FRIDAY WAS A dark day for those who cheer for the crimson and gray.
Washington State appears to have been left behind in the conference reshuffle.
The inevitability of a Pac-12 Conference breakup was confirmed in 2022 when USC and UCLA were poached away by the Big-10 and its brand-new seven-year, $8 billion TV deal with Fox, CBS and NBC.
In reality here’s how that sentence should read Fox, CBS and NBC gained West Coast time slots by paying $8 billion over seven years for Big-10 sports.
It’s clear television networks are dictating their needs to the conferences — and what will eventually befall college football is a full move to an era of super conferences, a 20-24 team Big-10 and Southeastern Conference, with the Big-12 and ACC as a second tier and other conferences filling in the bottom rung of the ladder.
Eventually, a champion will be crowned in an SEC/Big-10 final, with the other leagues left farbehind.
And don’t think that teams already in those leagues are safe.
Does Fox need the eyes of Purdue Boilermaker fans? Or Indiana Hoosiers in sports other than basketball? Rutgers may be the closest big-time football program to New York City, but does that really matter?
There was no real interest left from the “linear” television networks to bid on the rights of a weakened Pac-12, no overtures from the Big-12 to join up after the Pac-12 squashed that idea after USC and UCLA bolted.
And the streaming deal the Pac-12’s (lack of) leadership at the conference and university president-levels came up with wasn’t enough to sway the Huskies and Ducks from bouncing for the Big-10.
What’s really galling is the Cougs more than pull their weight television viewers-wise for networks.
Washington State posted 21 games with more than 1 million viewers between 2015-2019 and 2021, good for sixth among non-SEC/Big-10 schools — seven games behind Washington, six back of Oregon, one behind Miami and 18 ahead of our Pac-12 peer Oregon State. That also beat every Big-12 school besides SEC-bound Texas and Oklahoma.
The general consensus online is that Washington State and Oregon State will clean up in football if they move to the Mountain West Conference and play against the like of San Diego State, Boise State, Fresno State, Air Force, Hawaii, Nevada, etc … But the main recruiting draw for many WSU athletes is the chance to compete against Pac-12-level competition — I don’t see a lot of California kids coming up to play for a MWC-based Cougar football team when they could stay home and play for San Diego State or Fresno.
Donations will dry up, television revenue will dip dramatically and drastic decisions will have to be made to budgets and salaries.
All of WSU athletics will suffer, especially the women’s soccer team which made an NCAA Final 4 run in 2019 and has been a consistent NCAA Tournament team along with the volleyball program.
Oregon and Washington’s decisions are easy to understand — the move will provide stability and more cash than a Pac-12 sans USC and UCLA ever could. The Dawgs and Ducks will play big-time games on national TV against Ohio State and Michigan. Except they already did that in a little game called the Rose Bowl.
But to this Cougar, the move feels like being a child of divorce. All signs may have pointed to this outcome, but when the truth is revealed you still feel the sting.
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Sports reporter/columnist Michael Carman can be contacted at mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.
