Filed under: Arizona, Arizona State, California, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, UCLA, USC, Washington, Washington State, Pac 10

PASADENA, Calif. — It was L.A. day for the Pac-10.

The bright, big city lights of Manhattan, and those inside the ESPN studios, gave way to brilliant sunshine at the Rose Bowl Thursday. The Pac-10 kept their show on the road, but the road was much closer to home on the final day of the conference’s three-day media blitz.

The coaches told stories of small hotel rooms and seeing the new Pac-10 logo on the big screen in Times Square. They got face time with media types who don’t usually pay attention to their teams. They roamed ESPN, becoming the first major conference to bring all of its coaches (and its four star quarterbacks) to the Bristol, Conn., campus at once.

And they declared the whole affair a smashing success.

“If you talk to people from around the country, they would say we don’t play ‘real football’ out here,” said UCLA coach Rick Neuheisel. “Going to New York and taking the East Coast bias head on, I thought it was a bold move. I wasn’t sure about it at first, but after going through it, I think it was brilliant.”

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