizona than to hop on a jet to Ohio or Maryland week after week.

Ex-Cat Terry's personality as important as his game

Dalen Terry became Arizona’s 26th first-round NBA draft pick, and the first not to average in double figures in scoring. It’s a sign of changing times. NBA clubs now draft on potential as much as production, and Terry was attractive not just for his developing basketball skills but also by his personality, positivity, energy and willingness not to be a go-to shooter. If Terry maintains his team-first persona, he could play in the NBA for a decade and make close to $100 million. One thing Terry must overcome is his showboating. In his first NBA Summer League game, he was assessed a technical foul for hanging on the rim after a breakaway dunk. At Arizona, he would flex his muscles after dunking, pose for the crowd and infuriate opponents. Check back in a year. I think the Bulls will eliminate those unnecessary actions.

Pac-12 squandered serious amounts of money under Scott

Brian Jeffries, radio voice of Arizona sports since the mid 1980s, last week gave a vivid description of how the Pac-12 under former commissioner Larry Scott spent thousands and thousands of dollars unnecessarily in Tucson alone. Speaking on a Tucson radio program, Jeffries explained how he spent three years as the producer for Arizona home football games in the pre-Pac-12 Networks days. Jeffries hired 48 employees for all UA home football games: producers, cameramen, you name it. He said 47 of those employees lived in Tucson. It was a struggle to make a profit. Jeffries said during those three years, with Dave Sitton as the play-by-play man, Arizona made a bare $25,000 profit. When the Pac-12 Networks took charge, Jeffries supplied them with the list of 48 game-day TV employees. “They would not take the list,’’ said Jeffries. “They flew in people from Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Denver. ESPN would hire our 48 local people, but the Pac-12 did not. They ended up paying for airfare, hotels, rental cars and meals for all those people.’’ Scott is the same commissioner that rented an outrageously expensive building in downtown San Francisco for $7 million a year — more than $70 million in his tenure.

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Title winner Salant will join Pima County Sports Hall of Fame

Robb Salant is one of the most accomplished coaches in Tucson history, any sport, any era. After winning state singles tennis championships at Catalina High School in 1962 and 1963, he was a standout player on a string of Arizona top-10 tennis teams. Salant continued his excellence as a coach, winning nine state championships, including 1989 at Rincon/University, and an amazing streak of eight championships at Catalina Foothills from 1997-2011. Salant will be inducted into the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame at the organization’s November banquet. PCSHOF president Pat Darcy previously announced that softball players Kenzie Fowler and Calista Balko, golf instructor Susie Meyers, former MLB pitcher Jason Jacome and Sahuaro High girls basketball coach Steve Botkin will be part of the Class of 2022 induction ceremony. Seven more Hall of Famers will be announced this summer.

Wildcats' TV numbers in football less than stellar

With help from Sports Media Watch and after considerable research, Andy Staples of the Athletic discovered that 732 of the 951 FBS games played from 2015-21 drew TV audiences of more than one million viewers. It puts a strong perspective on the draw of Pac-12 teams. Over that period, Washington was third overall with 28 games that drew in excess of one million viewers, followed closely by Oregon at 26. What doesn’t reflect well on Arizona is that it tied Georgia Tech and Memphis with six audiences in excess of a million viewers. The other mid-level Pac-12 schools far outpaced Arizona: Colorado had 15 games of one-million plus, ASU had 13 and Cal 12. It could be an omen that Arizona’s attractiveness to the Big 12 might not be strong.

Cienega's Jackson projected to go in seventh round

When the MLB draft begins next Sunday, the first Tucsonan expected to be selected is Cienega High lefty outfielder Isaiah Jackson. After hitting .506 with 23 extra-base hits in his final prep season, Jackson is projected as the No. 216 overall pick, a seventh rounder, by MLB.com. Jackson recently was invited to the MLB Combine at San Diego’s Petco Park, which reinforces his high profile. Jackson has signed to play at ASU if he does not choose to turn pro this summer. His brother, pitcher Andre Jackson, reached the big leagues last summer, making three appearances in 11 innings for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Andrew is struggling this year in Triple-A with an 0-5 record and 6.34 ERA at Oklahoma City. The second Tucsonan expected to be drafted next week is Canyon del Oro second baseman Nate Baez, who hit .319 with 10 home runs at ASU and was an All-Pac-12 first team selection this year. MLB.com ranks Baez as an eighth rounder. Arizona catcher Daniel Susac, who is from Northern California, continues to be ranked as a mid-first round pick.

UA’s No. 1 basketball fan Whitehill passes away at 91

In 2018 I had the pleasure of sitting in the "Arizona Room" of Tucsonan Chuck Whitehill, spending two hours as he recounted his days at Bear Down Gym and McKale Center, attending 1,026 of 1,032 home basketball games since his freshman year at Arizona, 1948.

Whitehill saw it all: The end of Arizona’s 81-game home losing streak in 1951, the end of Lute Olson’s 71-game home winning streak in 1992, four Final Four teams and visits from notable basketball dignitaries such as John Wooden, Jerry Tarkanian, Elvin Hayes, Shaquille O’Neal and Bill Walton.

Mr. Whitehill died in Tucson last week. He was 91. A memorial service in his honor was held Friday.

Whitehill sat in Section 14, Row 8, Seat 16 at McKale Center, which included a period in which he saw consecutive 75 UA-ASU games. He graduated from the UA Law School and practiced law here for more than 50 years.

He passed on his devotion for UA athletics. His daughter, Judi Kessler, is the UA’s longest-tenured employee in the athletic department, 1984-2022. She is the UA’s associate athletic director, major gifts.

“My dad was a one-of-a-kind, generous and kind-hearted man, a respectful gentleman who always found the good in everyone, who loved people and always wanted to help them," Judi said last week. "Dad always had a smile on his face, was a master of the weirdest one-liners, and sometimes talked so fast, you couldn’t understand him. My dad had a very full and wonderful life, and those who knew him were fortunate."

My two cents: USC has showed disdain for Pac-12 teams in past

For those whose appreciation of USC might have taken a (large) hit after the Trojans spear-headed the greedy move of USC and UCLA to the Big Ten, this isn’t the first time the Trojans played the "I’m more important than you" card in Pac-12 football history.

In 1970, when the Pac-8 conference was flailing, USC said it would not play football games at Washington State any longer. The Trojans agreed to play the Cougars only in Seattle or Spokane, where exposure and attendance were greater.

In 1972 and 1976, USC-WSU games were played in Seattle. In 1977, 1979, 1981 and 1983 they two met in Spokane. Even though they were in the same conference, USC did not play a football game in Pullman from 1967-83.

UCLA followed their Los Angeles sidekick, playing road games against WSU only in Spokane in 1971, 1973, 1975 and 1978.

USC further flexed its LA influence from 1970-76 by playing financially stressed Oregon State in Corvallis just once, while getting five home games against the Beavers in L.A.

It wasn't until Tom Hansen was hired as Pac-10 commissioner in the late 1970s that order was restored to the conference, and Pullman's place on everyone's road schedule was restored.