Santa Claus came early for the two remaining members of the Pac-12 conference, Oregon State and Washington State. For yesterday there was an announcement that $255 million will be under their metaphorical Christmas trees, courtesy of a settlement agreement with the ten departing members of the conference.
Sports writer John Canzano described the agreement in his Bald Faced Truth substack column that I subscribe to.
Jayathi Murthy called me at 6:30 a.m. PT on a Saturday in Week 2 of the college football season. The Oregon State president was ticked off about what happened to the Pac-12 and the attempts by the departing members to blow up the 108-year-old conference on their way out the door.
“We’re ready for the fight,” she told me.
Oregon State and Washington State announced that they have reached a settlement with the 10 departing schools. The financial piece of the agreement gives the two schools protection against liabilities involving ongoing lawsuits, $190 million in future conference revenue and $65 million from the departing schools that will be spread out over the next two years.
The total war chest: $255 million.
Said one source: “We have a term sheet. We still don’t have a definitive final agreement. It will be a month or two before this thing gets papered, but we’re close enough that everyone feels comfortable.”
The departing schools get closure and an assurance that OSU and WSU won’t try to withhold all the revenue this year. But it also amounts to a victory in the fight Murthy spoke about in September. At the time, she expressed disappointment that TV market size was driving college football realignment.
“The presumption of it gets me,” Murthy told me. “We are a land-grant university. It was this amazing, visionary thing that happened 150 years ago. It was amazing and deliberate. It put universities in small towns. Now, everything is tied entirely to eyeballs and TV ratings? To do that is to disenfranchise students.
“It’s not the way it should be.”
This is great news for Oregon State and Washington State.
They were treated badly by Oregon, Washington, and the other Pac-12 schools who left them in the lurch in a self-centered effort to get more money out of media deals, even if this meant heading off to distant conferences like the Atlantic Coast Conference and Big Ten.
So now I view OSU and WSU as underdogs. Since I usually root for the underdog in sporting events, the news that the Pac-2 have a $255 million war chest to ease their way into either rebuilding the Pac-12 or finding ways to cobble together agreements with other conferences made me smile.
Canzano reports that things are coming along fairly well on this front.
Washington State and Oregon State’s football teams will play a scheduling partnership with the Mountain West Conference in football in 2024. Men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s golf, cross country, volleyball, women’s rowing and softball will be affiliate members with the West Coast Conference. And Oregon State announced that gymnastics, wrestling, indoor/outdoor track and field and men’s rowing will continue competing as members of the Pac-12.
The departing schools will be off to their new conferences in August. Oregon State and Washington State now have control of the Pac-12 and $250 million in assets. They have a plan for 2024. Beyond that, things remain uncertain.
I appreciated the Oregon State University president reminding me through her quote in Canzano's column that her school and Washington State are land grant universities, which were designed to be in small towns. Somehow that had escaped me until now.
That makes the media rights greed of the ten departing members of the Pac-12 even more obnoxious. Corvallis, Oregon only has about 60,000 people. Pullman, Washington only has about 33,000 people.
Obviously their fan base is much larger, but still, there's no way these land grant schools can compete in a bidding war for media rights with universities in much larger markets: Seattle, Portland, San Francisco area, Los Angeles area, and such.
I'm still going to be an Oregon Ducks fan. However, it's going to be a while before I get over my irritation at how the University of Oregon jumped ship for the Big Ten just because they expected to rake in more money from media rights in that conference.
I suspect that in coming years, there's going to be some regret expressed by the ten departing members of the Pac-12 when they realize that things aren't so rosy halfway, or all the way, across the country. Hopefully OSU and WSU will prosper and be able to say, "Hey, you're getting what you deserve."
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