After 10 teams announced they will be leaving the conference in 2024, only Oregon State and Washington State remain as active members next summer. In the span of a few short months, one of the most historic conferences in NCAA history lost Los Angeles, the entire state of Arizona, Seattle, Portland and Salt Lake City markets to cross country conferences.
All that remains is Corvalis, Oregon and Pullayup, Washington…at least for now.
On Friday, both Oregon State and Washington State filed legal documents looking to bar the 10 departing schools from being able to vote on Pac 12 Conference matters, including the current Comcast television deal that expires in 2024. Conference bylaws constitute that as the only members not having announced their departure, the 10 that did would have automatically terminated their voting rights, even though their official departures would not be for another 12-18 months.
Essentially, the Beavers and Cougars are looking to revoke the squatters rights of their abandoning tenants.
Should the schools latch onto another conference, they would also hold primary jurisdiction over what to do with the Pac 12 assets. On the other hand, this could be a situation where we see the entire 12-team Mountain West Conference be absorbed by the Cougars and Beavers, bringing the conference to 14, albeit a much lower-tier of competition.
This would relegate the Pac 12 to a mid-major conference on the level with the Mid American, the Sun Belt, and the Ohio Valley. More importantly, the conference would no longer have standing as a “Group of Five” when it comes to college football. Schools from smaller conferences like Creighton, Butler, Gonzaga and Marquette have shown they can be among the nation’s best in college basketball, but none of those four play football at the Division I-A level.
Only Butler fields a football team, despite being at the I-AA level since 1993.
Both schools had to see this coming in the distance. Oregon State generated $87.7 million in athletic revenue in 2022, while Washington State was $84.1. Both were the bottom two in the Pac 12. On the US News & World Reports 2022 list of the best universities in America, Oregon State came in at 151, Washington State at 212. Neither are members of the Association of American Universities (AAU).
As a whole, the current Pac 12 member schools have not met since August 4, which was just before Stanford, Cal (Berkeley) and SMU (from the American Athletic Conference) were accepted by the ACC. Should both schools win this argument, this would not block the 10 schools from leaving, but would work more towards protecting the assets for the remaining members.
In the middle of all of this, Oregon State sits at #16 in the current Associated Press college football poll, and could challenge for a spot in the Pac 12 Championship Game in November. Granted, the Beavers would have to leapfrog in-state rival Oregon, a Washington squad who is a favorite to make the BCS Playoffs, and Utah, who always loves to play spoiler late in the year.
The Beavers are led by quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei, the transfer from Clemson. If you remember, Uiagalelei played the Tigers right out of the ACC title picture a year ago, even being benched for 2023 starter Cade Klubnik.
You also are going to have a scenario where your late-season rivalry games are going to spread across two conferences. With one or both the Beavers or Cougars now facing a Big 10 opponent in the Ducks and Huskies, respectively. Florida and Florida State have never been in the same conference since the start of the “Sunshine Showdown” in 1958, the “CyHawk” has always been between the Big 12 (Iowa State) and Big 10 (Iowa), and “Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate” (Georgia/Georgia Tech) has not been an inter-conference game since 1913.
There is surely no coincidence that the Pac 12 Conference declined to comment to ESPN since the ruling on Friday.
-JC24
Only Butler fields a football team, despite being at the I-AA level since 1993.
Both schools had to see this coming in the distance. Oregon State generated $87.7 million in athletic revenue in 2022, while Washington State was $84.1. Both were the bottom two in the Pac 12. On the US News & World Reports 2022 list of the best universities in America, Oregon State came in at 151, Washington State at 212. Neither are members of the Association of American Universities (AAU).
As a whole, the current Pac 12 member schools have not met since August 4, which was just before Stanford, Cal (Berkeley) and SMU (from the American Athletic Conference) were accepted by the ACC. Should both schools win this argument, this would not block the 10 schools from leaving, but would work more towards protecting the assets for the remaining members.
In the middle of all of this, Oregon State sits at #16 in the current Associated Press college football poll, and could challenge for a spot in the Pac 12 Championship Game in November. Granted, the Beavers would have to leapfrog in-state rival Oregon, a Washington squad who is a favorite to make the BCS Playoffs, and Utah, who always loves to play spoiler late in the year.
The Beavers are led by quarterback D.J. Uiagalelei, the transfer from Clemson. If you remember, Uiagalelei played the Tigers right out of the ACC title picture a year ago, even being benched for 2023 starter Cade Klubnik.
You also are going to have a scenario where your late-season rivalry games are going to spread across two conferences. With one or both the Beavers or Cougars now facing a Big 10 opponent in the Ducks and Huskies, respectively. Florida and Florida State have never been in the same conference since the start of the “Sunshine Showdown” in 1958, the “CyHawk” has always been between the Big 12 (Iowa State) and Big 10 (Iowa), and “Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate” (Georgia/Georgia Tech) has not been an inter-conference game since 1913.
There is surely no coincidence that the Pac 12 Conference declined to comment to ESPN since the ruling on Friday.
-JC24