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Future of Beav Football

749

From the prior thread, this is my prediction:

1. AAC or MWC
2. This results in (a) Smith leaving and (b) 75% of our current recruits entering the transfer protocol.
3. We are then stuck rebuilding the entire program with a new coach, maybe Riley, and waiting years for the team to get respectable again. In that time frame, we have a terrible record even in these inferior conferences.
4. While going through this transition, we have to watch foreign games with no ties like Tulane, which make the teams pretty much unwatchable.

So, this is the end of Beaver football. Die hard fans will sit around and waste their lives watching this total crap product, but a lot will tune out and do something better with their limited time on this amazing planet.

I’d watch if we went to the Big 12. That would be interesting and competitive games, and we’d keep our recruits and probably our coach intact. But the odds of that are under 5% I’d say. Short of that, it is the end.

Edit: Rebuilding the PAC if we could keep Cal and Stanford would be semi-watchable. Would have to add some intriguing schools like SDSU, Fresno, Nevada, BSU, Air Force, CSU…something like that is bad but just barely watchable. We’d still lose a lot of recruits and most likely lose Smith. Smith is only here for nostalgia. He is/was reliving his playing days. That’s why he’s a HC at Oregon State. To relive his glory vicariously through others. Now that that is gone and all the schools he competed against are gone, he will be gone.

We are better off going independent than doing all this. Then we can at least play in interesting games and probably get good recruits if they see a competitive schedule. I don’t think chasing TV money is wise since TV as we know it will be completely obsolete soon. There’s a 99.999% now that all of us will die never seeing the Beavs achieve greatness (Rose Bowl, Pac title, etc). We had a pretty good shot if we had stayed in the PAC, but of course we wasted so much time with Riley. Those wasted years where we accepted mediocrity lead to this result. We’re building into something respectable but ten years too late and just in time for the entire landscape to change on us. Once again, Lucy pulls the football on OSU.

It is this year or bust for OSU. Smith is likely hammering that home. It’s our last chance at something special in our lifetimes.

749 COMMENTS

  1. 22
    4

    Going independent is a Crack pipe dream and will result in the same boring, unwatchable teams/games.

    1. No team worth 2 shits is going to come play a game in Corvallis.

    2. OSU wouldn’t have the funds to pay them if they did.

    OSU Is fucked no matter how you slice it if they lose P5 status.

    • 5
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      Disagree. The money can be made via their own production crew (selling ads), selling games to fans ala carte (e.g. app with $10-20 per game), and/or partnerships with larger entities (amazon, apple, etc) that want to carry games but not overpay for those games. There are actually many others ways to get the money, but that’s just one realistic idea. You have the small thinking that lead to this problem. And being reliant on cable TV is what got everyone into this problem as well, so it’s obviously not the long-term solution. If we get in the Big 12 it’s only a stop gap to the problem resurfacing because the model is flawed. Dinosaurs will dinosaur until they go extinct, and big cable is the biggest dinosaur out there.

  2. 10
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    I agree with Whiskey on this one. Keeping P5 status should be priority one. I’m re-posting my comment from the end of the last thread giving my 2 cents on this:
    I was all about going to the Big12 to stay relevant (and I’d still love for this to happen but not looking good). But I think rebuilding a PAC conference via Apple streaming might be the better long term play (or at least another better option). We could turn from a small fish in the pond to the big fish in the pond and winning cures many issues. I think Smith is a forward thinker and would like being on the cutting edge of a new frontier (plus he has outwardly stated he wants to keep his family in Corvallis). Winning is key to it all. It unlocks more money, brings better coaches, and nets better recruits. If you can create a conference that you win in and it retains the P5 status… bam!
    In the end I’m going to relish this season as the last season of its kind… the last PAC-12 season, the last I see of a conference I grew up with.
    With that I scream Go Beavs! Let’s go out with a bang! …. Or chainsaw thingy with that noise.

    • 3
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      Smith won’t stay. He’s reliving his glory years vicariously. Just watch. He will be gone as soon as he can leave if we’re in an inferior conference.

      AAC is horrible football with no rivalries, no geographic ties, and no intrigue.

      • On top of that his exit fee is a mediocre $4m. Barnes should prioritize re-negotiating his exit fee once the landscape of OSU athletics stablizes, however it looks.

  3. 7
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    Sad that it comes to this. Rejected by BIG10, rejected by Big12, abandoned and backstabbed by PAC12, MWC is a deathblow, and AAC looks like a lifeline but also feels like scraping the bottom of the barrel to find anyone to help.

    Begin lawsuits immediately and put pressure on the media execs, school presidents, ADs and conferences that colluded to destroy the PAC12, while also desiring to submarine OSU and WSU.

    • 4
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      I do feel like there should be lawsuits here. So much damage. I don’t see why the Federal Government can’t get involved, either, as they give endowments to these schools. I haven’t heard anything about that angle, but it seems valid to stop this if it wants to be stopped…though with each passing day and zero interest in stopping it the train has left the station.

      • 2
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        The train has left the station…yes. There was some pity and recognition of what had been done to OSU/WSU in the immediate days after Oregon and Washington backstabbed the conference, but that has quickly vanished and now the attention turns to the upcoming season rather than the longterm damage that has been done.
        “Too bad for OSU…oh well, on to the games.”

        Barnes was too silent, as it all unfolded since he never had at least a press conference to decry the foul play.
        Kliakoff seems like he was a plant and somewhat complicit in the whole maneuver: lying and stringing everyone along to give them reasons to depart. Haven’t heard a peep out of him in 2 weeks.
        And no one even mentions what the athletes think of it, or seem to even care.

        • Georgie may be a bozo and end up the fall guy but the palace intrigue, back stabbing and big ego teams certainly didn’t make things easy for him.

          If Barnes is guilty of anything it’s not having cards to play and having to trust the process.

          • The major decisions were left to the presidents. AD act as advisors. I think Barnes gets a pass on the blame game during this round.

      • 5
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        I hope they sue the shit out of USC, especially among other entities. They blocked expansion and then left less than a year later? WTF? Unfortunately, I feel like the powers that be do not care. I don’t remember anyone caring when the Big East fell apart as a football conference. Some teams found homes and stayed “Power 5” and others got screwed. I don’t think being independent will work, the Beavs will wind up like UConn. I’m afraid the goal is going to become trying to keep up with Boise St as a great Mountain West team with a different coach and of course a different player mix. Also, DJ is a junior, correct? How can he stay after this season if the Beavs are not a Power 5 team?

          • DJU wants to be one and done. I don’t see smith just suddenly leaving because of this. He was already becoming a hot commodity so he might’ve left if we remained in the conference anyways.

      • 11
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        I mean Lahaina just burnt to the ground and the federal government is nowhere to be found. Doubt they would give two Fs about college sports realignment. Maybe if we relocate Corvallis to the Ukraine we could have the funds to go independent?

        • 5
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          Fuck off, loser.
          The Feds are all over it, as is the state government.
          The private utilities whose failed maintenance caused these fires, very much like Paradise City, not only caused the fires, but they blocked egress for the victims, because they were trying to patch shit up while the fires raged.
          Take your flaccid penis narrative and shove it in a baggy.

          • 1
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            why are you so upset Jack? your Comment seems to insinuate that u think it’s the people of Lahaina’s fault? That would make u the flaccid penis loser. U must love the current admin if my comment upset u that much, it’s telling. Clearly the people in Hawaii are upset with the fed gov so I’m not sure why u are trying to speak for them. Kick rocks

          • 1
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            The government is doing what it can.
            MECA cutting corners is what killed people, and their emergency response blocked a lot of people trying to escape.
            The government is the people, and they are having to fight off land vultures looking for an easy investment, while there are probably still children’s bodies lying in the ruins.
            It was deemed a national emergency before the fire was done burning, and all the resources that come with that are in effect.
            But we have losers with some stupid narrative handed to them by conspiracy nutters who want to make it all about scoring political points, complaining about something they will hopefully never experience, from the comfort of a keyboard.
            There are no political points to be scored in this tragedy.
            Fuck off for trying.

          • 6
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            my original comment wasn’t even taking a side politically, you inserted politics into the discussion. If the gov was actually proactive with Hawaii, significant aid would’ve already been delivered but instead it’s going overseas, which is decided by people on both sides of the isle. Grow up and stop acting like a child, although you are likely still one

          • 4
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            Your first mistake is to trust the government, any government: ever. Your best interest is not their concern. We’ve entered a new period of time where there is no rule of law and you are fully and completely on your own. If you don’t have the cajones to survive on your own – better start picking up some skills and being less dependent on others.

  4. 11
    1

    Been a fan of Beaver football since Prothro was at the helm. The 65 Rose Bowl, when Paul Brothers and crew got spanked by Sparty, was the first sporting event I ever watched on a color TV. During my formative years (60’s) the Beavs dominated the ducks. Good times. Fast forward to about 20-25 years ago, when uncle Phil started pumping his millions into the school down the road and the arms race in college FB really took off, I just didn’t see how OSU was ever going to have the resources to compete. Like on the field at times, they’ve done well with facility upgrades with the resources they have, but It’s been a matter of just barely keeping up. I guess what I’m saying is, I’ve been sort of waiting for this day to come. Granted JS has the program on the upswing, but like the Erickson years, we’ve been here before. JS will eventually move on, and the cycle of irrelevancy could start over again. I’ve actually thought it would be fun to be in a conference like the MWC, where going in to each season we had a legitimate shot a a conference title and an at large playoff birth. I guess I may now get to see just how fun that really is, who knows? Whatever happens, I’ll be wasting my time following the Beavs wherever, albeit with maybe a little less enthusiasm initially. I sat through the Feritig/Avezzano/Kragthorpe years. I can sit through anything.

  5. 5
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    When considering what may come next, I would trade the next 30 years of OSU football for 1 year of absolute greatness and a National Championship run, playoff appearance and championship game win.
    In 1 year of greatness, OSU could:
    1) achieve what Ducks have tried to buy for 20 years
    2) DJU gets a career resurrected and is drafted to NFL
    3) JS can depart having accomplished his goal of reviving the program to greatness
    4) New Reser will have sellouts and finally be complete as a stadium with big time atmosphere
    5)Disprove the talking heads who justify the realignment and dismiss schools like OSU
    6)Establish a national presences even for a little bit
    7) Rose Bowl for the semifinals, last chance as a PAC12 member
    8) Any player who transfers after the season will leave on the best possible terms having won it all
    9) All Beaver fans can Rest In Peace even if the program withers into a WAC athletics program, because we saw the year of greatness that we knew was possible.
    10) Lindsay Scnell, Ken Goe, lazy Riley supporters will finally be proven wrong that you can aspire for more in Corvallis than Riley 2.0
    11) Angrybeavs will be vindicated

    • 4
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      I’d trade a great season for 30 years of irrelevance because we’re getting the 30 years either way. Might as well take the great season.

      Though, to be fair, I don’t think it will be 30. More like 10. Cable TV dinosaurs will be completely obsolete by then. I think Washington, Oregon et al are in for some rude awakenings.

      • Yeah the fans in Montlake & Springfield are in for a rude awakening. The spoiled children have been bad so long I’m not sure why they think one year of decent football puts them in the same tier as a tOSU while traveling and UCLA will never do more han increase attendance at the Rose Bowl, with b1g fans though.

        I’m ready for the monied teams to exit the landscape and have college football return.

        • 9
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          Viewing this objectively with no sour grapes, I actually truly believe 100% the Ducks and Huskies just signed up to be the Beavs of the Big 10. I think they are really in for a rude awakening and regret. 7 or 8 wins year after year is going to hurt. I wouldn’t be surprised if they try to reform the PAC in ten years when the big cable dinosaurs finally go extinct.

          • 3
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            How soon until the Ducks go into Iowa and get beat 10-3? Lol
            The Ducks frame of reference for competing in the Big10 is nostalgia of Chipsters team running all over a Michigan team with their spread offense.
            Anyone who has travelled even a little bit knows they will be at a disadvantage traveling east over and over. I will be tempted to watch just to enjoy another road trip loss for the Ducks.

          • 12
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            I’ll probably watch the Ducks and Huskies just like I watched the Huskers. That was fun. It’ll probably become more entertaining than the Beavs. Just make sure to watch it on an illegal stream that doesn’t support big cable! JK/wink, etc.

          • 1
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            I will not be watching any P4 games whatsovever. I’ll read the highlights, but won’t tune into their games. Will not give them the viewership #’s. This includes Huskers, ND, etc. unless I’m over at a friends or families house who wants to watch the game on their tv and would anyways.

  6. 15
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    Go jump on the Oregon Bandwagon then if these games are so unwatchable. Go watch your Collin Cowherd “BIG GAMES! MORE BIG GAMES!” You can’t complain about how Media is ruining college football by realignment while only watching your team you root for if they are part of that realignment. You can’t have it both ways Angry. lol We were not invited to any of the other conferences. So what? Will we run on a smaller budget than we’re used to? Yes, we will. For how long? Now that’s up to the coaches in how long they want to stick around and fight for Oregon State and what they’re building. Why would Jonathan Smith leave a program he’s building from the ground up to go to a “Power Conference” when they looked at his body of work and said it wasn’t good enough? He’s proven we can win at Oregon State. With the recruits we have, it will take a lot of conversations and trust to keep the players we have, but if the players we have committed to Oregon State and to this team versus committing because it’s a power 5 conference, then those players who care about the power conferences will leave. Coach Smith can show the teams coming in HOW to recruit to your strengths over glaring weaknesses. Barnes has even said in an interview this week, “If we could have an airport built in Corvallis, that would be awesome!” or something to that effect. To abandon the team now when they are catching momentum based on this huge setback is not the Oregon State way. We keep moving forward. We survived the 1956-1967 Independent era, we can survive this hurdle as well. Different times, different solutions, but same outcome. We’re not going to be denied a spot at the table. I trust Barnes’ leadership over your pessimistic attitude and poo pooing and believing the media pundits who want us to fail. You’re giving them EXACTLY what they want by quitting. By not watching, you’re telling them they were right and we don’t belong. You’re telling them they were right to exclude us because our fanbase doesn’t care about football, it only cares about prestige and “BIG GAMES”. Get over yourself Angry. The world does not revolve around your opinions. Quit on Oregon State like UW, Oregon, Arizona, ASU, Colorado, Utah, USC, UCLA all did because guess what, they didn’t want any part of the Pac-4 teams. They abandoned the conference and wanted nothing more to do with it because it was/is tarnished and the image was/is damaged. You might as well save your time and money and shut this site down and leave it behind you. Go enjoy your biking on the weekends and enjoy your life without worrying about sports. I did that with the NFL years ago and I haven’t looked back since or cared to even watch the Super Bowl. NFL to me is unwatchable because its only “Elite talent”. there’s not really any upsets IMO. Not as many as there would be in college. Oregon State is the Giant Killers for a reason. The Giant to be slain right now is the Big Media Market.

    • 3
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      Terrible take.

      The Giant to be slain right now is the Big Media Market.

      Right. It’s going extinct no matter what. It just took down the Beavs in that process. We might see the PAC reform in 10 years as the Ducks and Huskies realize how screwed they are as 7 or 8 win teams that are completely irrelevant. There will be a lot of talent compression that leads to them being small fish in big ponds.

      • 7
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        Your take is a terrible take. It’s filled with pessimism and doom and gloom. I’m willing to see what OSU, WSU and the rest are willing to do to make the games interesting. Oregon State is relevant to the AAC teams. Oregon State spearheaded a rebuild of the PCC into the PAC-8 with the original teams after being independent. Oregon State recruits in Texas, Florida, etc. Getting a chance to play in those states will allow for better recruiting opportunities for all sports. Also, AAC plays against ACC, B1G, Big XII, Pac-12, and SEC OOC games with SEC teams on the road against AAC teams. So they play in big games already. ACC is the only P5 conference who has teams in the same states as the SEC to compete against. Wouldn’t keeping a Power 5 conference where you play SEC teams in OOC games be a huge selling point for recruits? I would think it would be at this point. There is a lot of upside to taking in AAC teams. I see it as elevating those G5 teams, not relegating a P5 to a G5. Imagine if USC, UCLA, Oregon, and UW were left over. Would others view them taking in AAC or MWC members to rebuild as a relegation? NO! They would view it the opposite with those teams elevating. That’s how we have to spin this and not let the media spin the narrative. We need to get ahead of those media comments NOW before the plan of action is implemented.

        ECU @ Michigan (AAC @ B1G)
        Rice @ Texas (AAC @ Big XII/SEC)
        Cal @ North Texas (Pac-12 @ AAC)
        UTSA @ Houston (AAC vs Big XII)
        Ole Miss @ Tulane (SEC @ AAC)
        Tulsa @ Washington (AAC @ Pac-12/B1G)
        SMU @ Oklahoma (AAC @ Big XII/SEC)
        Houston @ Rice (Big XII @ AAC)
        Charlotte @ Maryland (AAC @ B1G)
        Temple @ Rutgers (AAC @ B1G)
        Here’s the biggest one for you (ALABAMA @ USF week 3) SEC @ AAC
        FAU @ Clemson (AAC @ ACC)
        UAB @ Georgia (AAC @ SEC #1)
        UTSA @ Tennessee (AAC @ SEC)
        SMU @ TCU (AAC @ Big XII)
        FAU @ Illinois (AAC @ B1G)
        Memphis @ Missouri (AAC @ SEC)
        Miami @ Temple (ACC @ AAC)
        Charlotte @ Florida Gators (AAC @ SEC)

        • 5
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          Unwatchable games for anyone in the West. No WC ties, no history, no nothing. A whole lot of “let’s lump the rejects together at one prom table and watch them dance.”

          • 11

            The tie-ins would be adding the Pac-4 teams. It will be a 5-10 year process, but there will be good games to watch in the rebuilt Pac-12. Give it time. It’s hard to accept change and rejection at the same time. We all grieve in our own way. Hope you can find the silver lining in all of this and find your way out and at least enjoy this season.

    • 4
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      Go watch your Collin Cowherd “BIG GAMES! MORE BIG GAMES!

      For the record, I absolutely hate this guy. I haven’t listened to him in at least a decade, and back then he was a corporate lackey pushing for this type of consolidation. He’s just a corporate lackey with no soul and no appreciation of what makes college football special. I actually think he’s a big cause for this as well, pushing that narrative every day on his show. He should be banned by all who care about the issue.

      • He was actually a nice guy to me and my family at the Minneapolis airport about ten years ago. He overheard my wife and I talking about the Portland area and he piped in and started a conversation with us (he was originally a Portland broadcaster). I’m not a fan of his “act” either.

    • JS might leave simply because he will be asked to take a 75% cut in his salary to keep the entire athletics department solvent… other than that he’ll probably stay. SMH
      The budget disparity is enormous and can’t be ignored

      • 2
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        Why would he stay? He wants to be at OSU because he played there vs specific teams. None of those teams will exist, and he won’t be able to vicariously relive his youth. There’s no reason for him to stay. On top of that #1 reason, he’s also too competitive to play crap teams from the AAC.

        • 2
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          Have you asked him that specifically and has he given that in an interview as his specific answer? I haven’t heard that at all. I’ve heard he knows how to win, recruit, and build something at Oregon State. Will he have the same vision, passion, etc if he goes to another college? Maybe.

      • I’ve heard and read that coaches’ salaries are covered and paid for over the next 3 years. The salary disparity will hit in 3-4 years, not right away. Scott Barnes runs a tight ship with finances and is really good at running a lean Athletic Department. Think about who we had to recruit against in the Pac-12. Oregon, UW, USC, UCLA, etc. I’m optimistic until it proves me wrong. Looking out for the Athletes is Barnes’ priority. UW, Oregon, USC, UCLA all sold out their non-football and non-basketball teams by getting out of their regional conference. It would be like Rutgers joining the Pac-12 if we were to take AAC members and span coast to coast. It’s the same concept.

  7. 2
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    I hope this isn’t a huge distraction for the 75% of guys on this team who will transfer after the season. That’s the one thing that can keep this from being a special season. But short of that, they’re going to have some serious motivation and punishment to take out on others, and I see an undefeated season based around that (unless they get distracted by transferring). I don’t think it will be an issue, but it could be given the scale. With so many guys who will leave, they might be talking/thinking about where they should go nonstop and lose focus.

    I also think WSU, Stanford, and Cal will be super tough. I think the others in the conference are in for punishment vs all the rejects.

    • Those guys should still be motivated knowing their body of work this year will dictate their future. Same as any other year in the transfer portal era.

      • 3
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        Yeah that is probably correct.

        This is going to be like revenge of the nerds, only revenge of the rejects. It should be fascinating. The 4 rejects are going to be so good this year. OSU has the best team of those 4.

  8. 22
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    PAC4 should vote out all departing schools from appearing in conference championship games and none will receive revenue payouts for this year, asap.
    Set the lines and let them feel some immediate consequences for their treachery.

  9. 1
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    BTW, what are Duck fans saying about this? I haven’t seen much in my Twitter feed. Are they glad the Beavs got screwed and officially deemed small time? I mean, that is about to happen to them, so they should be careful with that. But yeah, I am curious to know what they’re saying. I’d imagine a lot of them are going to miss the rivalry.

      • 3
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        They feel bad, but then they joke about MWC and laugh at us being relegated and being the “little brother”. Aren’t “big brothers” supposed to look out for their little brothers? seems like UW and Oregon are the big brother/little brother duo.

    • well, for one thing, you don’t see Duck trolls on this site since the assassination of the conference; which is kind of surprising actually.

    • 3
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      Are they actually excited about joining the Big 10? I don’t see why they would be other than feeling like it’s validation of the way they see their program.

      Playing in a conference that has been/will continue to be dominated by two powerhouses while the rest fight for scraps in objectively terrible locales doesn’t seem all that compelling. Then again, they play in Eugene.

    • I have several duck fans at work. All of them are pissed. They had a pretty clear path (or at least they thought) to the playoffs every year with a good chance at getting the bye bracket position by staying. All said the same thing you did. Get paid more money to be a middling school that makes a run every few years but is never really in the conversation.

    • They can knock themselves out trying to. As bummed as Beav and Coug fans feel, imagine how Stanford and Cal must feel not only being left behind, but left with OSU and WSU!

      Tuesday of this week was the deadline of some sort for ACC teams to declare their intentions, so since no one left they must figure it is worth one more shot. If they make it, the silver lining is that OSU and WSU dont’ have to continue catering to their elitist tendencies, and presumably, whatever assets remain only have to be split two ways

    • 7
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      It’s a powerful message that the two, arguably, most prestigious institutions academically in the PAC are left ….I kind of find it very fitting and romantic that the two pig-pens of the conference in OSU and WSU are left with them. Also, Stanford is a powerhouse in most other sports (I believe they have the most NCAA championships over the past twenty years by far). Shows how stupid and ridiculous the sport of college football has gotten with all of this.

  10. I guess I’m half way between Angry’s take and Beavsforlife. I didn’t go to OSU (thus the moniker) so I don’t take it personally, like I imagine some alums do. I’m kind of attracted to the story of the Pac rebuilding itself, as must be obvious from my posts in the previous thread. (I haven’t written so much on this site since the Heimlich affair. This is the kind of sports story that most appeals to me because it’s not about x’s and o’s; going for it on 4th down notwithstanding.)

    In a way, this moment has been inevitable since 1950, when Montana was kicked out of the old Pacific Coast Conference, certainly in 1959 when the whole conference dissolved in order to jettison Idaho, UO, OSC and WSC. Thus, we have seen this once before, at the hands of the same perps. UW, SC, UCLA, Cal, and Stanford created the AAWU starting that season. WSU was added for the 1963 season, the Beavs in 1964. The reversion to the Pac nomenclature (as in 8) started in 1968. In a way, the 1959–63 era, when OS was an independent in football, was one of its most productive; Terry Baker, etc. And they were able to keep one of the best football coaches in the program’s history–Prothro during that entire run. In fact, he left when OS rejoined the Pac!

    As for Cowherd, he is another vulture, just line Finebaum. For years (like 2015-18) he railed constantly against Aaron Rodgers; past his prime, over-rated, etc. The Packers draft Love, so he then proceeds to criticize the Packers endlessly for a decision he more than anyone in the media laid the groundwork for. Now he says that Love should just quit football.

    • 8
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      1959 and 1949 are tied together because of pay for play, not culling members. Montana and Idaho left because they weren’t going to play that game with their limited resources. uo was kicked out for being a stroller, and osc left on principle, partly in defense of uo, partly as protest that ucla was allowed to remain. But Cal was the center of power, and they stood by ucla, despite a lot of their players being mercs. ucla was almost relegated.
      Then Terry Baker happened. And it wasn’t just that he won the first Heisman west of Dallas. It was that he led that osc team in turning down an initial bowl invite, because their opponent would be a school that refused to integrate their teams. This is what won him sportsman of the year, and it’s why he had to go to the army/navy game (at the same place their bowl game would be played) and sit with jfk and rfk–so the politicians could birg.
      Soon, the pac was begging osc to come back, but we refused, unless uo was also allowed. They finally relented, and the pac 8 was named.

  11. 6
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    The ducks have beaten both Michigan and Ohio St. on the road before.
    Don’t see them trying to come back to the pac. Maybe they will win fewer games but they will have plenty of money. That is what college football is all about.

  12. 5
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    There is no telling where the Beavers end up, if this year they are Pac 12 champs and make a good run into the playoffs. I think the Beavers as a team play better than the sum of their parts. As for JS leaving, I haven’t heard from him that he wouldn’t leave, but I have heard him say how much he loved raising a family in Corvallis. Trent Bray, when asked about the money, said it wasn’t about the money for him. Where would JS go that would fill all the boxes for his family? Even though he is a CA kid, IMHO I can’t see him dragging his family to power 5 school in California. In respect to power 4/5, they are an obsolete term to a point. There are no “automatic” spots in the playoffs ( 12 team ), but usually the 5 P5 conference champs are top 10. My question is how did Boise State or Utah get so high in the polls in the MW, was it soley on the ooc wins against P5 or was any poll credit given for MW wins? Would the Beavs be able to have a high poll number in a rebuilt Pac? What advantage does the AAC have over the MWC? Looks like six of one or a half dozen of the other?

    • If they come into the season already ranked high and on a win streak and then go undefeated they’ll be in play for the playoffs. There’s a lot of intrigue in the Cinderella type team which gets eyeballs.

  13. @MHver3:

    “Hearing ACC plans to meet tomorrow to once again discuss Calford. Expect there to be a push for a vote instead of a straw poll as this is for all intents the final meeting on the matter.”

    Matches up with the “days away from knowing our direction” talk from Barnes yesterday.

    • Responding to others on what he thinks will happen:

      “I wish I knew. This was already closed once and then political pressure has once again prolonged it. Meanwhile ORST and WSU are sitting around waiting for the death certificate so they can move forward.”

      In regards to B12 interest in OSU/WSU if Calford are out of the picture:

      “3 days ago they did. 2 days ago they didn’t. Today they don’t. Tomorrow they might. ????? What a crazy time to be alive”

      LOL

  14. 15
    1

    So, is the Smith only here for nostalgia/ living vicariously through others and then leaving going to be the narrative you push this season? One thread and its already getting old.
    You have any proof whatsoever that says he’s gone after this season? or that 75% of the recruits will transfer? No, you don’t.
    Here’s a crazy idea. Let things play out and let’s see where OSU ends before all the doom and gloom/worst case scenario.

    • 5
      1

      From what I understand per Barnes, the finances for his contract are guaranteed. The assistant pool could take a big hit, but perhaps donors can step up in a disaster scenario to help with retention. Also, he and Lindgren (both quite religious and family oriented I do believe) often speak of the home-life balance and community that Corvallis offers that is almost impossible to find in other places when asked about getting other offers.

      Sure, money talks, and we definitely could see an exodus of players and coaches if relegated to a “merger” with the MWC if Calfrod bolt to the ACC, but I don’t think it would be on the extreme end of imaginable doomsday scenarios.

      JS strikes me as fierce competitor and a football nerd that LOVES Oregon State and Corvallis. I think he would jump to the NFL for the right opportunity at the right time for his family (his kids are coming of HS age I think), but isn’t going to jump to a “Power 2-4” team simply chasing a bag of $.

  15. I’m not sure which direction is best or preferable.

    On the one hand, it would be sweet to go to the Big12 and kick the crap out of all the traitors and an entirety new conference at the P5 level. But that may be a short lived solution as angry points out based on a dinosaur tv model, and soon crash as well.

    On the other hand, trying to salvage a PAC revitalization with some MWC/AAC will also lead to more cross country travel and a diminished value in the sports realm. If the roster and staff stay intact, Beavs could have some decided advantages and be the big fish in a smaller pond, with excellent chance to become the upstart always in the playoff run like Boise St used to be.

    Going Independent seems like a huge gamble based on the lack of internal support for athletics from the OSU leadership at large. They would need a complete overhaul of how sports/football is viewed and approached to be successful and I don’t see it happening.

    If Barnes, and Luck can work out another deal with Apple, add some of AAC media arrangements and keep it to teams mostly central time zone, I think I’d go for the salvaged PAC option and push for early kickoffs rather than guaranteed 7pm kickoffs…

    Some posters are frustrated above about negativity but I’ve already run the gamut of anger, denial, frustration, despair, fantastical solutions, and now I’m at the point of dry realism without much more emotion. We are at a deathknell point unless there is some way to depart from the status quo off how everyone else is doing business.
    Angry has had some good ideas and observations regarding tech, others have good ideas about financial options and donors, even the details surrounding PAC assets gives some hope as leverage.
    My difficulty lies in believing that anyone in the OSU world is going to be able to implement a partnership with NVidia, a big exclusive deal with Apple, a leveraged tv rights deal that doesn’t give away power and schedules, sponsorship and naming rights for various elements of New Reser stadium, conference alignments that work on limiting miles/extreme travel demands for athletes, developing strategic NIL and recruiting advantages in the face of conference changes.
    OSU has been “happy to be here” for too long and hasn’t actually been leading anything, yet now the pressure is on to take the bull by the horns and be innovative and lead, or die essentially, can they do it?

    • 1
      1

      The scuttle has been:
      Option 1- Cal/Stanford to ACC leads to OSU/WSU getting an invite to Big12
      Option 2- PAC4 united leads to 4 AAC invites follow by 4 MWC next year
      Option 3- Stanford goes Independent, PAC3 unite add +5 AAC and 4 MWC later
      Option 4- Stanford independent, Cal shuts down all sports, PAC2 merger with MWC ( Stanford will not do this)

      • Big 12 seems like a pipe dream unless the war chest is big and the 2pac offer it to the Big 12 as tribute.

        More likely that 2pac buys out BSU/SDSU with their money and adds a few top AAC teams from Texas and surrounding areas.

    • Kind of two sides of the same shit sandwich.

      Stanford/Cal staying gives cred to the remaining teams and the rebuild of the PAC.

      Stanford/Cal leaving opens the door for better football schools (Boise, Fresno) joining up but gives leverage to the remaining P5 conferences to deny a seat at the CFP table.

      • Apparently it was Virginia Tech, no longer a conference power but a bottom dweller in ACC…self preservation doesn’t make sense because they could probably move up 2 spots in conference standings by adding Cal and Stanford.

          • Stanford and SMU are saying they don’t want any revenue; they are just desperate for a landing spot. That serves the interests of FSU and Clemson who are advocates against equal division of revenue per school; this sets a precedent they can use to their advantage going forward. This will be approved unanimously in the vote on Friday. With SMU gone from the AAC, the strongest potential partner for a revived Pac has itself been poached. OSU and WSU: Stabbed in the back again. Looks like Mountain West. Let’s make the best of it.

          • This doesn’t make any sense, furd was going to cut a lot of sports not to long ago. Not on exact date, maybe last year, because of funding. Now turd doesn’t want any money. Wtf

          • I respect your positive attitude, but I’d rather pretend football doesn’t exist than follow Beavs in the MWC at all. It’s too depressing.

  16. 2
    6

    Question:

    If the Beavs are ultimately left out of P5, Stanford and cal leave for ACC, and we are forced into MWC, does Barnes still have a job? I get that a lot of people think simply working nonstop during these times is him doing a good job (it’s the bare minimum) and I get that in terms of football this is out of his control but what was in his control was elevating our basketball program which he has completely failed. Considering the lack of a competitive basketball program is why we’re not getting an invite to the big12, shouldn’t at least some of the blame be on Barnes for us being completely left out? The tinkle extension might have been the true nail in the coffin for us…

    • 2
      2

      to clarify to the down voters, we don’t really know what’s happening behind the scenes right now and Barnes may be doing a great job finding us a new home for athletics, but as of right now we have no updates in regards to actual moves being made so I think it’s a fair question to ask what happens if the worst outcome is the direction we head. IMO the Reser project and the JS hire would have likely happened with or without Barnes so I don’t think those should be his saving grace. The fact that we have had multiple multi-decade long lulls in the top two major sports should indicate that our fan base is complacent with mediocrity. As much as I hate the uo fanbase (some of the worst fans in sports) at least they demand success from their administrative officials or else heads will roll. It seems like many beaver fans just say whoever is at the helm is doing a good job regardless of their actual performance (ed ray, Riley, tinkle, ect)… 50+ yrs of losing football and the last 30 years of (mostly) losing basketball is due to fans and donors being complacent and not demanding better results from the school Pres, AD, and coaching staffs imo

      • Looking forward to this response. Usually a new thread is started or more comments get deleted when this happens. Or he hijacks the account and makes up comments. I’ve seen all of the above happen in the past.

          • 2
            1

            editing people’s posts that you don’t like isn’t funny. It’s tacky. Especially when you periodically ask for donations.

            Yeah, I know go make my own website and rules

            Do better.

            My worthless 2 pesos

          • 1
            3

            Well he is a troll and trolls should get zero respect, so the only other option is to ban him. This is more fun. Donations have nothing to do with trolls. Donations keep the site alive, and they compensate me for my time, which of course should never be expected to be free. The people who donate get this, and they’re saints, and the people who don’t are free loaders who should shut their mouths.

      • Eating apples out of his sheeps bum is actually pretty funny but it’s not fair if we all don’t have the ability to edit comments. But still funny. Play fair please.

        • 1
          2

          Everyone who creates an account and logs in should have the ability to edit their own comments. Which would mean, if I edit his comment, he could change it back. But anyway, he is a troll. Trolls get zero respect here. They can post, but they’re not going to get the full rights and respect that normal commenters get. Also, there is zero reason I should have to accept any abuse. Period. And I won’t, so there’s that part.

  17. So there’s talks of Stanford and SMU to ACC as well right? This might be the worst situation of them all if we get stuck as the Pac 3 with Cal. Hearing Stanford and SMU are willing to go 0 media dollars for next few years to join. If it’s Pac 3, I don’t see any reason for B12 to take the Beavs and Cougs since we wouldn’t have the rights to the P12 with Cal still hanging around. Not that Stanford has been great at football recently but that would be a pretty rough blow to have any chance of a P5 type status without them in the mix. I gone I’m wrong and things can obviously change rather quickly but it does kind of feel like this is trending to be the worst possible outcome for the Beavs/Cougs going to Mtn West. I think the AAC would be marginally better but the extra travel and whatnot would likely eat up any of the increased dollars they’d see over what they’d get in the Mtn West.

    I don’t think there would be a mass exodus being relegated to the Mtn West but I do think there is enough potential fallout that it could be extremely crippling to this program and I would also assume that our recent commitments for this upcoming class would be gutted as well. Since we have gotten better recruits recently I doubt they have as much interest in waiting to play a couple years for a Mtn West program when they could likely do the same thing at a P4 program and get more NIL money. Sadly, I feel terrible for the other sports not the major 4. IF the Beavs want to have any chance at being competitive and a top G5 school with aspirations to get back to the upper tiers, they will likely need to cut bait on just about everything else. I’m sure there will be some big impacts even with a rebuilt Pac to those other sports but not on the scale that it would benwith Mtn West media money.

  18. Just spitballing but would the ACC want to take all 4 PAC schools as a west coast pod like Big10 just did? I don’t really like the idea but they may have a better chance to weather the storm at a higher upside than Big12 in the long run.
    It sounds like Stanford, Cal along for the ride and SMU are campaigning to join without any compensation to have a P5 landing spot. I’d start watching for Stanford athletes who want to transfer rather than attend a school with zero dignity. Such a desperate move and additional travel for no financial gain…? Even worse than UW, OR et al. How much must Stanford despise being left behind with the ugly stepchildren of the NW?
    No humble pie for the Tree though, go grovel on the east coast with your elitist political class doing your negotiations. Good riddance.

      • The endowment at Stanford is large enough they don’t need the TV money like other schools. The only question is how much of the endowment do they want to give to sports. We have a kid at our HS that is a decent football player, but got a 36 on his ACT and is being recruited by Yale, Columbia and Harvard. I was talking to his dad and while they don’t have any football scholarships he was saying that Harvard’s total operating cost are less than the interest earned from their endowment and they could effectively have every student go there for free and still grow the endowment. I’m guessing Stanford is in similar situations

  19. 8
    5

    Osu should hire Dick Cheney as a consultant, he’ll just shoot someone with s shotgun to allow OSU into a Power 5 conference

      • I don’t think we’ve ever had so many solid defensive ends. This doesn’t even account for the outside linebackers.

        Hodgins, Golden, Shippen and Wright is a pretty solid rotation at tackle. If Sio didn’t medically retired yeah, this would be the most complete rotation OSU has fielded. We don’t really have a massive dude who comes in on 4th and short to force a double team.

        • I honestly think the notion of having a “big guy to be double teamed” is not the style we play. The defense is strong, quick, and fierce. Remember Grant tackling Bo Nix last year? Grant came up to the line and delay blitzed Bo Nix and Bo didn’t see it because they went up tempo. Going up tempo is now a double edge sword. You can catch the defense off guard with them guessing what you will do, but if they know your tendency when you hurry up, then it mitigates the effectiveness of your hurry up offense.

          I will be intrigued to see how teams adjust to the running clock and no consecutive timeouts in this years games. Will deep passes be used less to limit the long route running or will they be used more to wear out DB’s having to go more up tempo and rotating guys in and out at WR and DB to get different matchups?

    • It is. Great players + rage = big wins. It should be fun for 3 months. Then we have to join the ACC and see Tulane, which is about the most miserable thing one can think of.

  20. Perhaps we are underestimating the types of guys JS has been recruiting by thinking they would respond to the current situation like a Duck roster would. We have already seen the contrast between the typical recruits for each school amid transfer portal and NIL chasing.
    I wonder if JS has security and the staff are settled whether we see a lot of guys transfer or very few even if MWC is the final landing spot.

  21. 1
    1

    Rick Neuheisel had some interesting things to say about the situation this morning. (1) He doesn’t think Stanford will get the votes to join the ACC. His theory is that if one of the “no’s” becomes a “yes” a previously nominal “yes” will switch to no. His prime candidate: Miami. The only reason there were as many yes votes in the two straw polls, he asserts, is that it was known from the discussion that there would be enough no votes to kill the proposition. (This kind of thing happens in legislative bodies all the time.) The theory makes sense, as why piss off ND unnecessarily? (2) As a lawyer he thinks OSU and WSU have tremendous footing for lawsuits seeking damages. (3) Putting his CBS hat on, he thinks the network would in fact find extra value in a MW that contains OSU and WSU, should it come to that, minimizing the sudden loss of revenue those schools would face otherwise.

  22. 2
    1

    ACC will vote no on Stanford/Cal today.
    I think there will be a decision for Stanford to make regarding their stance on academics vs sports institutions.
    PAC4 needs to pull in Boise St, Fresno St, SDSU to maintain a majority west coast conference and Stanford will be the one standing in the way of that. I think it will be an ultimatum for Stanford to help by yielding or go independent.
    If Stanford yields, the P5 status should be safe, if they depart it may be in jeopardy but results in a dare the other conferences to vote on it.

    PAC3 seek AAC schools SMU, Rice, South Florida, Tulane, Memphis, UTSA, to join next year, and add BSU, SDSU, and possibly service academies, Colorado St, UNLV, Fresno St the following year for a 10-14 team conference, renegotiate with Apple and See if there is a reasonable tv package for this new look PAC conference. Take $20-$23 mill/year if offered and go digital streaming with Apple.
    Keeping P5 status and full access to 12 team playoff payouts is the goal.

    • I still haven’t seen a clear answer on WHO exactly decides if/when a conference is one of the power 4-5 conferences. It seems to me the two money-no-object leagues will push for everyone else to be an also-ran sooner rather than later. Any consideration of a conference with OSU as a P 4-5 will be short-lived, at best.

      • The question will be….”Is a Peterson era Boise State still possible under the new super conference alignment?”. I would guess no but if it is doable Smith is the best guy I can think of to make a run at it. OSU just needs to do whatever it takes to retain Smith and his full staff, as well as with pay increases going forward in line with power conferences. If it needs to be subsidized by General Fund as a loss leader so be it. Or find some other creative way to fund it. I think it’s fair to say Smith is a top 10 coach in College Football. If Beavs can dominate whatever league they land in, and have a proven coach that prepares guys well for an NFL career, it seems like there would still be a path toward strong recruiting. As a recruit seeking NIL money and an NFL future, would you rather play for a 6-6 Nebraska in the Big 10, or would you want to play for an 11-1 OSU in the weaker league, but with a spot in the new expanded playoff? To me the OSU option in that scenario seems like the way to go. The only contingency I could see is that if the overall level of play in the power conference just becomes so much better, recruits may view playing against the higher competition more beneficial to the goal of developing for NFL.

        • well, Cinci had a “Boise State” like run just last year, from the same conference (AAC) some here find unappetizing. The G5 will always have one spot in the playoffs, and with the cream of the old AAC now in the 12, the Mountain West’s best team will always be the odds on favorite to secure the 12th spot almost every year.

          How cool would be it be to have OSU a regular participant in the CFP while the deserters gnash their teeth. Should it come to that: THIS is what Smith pitches to recruits: Hey, if we dominate the (new conference) we can get to the playoffs, and often.

          • Cincy was two years ago. Tulane was top 10 last year. There’s ample opportunity for G5(6) teams to make the new CFP. In all honesty, our odds in the old PAC12 weren’t any better than the odds in a G5(6) conference EXCEPT for the possible step down in recruiting ability.

          • The issue under the new regime however may be that the cream of the crop in the top conferences are just so much better that it’s literally impossible to compete with them. Thereby making the annual trip to the playoff essentially a lambs to slaughter situation. That would not be good and would likely impact recruiting over time. There’s also the issue of the supposed “next round” of realignment where the true “Super League” is created. Maybe a dominant team from a lower conference that has been in the playoffs regularly would have an argument to join the Super League? Probably grasping at straws hoping for that…..

      • I analyzed this in the previous thread. The 10 FBS conferences plus ND have a weighted voting system. The power 5 and ND as a group have 80% of the voting strength; the G5 have 20%. I don’t know how the 80% breaks out but I do know that the SEC and 10 are angling for 50% just for themselves. The other 8 conferences would be crazy to go along with this scheme

        Thus, as it currently stands, the ACC and 12 would both have to vote on the SEC’s proposal (inevitably coming at the end of this month) to limit AQ positions in the 12 team playoffs to just 4 conferences, eliminating the Pac. I argued previously that the SEC will be the proponent because the Pac infused 10 won’t want to have still more blood on their hands.

        • Thanks. Seems then like keeping the pac name and trying to rebuild still doesn’t assure the pac a seat as an aq p5 conference. I still see the sec and b1g trying to paring the conferences down until just their two remain.

          No one is going to try and throw the pac a lifeline when they have a chance to snuff it out completely, in their mind giving them a leg up in the eventual goal.

    • picking up on what Neuheisel said on the radio this morning, I think an enhanced CBS plus Apple TV deal is quite achievable. I looked into the CBS deal with the Big 10. They get the 3:30/12:30 Pacific time slot, following FOX (which will get the ‘big game’ at 12/9), and preceding the NBC game at 7/4. (ND will be the lead-in for this game 7-8 weeks a year). In short, CBS will be out of inventory by 7 East/4 Pacific. When they held the SEC contract (now held by ESPN) they would often do a doubleheader on the main network, but that won’t be an option now because they can’t compete with the NBC night game, and I’m not sure if they can throw a late game on CBSN. Those games, I suspect, are reserved for the Big 10 network for unranked teams (think, Nebraska, Rutgers, Md, and soon enough UO and UW). Thus, the PAC-(whatever) would be a good late game for CBS, either on the main network or CBSN (or Paramount). ESPN couldn’t be lured into this scenario because they already had the Big 12 that could go late into the day with their Central and Mountain time (BYU) teams, plus they might have suspected (indeed colluded) into backing off on the Pac because they suspected Yormark would get three more Mountain time games to fill their late night spots.

  23. With any amount of success this year my take is Smith only stays if Peterson/Ericson/Riley told him he regretted leaving BSU/OSU and he decides he can be happy living in Corvallis. I’d put the most weight on what Peterson tells him.

  24. just remembered something else Nuheisel said this morning: if the Pac merges with the MW the deal would be this: the new conference would become the Pac (the legacy, the network, the AQ slot) but the commissioner would be the current MW commissioner: Gloria Navarez. G-L-O-R-I-A!

  25. What’s the story with the service academies?

    Can they join P5 conferences like anyone else?

    Air Force is pretty legit all around these days.

      • 3
        1

        simply from a sports travel perspective, there are lots of interesting destinations for Beav fans in the MW: Laramie, Ft. Collins, Colorado Springs would top my list. (Boise, Fresno, Reno, less so.) As a fan of OSU for 20 years, quite honestly I got bored with trips to Berkeley, Stanford, the LA venues–all of them. The novelty wore off.

          • every day
            even the influx of food carts makes this place a foodie desert, for the most part.
            I guess I shouldn’t expect Corvallis results out of a town five times its size.

          • Speaking of Eugene eateries is there anyplace you would suggest that is decent? Wife wanted to try someplace new so went to jazzy lady cafe on a recommendation from wife’s coworker, fucking dreadful.

          • It depends on what you want.
            The food carts at Oakshire are pretty good. Arekie is good stuff, for sure. And the burger place out back makes better burgers than any brewpub in town–not that my home grill doesn’t also do that. Coldfire has a couple great carts in Yardy and Stretched. Sabai for Thai. Bar Purlieu and Lion and Owl for sit down dinners (or brunch for the second)–I’m not a fan of Marche, but mostly because the salmon hash I had at Fish Tails, in south Newport, was ten times better than theirs. Their food is decent.
            There’s a really good steak house in Springfield on Main and Pioneer. At least, I think it’s still there. GJs on sixth for regular diner food. Chacha’s for Hawai’ian, and I hear Lani Moku now has a storefront way out in Thurston. Both are better than Hawaiian Time, which is basically Uncle Ben’s rice pouches with bottled sauce and bits of chicken. If it doesn’t have spam musubi, it’s not a Hawaiian restaurant.
            I haven’t been to Black Wolf, but I hear good things about it.
            Bangers and brews is good, but I usually get some orders of fries to go and take out a four-pack of whatever sausages I want. Izakaya Meiji is still there. But Belly is now a sushi place, though, a good one.
            Ask me ten years ago, and this town really sucked at the food thing. So this is all welcome stuff.

  26. A certain Rick Greenfield on the Awful Announcing site has a column up. The opening line says it all: “Is ESPN toast?” All a function of the usual argument (cord cutting) with this prognosis: the inherent risk in “transitioning from ESPN to ESPN+ with no way of knowing if a dual distribution model will even work.” Or, whether the channel simply “pares back on major sports rights [as the Pac 12 fiasco presaged] and become an increasingly irrelevant sports destination that simply harvests cash until it dies.”

    Even the UCLA hoops coach sees the lack of sustainability, arguing that the revenue streams have been tapped out even before the inevitable revenue sharing with collegiate players kicks in

    • Who knows where they’ll be in 10 years. 10 years ago, there were barely any streaming services. Now that’s the dominate landscape. Maybe in 10 years it’ll be AI brain chips delivering content.

      But we do know what’s going into the past, and that’s linear cable.

      Certainly possible each major sports league eventually forms their own media production companies and don’t need ESPN or Fox for distribution. MLB is moving toward that with the bankruptcy of one of the regional sports networks.

    • Will there be any established, not so young coaches who find themselves in this nightmare and retire or revert to less prestigious programs? Unrelated 1- flying 6 hours to play in a football game is bad enough but the trip back after getting your butt kicked? The travel talk is all about going to play a game, not the retreat. Unrelated 2- Is JS so nice he will let up on a beat-down? I especially hope he doesn’t let up on Colorado and stomps on Prime’s foot afterwards.

  27. 0
    2

    OSU should lobby NVidia to purchase ESPN from Disney and transform it into a tech filled sports streaming megaphone and feature OSU/PAC as its flagship school and conference.
    Attempting to hold onto the past failed miserably, Barnes may as well forge into the future and see if the streaming and technology aspect can leapfrog what Sankey and his SEC monolith have built over 20 years.

  28. @Brett_McMurphy:

    “Pac-12 coaches favorite musical artists from @ActionNetworkHQ:

    Arizona’s Jedd Fisch: Morgan Wallen
    Arizona State’s Kenny Dillingham: Train
    Cal’s Justin Wilcox: Bruce Springsteen
    Colorado’s Deion Sanders: Would not answer
    Oregon’s Dan Lanning: Mumford & Sons
    Oregon State’s Jonathan Smith: Eric Church
    Stanford’s Troy Taylor: Mat Kearney
    UCLA’s Chip Kelly: Mumford & Sons
    USC’s Lincoln Riley: Kenny Chesney
    Utah’s Kyle Whittingham: The Rolling Stones
    Washington’s Kalen DeBoer: Journey
    Washington State’s Jacob Dickert: Luke Combs”

    • 3
      1

      some guy named/with Larry Brown sports says ACC is not moving despite desperate pleas from Stanford.

      Nick Daschel mailbag says OSU lawsuits are lining up. says Pac assets are valued at nine figures but he must be counting two to the right of the decimal. (classic gory onion mistake). Still seven figures, which he must mean, could mean as much as 9 million, no less than 1 million

      Cougs vs Everybody up to 1/2 million views in 24 hours. Does that count as “viral?”

      • “says Pac assets are valued at nine figures”

        Lower nine figures. Estimated $200-250 million for the PTN. $43 million in reserve for network/conference operations and/or contingencies. $17 million in NCAA distributions. Unsure about future bowl payouts, but also in the millions.

  29. @MHver3:

    “Hearing ACC met this evening and no vote was held but progress was made-concessions were promised. Possible vote forthcoming as early as tomorrow possibly Monday. Calford only two schools seriously discussed but there was an option to take all 4 of the remnants”

    “I want to reiterate that I was told ACC taking all 4 was briefly discussed but the focus is on the California schools. That being said what value would PACN have to ACC who already has a network backed by espn?”

    • The irony is that Stanford football sucks and I think it will for the foreseeable future since they don’t play the Portal game AND all their other elite sports programs are going to suffer with hideous travel because of their arrogance.

    • No way Beavs could go to ACC without an assurance of revenue money. Stanford can float their own costs and join for free but no one else will. True east coast travel seems more costly than any other option. I’d say any info/speculation that includes OSU/WSU to ACC is pure clickbait and not to be believed.
      Unless Oliver Luck has dirt on everyone in the ACC & can work a magical full revenue deal matching Clemson, OSU wouldn’t be able to go that route. Would a full member of ACC be desirable for all sports?
      Honest question I haven’t even considered yet.

      • 1
        2

        Oregon State joining the ACC isn’t happening at all, especially not in all sports. However, the ACC/PAC-4/AAC and select MW schools should form an alliance under the ACC’s deal for football only with the ACC next up to be raised by big conferences. Just do a pod system so schools can dramatically reduce travel and you’ll have a football league that spans the entire nation and not just wait around to get decimated by the SEC/Big Ten and Big 12. Might as well get crazy and form a super league now

    • “That being said what value would PACN have to ACC who already has a network backed by espn?”
      $245 million?
      This “inside guy” knows that the ACC doesn’t actually own its own network… no?

  30. 2
    2

    Beavs going to the ACC wd be awful. Is Stanford going to subsidize Cal? Assuming Stanford goes and Cal stays, hard to believe with all the money sloshing around 38 million can’t be found to unleash SDSU to join the PAC.

  31. Was in Yellowstone today and I could swear I saw Jensen Huang here. Was tempted to approach the guy to ask if he had any plans to become the Beaver’s sugar daddy, but figured that could get awkward quickly if it wasnt him.
    Anybody know if he’s got a facebook page where they could check if he’s on vacation?

  32. Two ways to go:
    WSU puts out the well done tweet.
    OSU announces a “virtual town hall” for the OSU community…….set for 8/22 and 9/5.

    Barnes to participate 8/22, Murthy on 9/5

    • 4
      1

      Barnes on both. Provost on the first. Murthy on the second.
      Crowdsourcing both creativity and feedback is a good move. The fans and students should be a part of this.

    • Curious what the purpose will be for this meeting and who can join or participate. Is Barnes taking suggestions? Is he updating on what the plan is publicly? Is he being a politician to Beaver nation?

      If they are taking suggestions, or taking the temperature of Beavernation, someone meds to distill the 1700 comment thread into a cohesive presentation of rage, ideas and creative problem solving.

  33. Yes, Alas, I don’t have the skills to do that – but I hope there will be a voice from AB. Will any politicians participate? Steve Duin’s article in the O today about Kotek’s indifference to environmental issues. She won’t sniff this issue.

  34. 3
    1

    I think we know this, but interesting article about all of the teams who have struggled since following the money through realignment. Nebraksa aka TPB are of course one of the most glaring examples, but others like Missouri, Syracuse, and Colorado have become irrelevant in their new conferences with declining attendance. Out of spite, I would love to see the same thing happen to the Quacks, but they do have the “Uncle Phil’s money X-factor” and ESPN’s infatuation.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaf/2023/08/18/college-football-realignment-risks-nebraska-big-ten-big-12/70607979007/

    • Uncle Phil isn’t going to be around much longer. What happens after he passes?
      They’ll still probably reap ongoing financial benefits from Phil’s will, but who makes decisions and gives their programs direction after he’s gone.

        • 2
          2

          Even better if he is upset that the Ducks bailed on the Apple plan, left the PAC12 in the name of cash, as if he wasn’t enough for them. Perhaps he is upset enough to re-evaluate his leanings and decides to instantly switch all of his donor dollars to OSU instead. The greatest irony of all is if he did that right away, Beavs likely have a better shot to win it all at least with JS and staff in place.

          • I think there is a better chance get some of Phil’s money by embarrassing the ducks in the upcoming CW and then saying that OSU doubts the quacks sincerely want a game after dropping 3 of the last 4. But, if they do, it has to be at Reser and there has to be a BIG payoff for the Beavs.

        • from the joe beaver show…penny knight went to osu for one term, then went to psu. She met phil there while he was teaching, and she was one of his students. I forgot who the caller was, but he seemed to know the story.

    • 3
      9

      Self-awareness is a great thing to understand at any age. You clearly lack it. But maybe we can make some progress now. if, two weeks ago, the Big 10 had invited OSU to join their conference you would have been over the moon. You would not have been concerned about articles such as the one you linked to. I get your pissed. I would be too. But how ’bout you, and Beaver Nation, man up, own your shit, and stop whining. Maybe, just maybe, if you do that, the universe will reward you with something good.

      • 3
        1

        I’d be pissed if osu joined the big ten. Your team just sold its soul for money and longer travel that will get them 8 wins in a good year. We’ll see who’s whining in a few years.

      • 3
        2

        I lack “self-awareness” because as a fact jumping conferences has not worked out well for many P-5 teams. It would be great if OSU can maintain P-5 status, but going to the Big 10 would only stop the bleeding for a few years. If you as a Quack had any self-awareness, you would worship at the shrine of Phil Knight daily because as I’m sure you know that until his wallet opened up the Beavs and the Quacks were in the same athletic boat.

  35. Went to open house for the west side. Nice to see it all come together. Sat in the 4 seat boxes that are supposed to run 250k for 5 years. Had a nice reclining seat with a personal tv and great views. I don’t know if the new stadium capacity includes standing, because it looks like a lot more standing areas. I would think that standing near the 50 yard line would be a little higher price ticket. Can’t wait to see and hear the new “complete” stadium.

    • 10
      1

      Now the PAC gets national praise?!? The best way to disrupt all of these “nice” articles about the great teams of the conference would be for the remaining PAC4 to vote them out of the conference championship game, and revoke any revenue payouts for the upcoming year. I wonder how late they can wait to vote, needs to be 4 schools though I think.

      Decisions have consequences, traitors.

  36. Serious question: What is the argument against trying to stick it to the deserting teams as much as possible, for the remaining teams’ gain?

    • A few things that come to mind:
      -You don’t want to burn bridges for when the other teams want to reform the PAC in the future
      -With a chance to legitimately win the conference, they don’t want to exclude the majority of the conference and win on a technicality

      • 9
        2

        I’d say the bridges have already been burnt and if they want back into a rebuilt PAC12 in 5 years, it should cost them a steep entry fee and they should expect the schools left behind to do everything they can to benefit the future of the conference. It would be less personal and simply good business which would be a nice turn of events for the PAC.

        • 1
          3

          Don’t lose any sleep over those bridges. In five years the Big 10-SEC will have their “super league” in place. League members will be paying their players as employees, while receiving $80-$100 million in media revenue. May or may not be any good. But those that are in won’t be knocking on your door

          • In five years, it’s likely the ACC deal will be looking really good, and the overpaid B1G and SEC will find out what it means to market for subscriptions.

      • Hmm… pretty sure they’re not coming back though. No point in being all nice-nice after what went down on the chance that MAYBE they’ll be back and that will matter. And as for the winning on a technicality, if that’s what it takes there, better than sending the deserters off with a championship. If one of the PAC 4 can win anyway, no harm done by the exclusion.

        • Several ways to do this:
          1) withholding revenue, all or most needs to be done to protect the remaining teams from losing Power/revenue status and for rebuilding costs when a perfectly reasonable alternative was on the table. This might also apply to the costs involved in reabsorbing former PAC schools down the road.

          2) wrt championships, blocking all the exiting teams should be an option, but here are some other approaches: a) exclude the four teams whose actions directly lead to the current state of the conference. B) exclude teams whose players are on average “semi-pro” b/c of NIL deals (Might be the same teams as a)). C). Don’t block any teams b/c “student athletes” didn’t make these choices and/or in the spirit of competition.

    • What’s the switch?
      It used to be we just boomed the chant as a whole crowd. It was awesome. Then they started breaking it up between different sections, so one section would yell “O” and just sit there doing nothing for a while.
      Never understood why they did that.

  37. 6
    2

    We are approaching actual football finally. Here are some nuggets form across the conference of traitors.
    Utah: I’ve read some updates from Utah sites and they are kind of worried about Rising being ready. He is apparently practicing in spot drills and sets but not actually taking part in live action. The 2nd string qb had a major injury last week during their scrimmage, n o details, but it sounds like he may be out for an extended amount of time, I’d guess broken bone, rather than torn acl etc, not declared out for the season yet, They are also not working Kuethie on every practice. Utah will be vulnerable during a tough ealry schedule with 3rd string qb, no tight end and relying on their running game more than usual.

    UW: Sounds like Penix has had some arm soreness lately and has been taking some days off during camp to see if it gets better. Not a good sign for Husky fans. Huskies reporters all laud how great the receivers are because they saw several big 50+ yard plays during the scrimmage, not a good secondary and it will be a problem for the Huskies. Dline sounds great but the oline may be weak as well, giving a false reading on how good the dline really is.

    Ducks: New York City poster for Nix for Heisman, typical poor taste and self hype by the Ducks. Lanning talks up the greatness of his offense and how the defense needs to tackle better. Not much different from last year, all hype and no real substance when it will matter. No major injuries so far, but they are replacing several guys in their defense from last year too

    USC: Convinced they have 5 All American wide receivers and a top 5 defense made up of free agents form all over the country. Lots of hype about the 3 new freshmen oline guys supplanting the upperclassmen and expecting a freshman running back to be Marcus Allen. Feels like a lot of confidence and not really expecting much of a test until late in the season.

    Colorado: Deion Saunders is yelling at his players for not joining in a fight at practice. “If one of us fights, we all fight!” Nota family atmosphere unless you all fight each other I guess. I hope it implodes on their fake cowboy hats.

  38. 2
    9

    @ohiobeav: You’re working way too hard. Let me help you out, sport. What you want to say is this:
    Oregon State is great. Everybody else sucks.”
    No need to stay up late creating pretend analysis.
    Time to go ni-ni and dream of that CFP title for the Beans

    • 1
      4

      Relax “Ducks are easy to run over” troll. Concerning creating pretend analysis, I’m not pretending when I remember 19 straight runs and another OSU victory in the Civil War. How do you turn the page on your school’s treachery and back-stabbing nonchalance? Now that you chime in with your predictable condescending tone, I will agree. Beavs are great, and are going to be great this year and everybody else will struggle to be as good as last year, which I have been saying for a while.

      Ducks still can’t stop the run, and you should get used to 7-5 and 7th place in the BIG10.
      Make sure you get your Southwest credit card and keep track of your frequent flyer miles,
      Oh wait, I assume you’ve been to an airport before, but you probably haven’t left the trailer park.
      You enjoy your sweet dreams as you begin another year you won’t be winning a ‘natty’.
      3 things are certain in life: death, taxes and no natty for the ducks….”no natty for you, no natty for you, aaand no natty for you, no natty for you aaaaand no natty for you….”

  39. 5
    1

    I don’t know why people are considering WSU a tough game. They lost a lot of guys and coaches so I don’t think they’ll gel until later in the season. Ward is a good middle of the pac QB but isn’t talented enough to carry his offense. After 3 easier games before DJU should be feeling comfortable as well as the rest of the team. That being said I know Pullman hasn’t been kind to the Beavs but this isn’t the same kind of team it’s been on either side. Beavs should and need to start out 4-0.

    • 2
      1

      Agree, I have them as one of the easier Ws on the schedule.

      Btw, did the Beavs scrimmage this weekend? Havent seen any reports but also havent looked closely

    • 2
      1

      Why? 1)Pullman always tough place to play, just like Corvallis. Just ask Oregon and Utah who were lucky to get out of Pullman with wins last season. 2) Serious trap game situation. OSU plays UTAH the next game on a Friday. Easy to look ahead and not be fully prepared.

        • Right- people are getting way ahead of themselves. Beavs are going to be tough for sure, but Pullman is a damn tough place to play. Which is one of the reasons the Cougs and Beavs have been shafted. I agree with others posting here- the big money assholes hate losing to these 2 schools, in any sport.

      • These aren’t the same teams. They had a massive turnover on their roster and coaching staff and it’s early into the season so they all won’t be too comfortable and familiar scheme wise.

        The reason we haven’t won in Pullman in a decade is because they had leach and we had what we had. That’s changed on both sides and are completely different teams.

        If the Beavs can’t win in this game then that’ll really hurt the season as they would have to win every other game or at least all but 1 to make the championship.

    • I’m old enough to remember clearly how it felt to go down to Fresno and lose by 20 after being on ranked #1 on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 2001 and limp to a 5-7 season. Apple and oranges as that team lost so much from the Fiesta Bowl squad. I’m excited for the SJSU game cause I think they’re likely to really out class them in a way that OSU fans aren’t used to seeing in a season opening game against a decent G5 opponent, let alone an FCS one.

      But, I’ll wait to get excited in anticipation for the rest of the schedule after I see them play football for real, and as others have mentioned, the way the schedule plays out and peaks in difficult at the end with away games @UW and @UO, the @WSU game stands out as a clear trap-game scenario with the potential to be overlooked, and Pullman is a real tough place to get a win. But looking at it at this point from the pre-season, 42-17 Beavs.

  40. 1
    3

    Word is Cam Rising and his backup are both injured and still not fully participating in Fall Camp, possibly leaving Utah to start the season with their third string QB.

    Is it bad of me to say that I hope he takes a bit longer to recover, then has a miraculous recovery that happens the day after we play them ;)?

        • He was injured in the Rose Bowl and then had surgery probably a week later. To return by the first game would put him at 7 months post surgery. That’s a pretty aggressive timeline.

          A comparable example is Kyler Murray. He tore his ACL late last year and had surgery in January. He’s expected to miss the start of the NFL season.

          I’d guess Rising will be ok to play by end of Sep but he won’t have his running ability to help him out.

  41. Just saw a Beirtbart news article had an analyst report urging Apple TV to purchase ESPN from Disney and use live sports to round out its programs and streaming content. Estimated $50 BILLION for entire ESPN bucket of assets.
    Ironic after every ESPN talking head mocked the Apple deal from Kliakoff but they effectively become the Apple deal within weeks/months.

  42. 13

    The irony would be that the Pac rats jumped ship too soon. May they all drown. Stanford begging the ACC for admission is something out of Dickens. Please,sirs, if you’ll just let me in, I won’t be any trouble, and I can pay you with my endowment begging.

    • Things to consider:
      1. Notre Dame is only obliged to play 5 ACC games. Stanford would be one they insist on playing annually.
      2. Even with the same distributions, adding a Bay Area school (or two) means higher travel costs.
      3. All else equal, longer travel times to visit the West Coast and return are known to be factors which will devalue the product on the field.

  43. Was the Apple deal really “that bad” or am I alone in thinking it was a great way to monetize the Pac-12 Network? By getting Apple deal, then Apple buying ESPN, then having Apple having the ability to put Pac-12 games onto ESPN with having purchased said ESPN? Am I wrong in thinking this as an option?

    • 4
      1

      Apple’s deal was about 5-6 years ahead of it’s time. Bad now but good later.

      It’s quite a stretch to think Apple would buy ESPN. More likely, they’ll just outbid them for content.

    • It was a good deal, as indicated by Phil Knight’s reaction to it (reportedly). Sifting through the reports, it seems the dispositive voice in all this was the UW head coach. He was asked by his AD what he thought of the Apple deal. He said (reportedly) that not being on “linear” TV will make it harder to recruit. So the UW AD (now since decamped to SC; more on that anon) goes to the UW Pres. and says (in effect): “our coach isn’t happy with the Apple deal.” That tilts the UW president into the Big 10 camp. Thus, contrary to what I said earlier, it was UW who bolted for the 10 and brought Oregon with them. It was a stampede: the kind of thing that destroys the stock market from time to time. Panic.

      As for the UW AD leaving for SC, it only goes to show how mercenary both the institutions and people who run them have become.

    • if it’s true that Apple was also going to commit $100m in first year advertising then it was for sure a good deal. Part of the reason the PTN failed was because it was not available to certain TV providers. A 100m advertising budget and the widespread availability of Apple TV to consumers would’ve most likely really driven subscription numbers for people that could previously not access PTN. I think it was very feasible to reach the subscription marks needed to reach higher payout tiers especially as more conferences move towards the streaming model in the future. Most of the bad press around the deal was created by the schools with other conference offers that wanted to minimize blame for jumping ship imo

        • I see our old pal Schnell took a break from the grazing long enough to comment on the pac network not playing the sc ad presser live.

          That ding dong is so brain dead I’m guessing she didn’t realize both of the schools involved are no longer part of the pac?

          The pac network needs more of this. And scheduling all the defector’s games amongst them at 8 pm with exclusive rights, unless of course they are playing one of the final 4

          • wouldn’t that be sweet. Put the Cougs and Beavs on at 12:30-to 7 window and relegate the 10’s and 12’s on “after dark”

          • Exactly, jam those fools up; we control the assets, we control the product and the narrative. They can enjoy that 8 pm time slot, with all of the ‘desirable games’ of that group, being on the home channel, pac network.

  44. Washington losss their AD to USC.
    Softy the radio guy is pushing for UW to try grabbing Chris Peterson back as a replacement, with Scott Barnes as his #2 option. Several Husky fans are down with the Barnes idea.
    Just what we need is a rudderless ship in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle

    • I mean why not. Everyone is looking out for themselves and it’s hard to blame them at this point. UW AD jumps ship to a school that gets a full rev share.

    • Would Casey take the job? I’m all for it if he takes the job, but who knows if he wants to be in charge of all the athletics at his age.

      • hire Casey. a fighter. good reputation with donors. a national name. can raise money from former players, like they already did with Ellsbury. About which, can you imagine the number Adley is going to bring in on his next contract?

      • Casey isn’t the answer for AD. It’s like UW wanting Peterson. These guys are coaches, not administrators. Fans want them because they have a great reputation but they’ve never shown a interest or skills in being the AD.

        • well, I’d say Moose Krause (ND back in the day), Barry Alvarez (Wisconsin) , Frank Broyles (Arkansas), Tom Holmoe (BYU) are some apparent “exceptions” to the rule.

          • Ahhhh, it’s all coming to light now…Gary Andersen was a plant to start the beavs on ruination, so they could be relegated and the pac could be dismantled giving the b1g more power and lead to a two conference NFL minor league; Old Barry was playing the long game.

      • Apparently deboer is already running the uw ad, reports suggest he told the ad to nix the apple deal. Fuck that guy I hope the beavs obliterate that fucking guy’s squad. I only prey no uw fans are sitting in front of me at that game, I really don’t want to go to jail

      • It’s interesting that the deboer news leaks around the same time Cohen departs for SC.

        “Additionally, Cohen is a Southern California native who was recently named to the College Football Playoff selection committee.”

        Tinfoil hat time?

  45. Read that Tyjon Lindsey had a good game for Seahawks against the Cowboys. Article suggested he may get stashed on the practice squad.

  46. 3
    3

    Paranoia seeping in. Are the ACC and Stanford. required to announce a deal in a time frame? I think of how trustingly patient we have been (stupidly, actually) believing we’d soon get results and being shat upon. OTOH, who, if anyone, is out there in the vapor doing Anything? ,Who can set a deadline? I have visions of Stanford saying ‘we meant to tell you.”

    • Scott Ferrell (on the bench) had a guy on his show today mocking the idea of Cal and Stanford being an “addition” to the ACC, in terms of football at least. He mocked: “if the conference wanted to upgrade in anticipation of losing some schools or otherwise, they’d be better off adding Oregon State and the Cougs.” True nuff. In this new portal environment Stanford is never going to enjoy the success they had under early Shaw. Cal football is so irresolute and irrelevant that even Joe Starkey called it quits.

  47. 10

    Alton Julian “has been fully cleared for contact, and is ramping up to a high snap count. Julian participated in the closed scrimmage on Saturday (15-20 snaps) and was running with the third team again today.”
    Per sedge.

  48. The latest bad news scenario goes along these lines:

    P4 conferences: SEC, ACC, Big10, Big12 all join forces to vote a change in playoff qualifiers, no longer a given for conference champs to be an auto bid.
    Change the parameters to top 12 in rankings.
    The P4 begins to ponder 10 game conference schedules as they add more teams. Meaning less non conference games, and essentially taking away meaningful games from the seconds conferences.
    This then creates a tug of war with all other conferences like AAC, MAC, MWC etc due to a closed off system.
    The P4 conferences as they have expanded have also begun tightening the hold on access to the financial
    Windfall of the expanded playoff structure. It wasn’t going to be an equal playing field for the smaller conferences, only suggested as such. This is why the madness occurred this so quickly. As wannabeav said in the previous thread, they already had a vote planned for end of August to shrink the P4 conferences and reset the power structure for access. Lesser conferences will be caught between wanting access and needing to schedule important games with P4 schools to justify a higher ranking. P4 schools will hold the lesser conferences hostage to non conference schedule or playoff access and neither will be helpful without the other.
    And this is why Beavs can’t go to MWC. Attempting to maintain P5 status at all costs until it just doesn’t work out is the best route.

    • “P5” means there are 5 conferences in the CFP race, but who decides that? What makes anyone think there won’t be only 4 power conferences regardless of what the remaining Pac schools do?

    • From what I have read, the board that decides the playoff system is composed of Power 5 and G5 conference presidents. Don’t know if the “elite” 4 can force their will on the whole of the board. The board of managers that oversee the playoffs are 5 from G5, Notre Dame and Washington State.

      • The “P” schools hold 80% of the election power. “G” schools hold the other 20%. It’s rigged and there’s nothing that can be done to stop the destruction of D1 football, unless the courts get involved.

        • First they came for the Big 8 and I said nothing
          Then they came for the Pac and I said nothing
          Then they came for the ACC and I said nothing’
          Then they came for the bxii and I said…

        • The College Football Playoff Board of Managers is a group of university presidents and chancellors that oversees the College Football Playoff (CFP). They are responsible for making decisions about the playoff format and other related matters. Each member of the board has one vote1. 5 P5 votes ( including 1 from Pac ) 5 from G5 and 1 from Notre Dame. Have not found anything that says G5 only gets 20%. But I guess the “elite” can take their football and start a new league outside of NCAA.

          • based on this, I see votes going this way:

            G5 = 5 votes to keep Pac-12 P5 status and keep CFP with 6 autobids for conference champs OR 4 P4 and 2 G5 Autobids.
            Pac-12 1 Vote to keep itself P5 or 4 P4 and 2 G5 Autobids
            P4 = 4 no votes to keep Pac-12 as Power Conference and 4 no votes for 4 P4 autobids and 2 G5 autobids. 4 votes for 4 P4 autobids and 1 G5 autobid
            ND = 1 vote yes vote to keep Pac-12 P5 status and keep CFP with 6 autobids for conference champs OR 4 P4 and 2 G5 Autobids.

            7-4 in favor of keeping Pac-12 in Power conference OR going to 4 P4 and 2 G5 autobids.

          • wannabeav posted above on the same subject I’ll paste part of it here:
            “I analyzed this in the previous thread. The 10 FBS conferences plus ND have a weighted voting system. The power 5 and ND as a group have 80% of the voting strength; the G5 have 20%. I don’t know how the 80% breaks out but I do know that the SEC and 10 are angling for 50% just for themselves. The other 8 conferences would be crazy to go along with this scheme”

            I guess the question is what is a weighted version of voting?

          • ok so it breaks up with G5 = .44 vote per conference and ND + P5 get 1.46 vote per conference.

            G5 = 2.2 votes for Pac-12 = P5 or 4 P4 and 2 G5 Autobids
            P4 = 5.84 votes against both those options
            Pac-12 = 1.46 votes for P5 or P4 and 2 G5 autobids
            ND = 1.46 vote

            If ND sides with Pac-12 and G5, they would not have the votes to overturn the P4 conferences. So essentially, we would need either the Big XII or ACC to side with the Pac-12 to keep their autonomy or allow them to lose autonomy, but give P4 4 autobids and G6 2 autobids.

            By losing P5 status though, we end up losing .8 of the vote and if the ACC goes away, then they could lose their Power conference status as well. So I would hope the ACC sides with us so they can keep their autonomy when their conference implodes.

  49. Speaking of wannabeav, up above (only three days ago) he asked opinions on Zach Bryan’s music; how about reactions to the work of Tom Russell?
    Blue Wing, Mineral Wells, Gallo del Cielo, St Olav’s Gate, etc, etc.

    Oh, a reminder that the OSU Town Hall takes place tomorrow; we’ll see if anything worthwhile comes of it.

        • I’m tired of Zach Bryan and formula songs, so it really confuses me when artists with organic followings get lumped in with marketing darlings.

          • Are you confusing Zach Brown with Zach Bryan? Zach Bryan was self producing his music on YouTube with an iPhone while serving in the Navy. He wasn’t a marketing darling.

          • That’s the marketing.
            I give him props for being smart as hell in that regard. But his music sounds like he was self-producing on YT with an iPhone while serving in the Navy. I had a friend in Texas become enamored enough with him to go to one of his shows. He is no longer enamored. However, the Red Rocks product–where he has actual musicians on the stage playing some of his hooks–shows he has some promise as a songwriter.
            That’s the new model. Plug into Twitch or IG or Tik Tok, and you’re better off than being Nashville’s next big thing. I can’t remember the other guy from Wyoming doing this, but it’s now a formula for fame.
            Open mikes are now iPhone opportunities, not where an artist goes to hone their craft and distill their sound.

  50. 2
    1

    It just dawned on me that the talking heads (SEC mouthpieces) are using the same logic with conference realignment as they did with destroying the bowl system. They justify the direction of these changes by denigrating the undesirable games or programs in order to create support for their plans.
    “Who really watches …… vs…….. anyway?”
    Or “Who really watches Oregon St football anyway?”
    The question implies the matchup has no value if lots of people aren’t tuning in to watch. The obvious answer is people who value the game and the teams tune in to watch, but this doesn’t satisfy the monsters trying to ruin college football. The circular reasoning of rigged preseason rankings and bad time slots lead to poor ratings and less important games. Some teams are already fighting a rigged system and the Beavs are one of them. I do hope the Beavs can have a magical run this year and flip the whole narrative.

    • 2
      2

      I’ve seen this narrative all over twitter, too.

      ‘The teams left behind had no eyeballs’

      Completely ignoring wazzu’s crazy following or the fact that a team like the beavs played almost every game after 7 pm pt, no one is fucking awake at 10 on the east coast to watch a game. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad product, derp.

      It’s one more reason a streaming product would be beneficial, people can flip between the compelling games and not have bama constantly shoved down our throats every week.

      • 5
        3

        If you take out the 7 games that were either on the Pac-12 Network or the Fresno State game on CBS Sports because neither network reports their viewership, the Beavers averaged 1.08M viewers in their nationally televised games. They are averaging our viewership against those 7 games we were relegated to the Pac-12 Networks or the CBS Sports game. The 625k average matches the day game against ASU on ESPN2 last year, but when the Beavs are on ESPN or ABC, they get between 1-3.5M viewers depending upon the matchup.

        Boise St 1.25M, Stanford 1.08M, UW 1.15M on ESPN2 Friday Night, ASU 484k Civil War 3.56M, Vegas Bowl 2.45M = 1.48M

        Oregon’s games:
        Georgia 6.2M, BYU 2.58M, WSU 2.27M, Stanford 672k, Cal 738k, Colorado 962k, UW 3.63M, Utah 2.54M, CW 3.56M, Bowl Game 3.97M

        You throw out the Georgia game as an outlier and Oregon has 1.64M average viewers over 9 games. That’s a difference between 160k average viewers. Imagine had the Oregon State vs USC game and Utah game had been on National TV. Would have had the same viewerships most likely.

        In comparison, Georgia Tennessee had 13+M viewers and the SEC championship with Georgia LSU had 10+M viewers.

        https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/college-football-tv-ratings/

        • Thanks for doing the legwork.

          Unfortunately to complex and difficult to get all that into a reply to rando troll who in busy gargling the orchestrated media narrative of ‘no eyeballs’

        • Seems like the easiest way to calculate potential viewers is to look at average class size at each school. A certain percentage are going to watch games, regardless of which market they live in.
          Its not like every OSU fan or alum lives in Corvallis or even the Willamette Valley.

          • Probably not as true for SEC schools, though (and some others). In some places, it’s just more of a cultural expectation that you’ll watch “the game.”

          • I’m mostly just talking about Pac(former Pac) schools and their relative market size.
            Sure UCLA is in Los Angeles, but do they really have an LA vs Corvallis sized following?

  51. 2
    1

    Speaking of anti-trust, Kirk Schultz, WSU Pres., is quoted today on the “Awful Announcing” site that ESPN and Fox (principally) were scared to death about big-bucks Apple getting into carrying college football because they were afraid of the competition, having over-leveraged themselves. Thus, FOX lured UW and UO (in that order) out of the Pac into the 10 in order to sabotage the deal. Those supposed big brains at Stanford, are too stupid to realize that they have been played by UW and the rest, and continue to give the back of the hand to the company in their backyard (Apple) by chasing the same dinosaur arrangements with the ACC.

    Speaking of Disney, their stock is at a 5 year low. Watch Apple buy ESPN at a bargain rate this fall. Then the real bloodletting at the death star in Connecticut will begin. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.

    • Jen Cohen gets UW to the B10 weeks before bolting for USC. Knowing that she added UW,and by extension, UO to her new employer’s conference. Now USC has two additional west coast travel partners in the conference.

      If that isn’t some shady $&!t I don’t know what is.

      • Within two weeks, the person in charge of uw athletics applies the kill shot to a 100 yo conference then jumps to old rival/new conference partner? Ya don’t say?

        I’m perfectly certain it’s all just a crazy coincidence, as all high ranking college officials make snap judgments affecting their institutions not to mention their growing families in the matter of hours/days from start to finish.

        Canzano is infatuated with her though so I’m sure we’ll get the sexual misconduct angle somewhere soon

  52. Next up for the SEC/Media syndicate is the destruction of the NCAA as an entity.
    Colin Cowherd just had a guest talking about Harbaugh’s situation as the catalyst for Big10/SEC to draw their line and push back at NCAA until they simply walk out on the NCAA altogether.

    I’d guess that this same syndicate was behind the heavy handed punishments for USC after Reggie Bush, which crippled the PAC12 reputation for a decade and now the syndicate is using NCAA inconsistencies in punishment as a reason for abandoning it and replacing it with their own version of a governing body. SMH

    • 2
      1

      So… cheating and lying are good. And then being belligerent to the point nobody in your conference wants to be seen trying to help you is how we should all act.
      Got it.

  53. Elsewhere in the ex-PAC: ASU presumed starting QB (and ND transfer) Drew Pyne injures his hamstring with no timetable for a return (which doesn’t bode well). True freshman Jayden Rashada (of the infamous disappearing $13M NIL deal at Florida) named starter.

    The one scheduling break we didn’t get this season was playing Arizona instead of ASU.

  54. It’s behind a paywall now, but it’s announced DJ Uiagelelei is the starter for the Beavs and the backup battle is between Ben Gulbranson and Aidan Chiles. My guess is, Aidan will become the backup after the UC Davis game, but maybe they will work to preserve his redshiirt year, but give him looks. Makes you wonder if Throckmorton will transfer or stick it out through the end of the year?

    https://www.oregonlive.com/beavers/2023/08/oregon-state-tabs-clemson-transfer-dj-uiagalelei-as-its-2023-starting-quarterback.html

    • I could see both Gulbranson and Throckmorton transferring, unless they commit to BG as a clear #2 and are explicit about redshirting Chiles.

      Throckmorton is going to need to go the FCS route to get immediate playing time. Gulbranson could start somewhere in the bottom half of the MWC. Those are just comments on their potential transfer prospects, not necessarily their abilities.

      The other dynamic that may enter the equation: does Chiles get handled differently knowing they’ll need to convince him to stick around next season when we aren’t playing P5 football?

      • From what I have heard and communicated with Aidan’s parents, they’re all in with Oregon State. Aidan is solid and not looking to go anywhere else. Aidan is going to the veterinarian program. He would have to transfer to another AG college who has that degree and football. In regards to Ben Gulbranson, he’s going to become a Doctor and wants to do what’s best for the team anyway that he can right now. It’s the Juniors we need to worry about transferring after the season.

        • That’s usually a five year commitment, but I imagine it can be accelerated with summer sessions. Still, it takes a quarter of being on call at the clinic, as part of it.

    • It’s refreshing to have a university president freely speak their mind to the media. He’s been saying what everyone is thinking. Kudos to him.

      The crazy thing is schools like AZ applying to another conference “just in case the Pac12 collapses”…which would be caused by teams leaving the conference. So dumb.

      • I’m gunna keep chipping away at the foundation of my house but I’ll put an offer on another house just in case this one falls over so I’m not homeless

    • Here is the crazy thing about math:

      Stanford and Cal have stated to the ACC that they are willing to forego any tv money payouts for the first “few” years if they are added. If that was a possibility, why didn’t they offer their shares to be split among the other 7 remaining schools as Apple was negotiating?
      Apple deal @ $23/yr per school for a 3 year window would be
      $23m x 6= $138 mil
      $46m divided 7 schools = $6.6 mil per school
      $6,6 mil plus $23mil gets everyone who left to $29.6 mil and possibly keeps the PAC12 together but I don’t think that was anyones intention at the end of it all.

      • I think Stanford and Cal were asleep at the switch and when everything came down they were stunned they had nowhere to go. Stanford was in the middle of their president resigning and a leadership void at the top. Now they are scrambling. It’s obvious they want nothing to do with us or Wazzu but they may not have any choice for now.

        • 9
          1

          Maybe OSU/WSU should offer to allow Stanford to be part of the new PAC at discounted payouts since they want out so badly. Stanford gets 1/2 of what they would normally get just based on the sheer disrespect they are showing to OSU/Wazzu

  55. The fact that Smith went out of his way to name a QB this early in camp seems significant.
    Is it because DJ has jist been that much more dominant in camp?
    Is it because he is tired of being asked?
    Is it to help encourage a different scholarship QB to transfer out?
    FWIW, I’ve had a few people tell me in DMs that the oassing game has been pretty impressive in camp and a big step ahead of where it’s been in the past few years. Not that the bar has been very high recently, but still very welcome news.
    Looking forward to see what our speedy WRs can do this season with a QB who can stretch the field.
    Martinez is going to have so much more room to operate when we run.
    My main concern is Lindgren stays more focused on moving the chains and not going for the home run too frequently.

      • He looks like an NFL QB out there…just physically different. Great that he’s thoughtful and wants to learn too.

        I think most pundits are underestimating him and his potential this season. No personal distractions (parents’ divorce), playing behind the #3 OLine in the country, a top shelf running game, TE safety valves…only real question is how the smallish WRs will fare, but their lack of height can be compensated somewhat with play calling and obviously his throwing ability. Brandin Cooks wasn’t tall either….

  56. Been on the road most of the month and havent followed things very closely. Has there been any update on the Minnesota transfer’s eligibility for this season?

  57. 20
    2

    All this behind the scenes fuckery put on by the USC/UCLA/0re/UW athletic directors and the networks to kill the PAC-12 is going to make for some groundbreaking lawsuits. The lawsuits may just be what brings the whole system down.

  58. Is there anything in the Pac-charter (?) that has a deadline for departufre after declaring they want 2 go elsewhere? The ACC presidents calling off their meeting today . . .Beavs & Cougs are being screwed with. Did Andrew Luck just send us a nice foto to admire? or is he doing something – anything.?

  59. Predictably I suppose and right on schedule, Heartland Sports has a link to a New York Post article in which SEC/Big10 are bluntly warning any conference seeking to interfere with further consolidation of power will be effectively PAC12’d and summarily disposed of in like manner. This is a warning shot to the Big12 to stand down on the August 30 vote regarding playoff restructuring in which SEC/Big10 plan to have 4 spots each assured which means hundreds of millions of dollars at stake in this stare down.

    Will ACC and Big12 blink and shrink passively or will they push back and attempt to stop the madness as much as they can?

    • Makes me sick. Is there going to be a new league between FCS and the idiots. What they are doing is throwing traditional college football in the crapper. I remember when I was a kid in the 60’s my Dad would have a new year’s party. I was sent to Oaks Park with my brother to skate. But he would rent a couple TVs so they could watch the multiple games. Since then, they figured out to quit competing for bowl time slots. I can see where it is all going, but what I can’t see is where I continue as a fan. The elite select players, the have nots recruit. The elite can buy any player away from the have nots. So why do the have nots still play with the elite? I think the have nots should quit playing against the elite, let them play each other for 12 games a season. I don’t know how you could get a boycott of elite teams to ever get any traction. I think there will be an NFL farm team league and I guess a very large FCS league.

    • Here’s an excerpt from the NY Post article that shows where this could go. Pac-12 needs to survive period.

      “Yahoo Sports reported last week that the CFP committee is meeting on Aug. 30 to decide how to divvy up revenue (either among the nine FBS conferences besides the Pac-12, or perhaps the remaining power-four of the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12), and how to determine automatic bids versus at-large bids.”

      It’s one source that made the comment about staying out of the way of the Big Ten and SEC:

      “The latest wave of conference realignment is expected to give the SEC and the Big Ten even more influence on the College Football Playoff.Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
      The chatter for weeks has been that conferences not named the Big Ten and SEC should be careful about overplaying their hands with revenue or automatic qualifier demands. One source cautioned to The Post that the other conferences risk implosion along the lines of the Pac-12, which greatly overvalued itself in network rights negotiations, if they stand too obstinately in the way of what the Big Ten and SEC want.
      OutKick founder Clay Travis tweeted earlier this month: “Depending on how the CFB playoff criteria are changed, there is also the possibility the SEC & Big Ten create their own 12-team college football playoff and give half the games to ESPN and half to Fox and crown their own champion.”
      The Yahoo Sports story also alluded to the idea that the Big Ten and SEC “are expected to now hold even more clout in the CFP room” in the quest for a greater share of revenue and voting rights and a desire to take the 12 best teams, downplaying the idea of automatic qualifiers from other conferences.”

  60. Rising Star Power 5 Assistant Coaches……..that’s the title of a piece from On3
    Included are Ryan Gunderson, now QB coach at UCLA and Beavs Brian Wozniak.
    Wozniak gets points for sending Musgrave to the NFL, but isn’t it time for his TE’s to contribute during college?
    Anyway, how long will good assistants stay if Beavs aren’t P5?

    Oh, no mention in the article of Coach M………..guess he’s not “rising”, but ARRIVED.
    https://www.on3.com/news/30-rising-star-power-five-assistant-coaches-you-need-to-know/

  61. The rehiring of Stephen Thompson as assistant coach to the basketball program just shows you where OSU is at right now. And a pretty strong indicator that people don’t see a gig on this staff as a stepping stone to anything good.

    While I realize that there are only so many places for players to play college football – we are more likely to go back to the Gary Anderson era of competing against MWC schools for players and maybe get a few transfers who are looking for playing time they didn’t get at P5 schools. But the biggest problem will be the money. Forget NIL, just being able to fund a staff, will be an effort without a decent media rights deal.

    The Pac-12 managed to hit the sweet spot of worst possible outcome. I almost think conference presidents hung together as long as they did because THEY KNEW if the P12 went kaput, all of their idiotic decisions, indecisions and suggestions would come crawling out of the woodwork. If it just downgraded the football program, that would be bad enough, but figure the gymnastics, women’s hoops, soccer and baseball programs will also feel the pinch as well.

    • If we retain these coaches, we continue to win.
      The doom and gloom is old stuff. We didn’t grow up with 400 off-season natties.
      We’ll earn ours.

  62. 2
    6

    To all you nayseyers out there, what is our fight song again?

    OSU our hats are off to you
    Beavers Beavers fighters through and through
    We’ll root for every man
    We’ll cheer for every stand
    That’s made for Ol’ O-S-U
    RAH RAH RAH RAH
    Those who go marching down the field
    Those of IRON their STRENGTHS will never yield
    HAIL HAIL HAIL
    HAIL HAIL To Ol’ O-S-U
    O-S-U Fight! B-E-A-V-E-R-S

    Does this fight song mean nothing to you? Let’s change the words “Fighters” to Whiners or Quitters. Secondly, let’s change “root for” and “cheer for” with “abandon” or “walk away from”. Lastly, let’s change “Strengths” to “weaknesses and “Will” instead of “never”. There’s your fight song if you give up after this season.

    Quitters fight song:

    OSU our hats were off to you
    Beavers Beavers quitters through and through
    We’ll abandon every man
    We’ll walk away from every stand
    That’s made for Ol’ O-S-U
    BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH
    Those who went marching down the field
    Those of IRON their weaknesses will always yield
    HAIL HAIL HAIL
    HAIL HAIL To Ol’ O-S-U
    O-S-U Quit! B-E-A-V-E-R-S

      • 7
        1

        I’m tired of people saying they’ll quit on Oregon State all together after the season if we’re not in Power conference next year without even putting up a fight. Not watching or helping to keep Oregon State in the lime light or allow the university to crumble and fall gets my blood boiling more than anything. Don’t watch ANY game except Oregon State and Group of 5 games this year. Don’t watch ANY B1G, ACC, Big XII, and especially the SEC games. Show them their games are unwatchable if they move to shut teams out of a chance at the CFP. Conference champions may not be ranked, but they won their conference and should be rewarded. Whether the SEC and possibly the B1G decide to bully the CFP into giving them more autonomy than they have will be the death blow of College Football. If Scott Barnes leaves OSU for UW, then we have our answer where he thinks this thing is truly headed. If he stays at OSU, then we know he’s not giving up and he’s willing to fight.

        • 3
          2

          Some of us don’t want to watch MWC football all season and our school’s teams wither away due to reduced funding and exposure out of our control. There is nothing wrong with that. Life is too hard and short to spend free time on depressing things.

          I agree with not watching the overhyped B1G SEC blah “oh boy Alabama/Georgia/Ohio State a-freaking-gain” stupidity. I’ll probably keep my streaming services through the next few months, in case there’s some great Beaver game this year, and then cancel after. I don’t really care for Disney/ESPN, anyway.

          • I get you don’t want to watch us play in the MWC, but how do you think the players feel knowing fans will abandon them without getting all the details first? Let’s see how this all plays out before assuming doom and gloom. There’s still an outside chance we go to the Big XII. Weigh all our options, find the best path forward, execute it and then see what happens. MWC has 2 years left of their media deal. Eventually, ND will go into a conference with USC and Stanford in the B1G. It makes the most sense as they have more rivalries in the B1G than in ACC and the ACC is going to be dead anyways. So we’re already going to lose Stanford at some point in all of this down the road.

          • 4
            4

            Who cares how the players feel? It’s our life and limited time. They have to figure out a way to play in a shitty conference and make it matter. It’s due to Riley and the lost decade when change could have mattered. People didn’t care when it mattered. Now the same people want fans to care? Give me a break. The time for that was 2009 when Riley was shot after the bowl game. You could argue the time was even before that when it was obvious the program had a win cap on it. You (i.e. OSU fans as a unit) can’t care now after the fact and after the damage is done.

        • 4
          2

          I like where your heart is, and I agree with not quitting on Oregon State, but you’re talking about trying to step in front of a freight train. What’s happening is going to happen regardless of what Beaver fans do. Honestly, I don’t think a lot of Pac12 fans watch those other conference games unless a Pac12 team is playing them. So if all of Beaver Nation stopped watching those other conference games, it’s just a drop in the barrel for the networks. And since most of the Pac12 is now part of those other conferences, they just added a huge number of new viewers. So even if the remaining 4 schools’ fan base didn’t watch any of those games, it’s still a net increase in viewership. The networks know this and it’s why they don’t give two shits about the remaining teams.
          There’s nothing you can do about it from your couch.

          • The problem is, the narrative is wrong. People watch our games. 5 out of our 6 nationally televised games last year garnered over 1.08M viewers. Oregon had 3 of their nationally televised games under 1M viewers. Our average viewership was 1.46M over 6 games. Oregon, not counting Georgia game because it was Georgia, had 1.64M viewers in the span of 9 games. @ASU game was our only game that had less than 500k viewers watch in a day game on ESPN2. The others were on ESPN and at night. So it’s interesting we had more viewership at night(Which ESPN needs right now apparently) than our only day game in November.

            This season will get more eyeballs on us and we will be the cinderella team and there will be an outcry as to why we’re being left out.

          • 3
            3

            I like where your heart is, and I agree with not quitting on Oregon State, but you’re talking about trying to step in front of a freight train. What’s happening is going to happen regardless of what Beaver fans do.

            Agree on all of this, Doozeldorf. The best thing an OSU fan can do is not watch any football, period. Now will they do that? No. But that’s actually the way to incite change and/or have a meaningful impact.

        • 1
          5

          Scotty is right. We have limited time. To spend it watching Mountain West football is not something a lot of people are going to want to do, and that’s the correct decision. There are many more rewarding things to do. We could always check in late in the year if the Beavs are vying for something. This makes a person smart with their limited time, not a fair weather fan or anything else.

          If someone decides that’s how they want to spend their limited time on the planet, that’s also okay and their prerogative/their life, but to me it sets them up for a death bed regret as they bypass many more rich and rewarding experiences.

          • To each his own. One persons death bed regret may be another’s treasured memories. Don’t judge whether fans stay or go given how surreal this last
            few weeks have been.
            The reality is PAC12 has died and MWC is not the PAC12 we have enjoyed and taken for granted as a constant part of our sports landscape. A relegation to lesser competition will naturally result in less interest, major caveat, unless OSU begins to purely dominate the MWC type schools. Even such a result would take years for a bandwagon movement to become something akin to a rabid fan base. It will be more likely a small minority of steady fans continue but the vast majority just move on and no longer have an appetite for OSU athletics if it isn’t at the highest level. OSU fans haven’t exactly been catered to by the administration within the school over the years anyway. OSU historically at the admin level hasn’t cared much about OSU sports so it is no surprise when such an attitude populates out into the alums.
            JS is a counter culture figure at OSU, as was Erickson, Casey, & Rueck. Success isn’t expected or demanded so it is an uphill battle for fans at large.

          • 1
            1

            As noted: If someone decides that’s how they want to spend their limited time on the planet, that’s also okay and their prerogative/their life

            I think it’s a bad use of time, but in my youth I wasted a lot of time vicariously on sports and regret it now in my 40s (!! lol), so I can’t imagine being 80 and looking back on life and saying “my accomplishment was watching mountain west football”…but if someone does, cool. I don’t agree with the memories argument. I can make better memories than that on a Saturday. But again, it’s their use of time. But the guy above is holding against people who don’t want to do that, and I think that’s ridiculous.

            People have to make their own decisions here, and there is no right, only gradients and what our future selves will or won’t care about.

          • I understand priorities change in life. I do. If we do end up in the Mountain West for a time, but later down the road get back into a power conference and you decided your time was better spent not following Oregon State sports, than don’t come crawling back at that point. That’s what I’m saying. Sports is cyclical. This is a desperate money grab to get as much money for the top teams in the top conferences and not spreading the wealth around. This house of cards will come crashing down. For the last oh, 8 years or so, I have watched only 2-3 games on any given Saturday. It was primarily Pac-12 football. I never watch the SEC, ACC, and occasionally I’ll turn on a B1G or Big XII game in the past. Now, I will only watch Oregon State and any team in their conference in the late time slots after kids go to bed.

            The 2013 game @ Utah was the weekend I got married and had a honeymoon at the coast. That is a memorable weekend for me because of the comeback win in that game on the road. I also was in the Club Seats when we beat #6 ASU with my prego wife in 2014. So ya, I have a lot of memories from my childhood from going to games. There is more to life than sports, but sports teaches you something, no matter how hard you play the game, there will be winners and there will be losers. I refuse to let us be the losers in this situation.

          • then don’t come crawling back at that point. That’s what I’m saying.

            Why? People can do what they want with their time. If they have something better to do for a decade, they should do that. “Crawling back” when things matter is actually what people probably should do. Like if you were to ask AI to optimize your life (lol) that would very likely be the answer and best use of time.

          • I watched a lot more football when my kids were younger. As they got older our fall Saturdays are much better spent on the river or in the woods. It helped that the OSU football product was mostly shit during that time. We’ve watched some in the last year or two when it was convenient.

            Now WFO Jr is a sophomore swinging up to varsity so I’ll be getting my football fix twice a week live while he gets his JV/Varsity minutes. We’ll probably still watch some Beavs but priorities change as time goes on.

          • “There is more to life than sports, but sports teaches you something, no matter how hard you play the game, there will be winners and there will be losers. I refuse to let us be the losers in this situation.”

            The problem is that the program being the losers is out of your control. What you allow or refuse doesn’t matter.

            We need an opposite term for BIRGing, like STUBing (Suffering Through Unwinnable/Unwatchable Battles?) for those eager to embrace this Sisyphean struggle.

        • I literally have nothing better to do than watch Beaver football and I like it that way, so I’m going to keep watching no matter what league they are in. In the fall I have college football on from morning until night, I just love watching it. Yes, I also run some errands and get the yard work done, but it’s pretty much my escape from a stressful M-F job.

  63. My conspiracy theory for the day: Did the ACC presidents cancel their meeting yesterday because Stanford/Cal (altho I still don’t see how Cal could afford to be in the ACC receiving no media share) have already been admitted to the conference? Does the 30 August date have anything to do with it?

    • 5
      2

      SMU is also planning to join for no payouts and is probably being asked to cover Cals payouts as a show of good faith towards the rest of the conference.

      If this scenario holds, SMU and Stanford have become the lowest form of college athletics departments. Either beg or buy your way into a far off conference seems somehow worse than double speak and backstabbing for twice the money (USC) or slightly more money (UW/UO).

      I had no respect for the 8 that have already departed but somehow Stanford seems to signal they not only deserve no respect but have traded in their dignity as well. And for what? To go to ACC country and lose regularly? Good riddance.

      • …all to join a sinking ship.

        Makes you wonder what the ACC presidents really think of this. Staring down potentially losing their top programs and already being well behind the curve for the next several years, why would they want to add schools that bring very little to the table and make their programs’s lives more difficult in the process?

        At the end of the day, I wouldn’t be surprised if Stanford and SMU actually commit to giving the conference money to help the eastern teams finance team travel across the country.

        • 5
          1

          And the next few steps may be possible to predict for SEC and Big10:
          1) Try to wrestle majority power for playoff access
          2) Reset parameters for rankings and begin to push for more emphasis on strength of schedule
          3) Increase conference schedules to 10 games
          4) Eliminate any non conference games with mid tier conferences thereby reducing any shot a non power conference team can get ranked high enough to qualify for playoff spot
          5) Dare NCAA to take action on anything and cripple it through media pressure
          6) Establish your 8-10 key brands for tv rights and set the schedules so that those teams all are always qualified to the playoffs even after late season loss to rival school ( this is been perfected by SEC and Big10)
          7) Declare your separate championship league of 24 teams and create your own streaming/tv partnerships apart from the old conference models.

          I’d guess by the time this happens, ESPN will have dropped any pretense with control of ACC GOR and will begin negotiating a way out for Clemson, FSU and North Carolina.

          Leaves us with a minor league AFC/NFC as wannabeav has said earlier:

          Ohio St
          Michigan
          Notre Dame
          USC
          Penn St
          Wisconsin
          UW
          Oregon
          Alabama
          Georgia
          LSU
          Florida
          Tennessee
          Clemson
          Florida St
          Texas
          Oklahoma

          The tightrope they will be faced with is whether to keep the OleMiss, Miss St type teams as guaranteed wins or bigger payouts if those teams are jettisoned like OSU has been. There will be another 30-40 teams on the outside looking in once it is all decided how they can make the most money. Once things get to this point, fans will reject why they’ve done I think.
          130 D1 football programs and only 16-20 are deemed worthy to be in “the club” and get to play for a national championship? These talking heads say no one really wants to see Wazzu in the playoffs as if it is fact. Perhaps fewer people want to see Ohio St and Alabama every year in the playoff due to the rigged nature of the rankings and schedules.
          In the end, Stanford is irrelevant and no matter what they pay to stay “P5”, it is only a matter of time before they are also jettisoned as another have-not even though they technically “have” more than any institution in the country.

          Casey says let it become a professional league. I agree, for those 15-20 schools, just separate and go get your own league set up so that the rest of these conferences can go back to some normalcy, levelheaded decisions backed by regional loyalty and make sound financial decisions no longer dictated by ESPN and Fox tv schedules. I’d like to go back to regular 1:00 pm kickoff and find the game streaming anyway. PAC12 after dark is annoying and consistent 8:00 pm kickoffs are a detriment for any program on the west coast.

    • Pete Thamel is making it sound like this will go down by the weekend.
      Hope so, they just need to get it over with. All this 1 foot in and 1 foot out stuff is leaving OSU/WSU in limbo.

      anybody know what the word is on the Pac conference’s remaining assets and what exactly belongs to the 2 remaining teams if Cal/Stanford leave?
      Do OSU/WSU own that Pac12 network? Do they own any revenue earned during the 2023 bowl season or any Pac12 basketball tourney payouts?

      Is that enough money to sustain a program for 5-10 years, even if they’re in the MW?
      Seems like OSU/WSU could have a pretty good chance at a run through the MW if they have those assets to work with and use them to retain staff and keep running the program at a similar level to how they were as Pac12 teams.

      The competition won’t be quite as tough, so winning that conference should be a reasonable goal for the next several years.
      After that??? Who knows, maybe there are more rounds of conference re-alignment that allow OSU/WSU a 2nd chance?

      Or maybe the Big12 is just waiting on Cal/Stanford to get out of the way to they can absorb OSU/WSU and the assets they bring with them?
      I know they said they’re not planning to expand further, but both the Big12 and Big10 said similar things about a month ago…..and look where we are now.

    • 2
      2

      This feels like a media manufactured story. Cal and Stanford add nothing but travel costs to the ACC. Irrelevant football programs right now and not sure that changes any time soon. The best teams in the conference are also trying to bail to the SEC/Big Ten with lesser teams eyeing the Big 12. It will do nothing to prevent their downfall as a league. I’d be really surprised if this actually goes through

      • Apparently ND AD is sad that Cal and Furd have no landing spot…
        “Swarbrick also said Notre Dame is “very much so” lobbying for Stanford and Cal to be granted ACC membership.

        “You can’t have two of the great academic institutions in the world not have a place to play,” he said.

        As for Oregon State and Washington State, Swarbrick agrees with the assessment that the Pac-12’s death looks imminent.

        “It’s looking that way more and more every day, yes,” he said.

        Swarbrick bemoaned the reality that the decisions in realignment in recent years have been driven by money but said he disagrees with the reality that in the coming years, revenue athletes could become employees of their institutions.”

        Aren’t these the same assholes that started with the ‘we’re so special we want our own tv deal’? Now money is ruining everything. Boo hoo, hypocrite. Don’t feel like they’re going to try and fix it by giving up any cash of their own.

        • If you’re a great academic institution then you MUST have a place to play football…huh? That makes zero sense. Of course, if you’re not a great academic institution, but you have millions of rabid football fans, then you MUST have a place to play football. So if you’re not elite in academics and you don’t have a giant fan base, then sorry about your bad luck.

  64. OT?
    Seems the BS about conference alignment sucks the air out of the room. (well, sucks, at least)
    Anyway Hayes apparently is still not 100% physically, who knows how he is mentally.
    Didn’t participate in practice today.

    • If we could kick at a high rate from 35 in and make their pats I would be happy with that. Not sure if Atticus is the answer there or not. Probably won’t see many FG outside of 40-45 which hopefully with the offense we won’t need to. We all know smith likes going for it on 4th and I don’t expect that to change especially in the short punt and long Fg range. Just need to hope they can be as successful as last year with Colleto.

      • Agree.
        From what little I’ve seen written, Atticus may be OK inside 40, probably make a big difference if he is able to make his first couple attempts……for kickers it’s largely in their mind.

      • That’s a key point.
        If your plan is to go for it on 4th and 1-2, you have a team for that, and they’re ready.
        It’s not unlike any other down-and-distance scenario.
        But the players who are on the team have to be elite, for it to work always.
        Are you elite?

    • Hopefully, but the take from MHver3 is now quite different, Hopefully this changes, but he seems to expect the Big12 to look East instead.

      “This deal will effectively satisfy ESPN’s need for late window games and thus will end Big12 western expansion (at least for now).”

      • Fair points. Big 12 would have to decide if they want what’s left of PAC $ and TV network (since they don’t have one).

          • 3
            1

            Then fuck that, keep the PAC name at all costs. I’m actually rooting for Stanford and Cal to leave so this can be a reality. Not just so OSU and WSU can make the most of the remaining PAC assets but to keep those assets away from the defectors.

    • There’s basically zero shot Big 12 invites OSU and WSU. They’re positioning for ACC schools. They saw no value in OSU and WSU before. Don’t see how that changes. Stanford leaving would be a devastating blow for Oregon State and its future. It basically means no deal with Apple and having to join MW/AAC or go indy. There’s no other options left at that point. Pac would be officially dead.

      • Football…FSU and Miami? Hoops… Duke and NC?

        Eyeballs. East coast. Florida recruiting. Partner for UCF. Bigger payday from people pulling purse strings, potentially.

        • FSU, Miami, Clemson, Virginia will all be SEC or big10. It looks like NC and NC State are tied at the hip so I could see those schools going big12 as well as duke and a pick from Syracuse, Pitt, Louisville, or wake forest, any of which would have decent football and great basketball programs

  65. Interesting that neither Fox nor ESPN had any money left for the PAC 12 tv deal but per Bob Thompson they came up with $285M/yr to get 8 of the remaining 10 into other power conferences.

    • they’ve always had the money they just didn’t want us. They don’t have any power to kick us out of the conference for the next tv deal so they coerced all these other teams to leave us in the dust. If u think it’s frustrating now just wait until conferences go back to regional and they exclude us for being a part of that too

      • The point is, OSU has a very successful, very rich alum…

        Beavers should have NVIDIA stadium w/state-of-the art video, replay capabilities, edited highlights pushed out to players, recruits….in gill, at Goss, many production potentials…instead we got potato salad and “TNT” on the speakers…

        • 4
          1

          The guy is a tech nerd. He was probably bullied by athletes throughout his school years, so there’s very little chance he’s going to help out the athletics department.

        • Is not a top priority of his unfortunately. Now, he has given 10’s of millions to the computer engineering program so there’s that.

          • The Huangs: We’re going to give a bunch of money to our alma mater to make it one of the leading institutions of the future. With this supercomputer, Oregon State will be on the cuttng edge of AI and chip development. Future leaders will look to us for direction.
            Football fan: Yeah, but football.

  66. People are asking about why SMU and Stanford can afford to take smaller/no share and subsidize Cal. The answer is their endowments/donor bases are large enough they don’t need the TV money like other schools. The only question is how much of the endowment do they want to give to sports.

    We have a kid at our HS that is a decent football player, but got a 36 on his ACT and is being recruited by Yale, Columbia and Harvard. I was talking to his dad and while they don’t have any football scholarships, he was saying that Harvard’s total operating cost are less than the interest earned from their endowment and they could effectively have every student go there for free and still grow the endowment. I’m guessing Stanford is in a similar situations and SMU donors are willing to fund athletics for a chance to get back to the big time.

  67. It’s obviously not the first choice, but if OSU ends up in the MW or some form of the Pac, we’re just going to have to bide our time and focus on staying visible and building a brand (I hate that phrase) that will be attractive to the P5 schools that are left behind in the next shake-up. If it’s the MW, we need to be competitive so that when ESPN throws on a late Saturday night MW games, we need to be one of the teams. It might also help to ditch all the Portland State-type OOC games and play the big name schools that pay the most and give us the best chance of getting us on TV or even halftime highlights. Unfortunately, this would probably mean all road games, but it would at least keep our name in the mainstream and associated with P5 football. We’re not going to be world beaters, but we need to stay relevant the way Boise State has. Maybe a documentary along the lines of “The Last Season” might also draw some interest – especially if things turn out well. I’ve always felt OSU was squandering its association with the Pac, and now the Athletic Department is going to have to rely on itself if it wants an invite when the next shake-up occurs.

      • 1
        1

        Big breaking news from OSU marketing department:
        OSU has just announced plans to install bright orange turf at Reser Stadium as an added upgrade to Reser before UC Davis home opener.

        Also Benny the Beaver will be riding into Reser through an inflatable tunnel on a Harley Davidson modified into a jet ski.

        Scott Barnes will be parachuting to midfield for the coin toss and each game will feature a new administrator parachuting to midfield.

        NVidia has agreed to upgrade all referees to AI in future OSU home games, input settings should favor OSU.

        OSU has decided to take out a full page add in the New York Times and USA Today featuring Lunch Boxes and Giant Killers.

        Thanks to the generous donations plans for a permanent ESPN Gameday stage will be completed at the South end of Truax practice field. Wax statues of Lee Corso in a Beaver head, Kirk Herbstriet wearing an orange tie, Desmond Howard clapping and waving an OSU flag and Chris Fowler announcing on a loop Hail OSU will be a new fixture for fans.

        OSU has completed plans to build an interactive Duck shoot VR experience on the intramural fields.

  68. If the Beavs go into the MW, they’ll never come back out. If they go to the AAC, they’ll have a shot at getting back into a power conference or forming a lesser power conference with the future castoffs from the ACC or BIG10 or SEC.

      • That was then. This is now.

        I agree, that just tucking tail and joining the MW “because Boise State” is a death sentence.

        A table scraps PAC may be seen as a joke by the Richey Rich conferences but without Stanford’s snobbery they’ll be wide open to cash in on better football schools like Boise, SDSU and Fresneck. It’d be tight purse strings for a few years but if Luck can negotiate even a decent media deal then they could draw in some pretty good football/basketball schools as soon as their buyouts are low/gone.

        The chances of the SEC and B10 ganging up and excluding and new form of PAC conference champion from the CFP is about 100%, so it still wouldn’t be any easy road.

        • Who is Luck actually working for? Is there any reason to believe he’s not the one negotiating for Stanford and Cal to get into the ACC? Once that deal is closed then his work is done.

        • It’s either just MWC + OSU/WSU, which isn’t a great football conference, or it’s some combination of that and AAC teams, none of which are established football programs and all of which have managed success under just one HC.

          • I think the AAC talk was all the nerd teams that Stanford wanted. Stanford leaves, they’re off the table.

            Since the only thing that currently matters is FB/BB success they’d have to go after whatever programs would listen that have successful programs.

          • If SMU is willing to take a $280mill hit just to be in the ACC, what do you do to combat that?

            So Stanford, Cal and SMU are all off the board. Which means Rice and Tulane are likely off the board. Also service academies are off the board if ND isn’t pushing to help make new PAC.

            New PAC10-
            OSU
            WSU
            So the best MWC schools left are:
            Boise St
            Fresno St
            Colorado St
            SDSU
            UNLV
            Best AAC options:
            Memphis
            South Florida (maybe too far east)
            UTSA

            Possible teams to consider:
            Tulane
            Air Force
            Navy
            UAB

            The goal should be preserve “PAC” as a west coast conference and attempt to salvage a deal from Apple and redesign PAC network into direct streaming platform rather than a traditional linear option. Go for the subscriber route as a mint venture with Apple and lock up Las Vegas market as the hub of the new conference.

  69. 5
    3

    how long till we find out OSU/WSU are taking a deep discount to get into the MW because they don’t have any alternatives?
    1/2 shares split between OSU and WSU

  70. 3
    6

    Breaking news:
    MWC is no longer interested in OSU/WSU. MWC will instead expand east and bring in South Florida
    And East Carolina to widen their national footprint.

    AAC is also no longer interested in OSU/WSU as they have been told by ESPN to any former PAC12 schools or face severe consequences in their next media deal.

    MAC has announced they aren’t interested in expanding and don’t ask them about OSU or WSU.

    MEAC has openings but will require a 10 year commitment and a $50 million buy-in fee from both OSU and WSU.

    SWAC would like to get to 10 teams but aren’t certain the former PAC12 schools are a good fit with athletics.

    And on it goes…sarcasm of course but this seems
    To be the trend and Barnes needs a really good plan A and B

  71. 3
    2

    New report out says MWC and AAC are making expansion pitches to the soon to be PAC2. The dream
    of rebuilding the PAC seems to be dead. Oliver Luck is the latest in a long line of useless guys brought in to help a conference that can’t help itself.

  72. 2
    1

    Does Barnes have any real options then or is he just running out the clock until he can jump to UW?
    What a disastrous summer for OSU sports!

    Is anybody able to come up with a workable plan or do we just continue to sit and let WSU dictate the next steps since everyone else has been so far. OSU has looked very passive and reactive for this entire debacle. Now they just look like fools who have been duped for decades or just don’t care.

    So frustrating to see all of the capitol of being a member of the PAC12 become so degraded and worthless.

    • I have a great plan that would get OSU/WSU into a Power5 conference. But they’re going to have to hire me if they want to know my plan.
      It’s a really good plan.

      • 3
        2

        Ok give him an extension for presiding over the collapse of the athletic department.

        Not much different than Tinkle presiding over the collapse of Mens basketball and getting an extension.

        It is the OSU way to award failure and accept mediocre performance since we can’t ever except more than that out of little Corvallis.

        Barnes is just a political hack at this point if he beats zero responsibility in this debacle.

    • You seem to think that if you don’t hear about any action then there is no action. Since we haven’t heard if Barnes took a shit this morning then I guess he didn’t, and that means he’s constipated. It also means he doesn’t eat any vegetables and he has colon cancer.

    • 5
      3

      Yes. He bleeds orange. You can hear it in his voice during the broadcasts when things aren’t going well.

      That said, he’s one of the biggest Riley apologizes out there.

  73. 4
    1

    Totally random fact I found out this morning after looking over wins and losses vs Boise State…..

    Beavs travel to Boise for a game in September 2025.

    Fun fact. The B1G bound, money machine mighty Oregon Ducks have NEVER beaten Boise State.

    Yep. 0-3 all time.

    https://www.winsipedia.com/games/boise-state/vs/oregon

    Can’t even beat a Mountain West team. Even at Autzen. Lolololol.

    Suck on that.

  74. Not sure what the point is of Cal/Stanford joining the ACC. Weekday game/meet/match travel is going to be a b*tch, and I’d hate it if I was a student athlete. Not sure it would actually hurt recruiting at Stanford, but what golf or lacrosse player is going to be excited about signing on with Cal and travelling 3000 miles to play Wake Forest or NC State?

    Anyway, maybe I’m just a pessimistic Beaver fan, but if the Pac-2 merges with the MWC and keeps the Pac brand/name, I won’t jump off a bridge. Our budget will take a huge hit, and our best coaches and players will likely leave. But, we’ll carve out an existence as a D-I team that will have the same goals as before (try to cobble together enough talent to make a run and shock the world in football somehow, find enough talent to win at the non-football sports as we have before in gymnastics/wrestling/women’s basketball/baseball, and keep our “family” culture on our teams with local and regional student athletes competing against other local and regional schools).

    • 2
      1

      We will move to the American. They have a better upside and better TV deal than MWC. We need to go out East and prove we can dominate that league that plays SEC teams in OOC. SEC teams even play “on the road” against the American Conference. I’ve heard Amazon has come into play to partner with ESPN. For the 2026 year we can grab MWC teams to add to the Pac-12.

      • Which SEC school will travel to Corvallis for an out of conference game against AAC? I doubt any of them. They view AAC as a guaranteed win so not a real big feather in the cap to join AAC.
        We are now facing multiple “body bag” games to attempt to supplement the financials, and that will only last as long as the big conferences keep 8 game conference schedules. Once they go to 10 game conference schedules it is a closed door and no one will schedule the Boise St or Oregon St non conference games because of risk.

        Barnes should be trying to schedule a big preseason neutral site game with LSU next year just to keep the roster interested. JS has the roster to compete with the big boys now and Barnes should try to capitalize if the end is near anyway.

        • 1
          1

          Oregon State has a future game in 2028 @ Ole Miss and then in 2030 Ole Miss is scheduled to come to Corvallis. So your question is moot. Also, we have a completed stadium with a visitor lockerroom inside the stadium. We can get big time programs to come to Corvallis just as much as Oregon did with Michigan and Ohio State. It can be done.

    • It’s ridiculous that Stanford hangs their hat on how great their Olympic sports are and that’s why they need to be in a real conference, while simultaneously trying to make a deal that fucks their Olympic sports teams with a rake.

    • DirecTV has lower distribution than the Pac 12 Network, at this point. And they’re losing a million and a half subscribers per year.
      I guess this is what they get to replace the NFL, who went with google, instead.

  75. So we have been told that the issue was PAC12 network distribution, the issue was Larry Scott mismanaging the budget, the issue was Texas holding out for their own Longhorn Network rights if they joined the PAC, the issue was Kliakoff can’t negotiate, the issue was Kliakoff over valued the conference, the issue was Kliakoff refused to absorb Big12, but at how many points along the journey has it been USC lacking loyalty to the conference and actually sabotaging these opportunities?

    • NAILED IT! It’s always been USC, UCLA, UW, Stanford, and Oregon as the snobs of the conference. It was a hodgepodge of different schools that came together for sports. Then it became all about being viewership, exposure, and $$$$$.

    • “…the issue was Texas holding out for their own Longhorn Network rights if they joined the PAC,”

      There was no LHN, until Texas was about to join the Pac. Texas wanted to be in a conference that created their own network, and the Pac was about to be one. So ESPN offered UT $15 million per year for something like 99 years (probably not correct, but not far from true) to create the LHN, knowing the money was too good to pass up.
      ESPN lost so much money on the LHN, they’re just lucky UT went to some other conference where they can dissolve the channel.

  76. Canzano saying there’s an OSU board of trustees meeting today and then Barnes will have some comments for the media following it:

    https://twitter.com/johncanzanobft/status/1695153386705076682


    Board of Trustees at Oregon State meet this afternoon. There will be an athletics update from AD Scott Barnes and OSU President Jayathi Murthy.

    Agenda item “6B” comes with the following presentation materials:
    https://leadership.oregonstate.edu/sites/leadership.oregonstate.edu/files/2023-08/bot-6b-presentation-athletics_update.pdf

    • I may have misinterpreted that to mean there is a media update, when really it might just mean Barnes will be updating the board at the meeting.
      No point in a media update when there’s nothing to make an update on

      • Priorities:

        Minimize travel
        Minimize exposure by staying in the West
        Take the smallest $ amount between MWC and AAC
        No room for expansion in the future
        Find a way to remove Kliavkoff
        Play teams who don’t play SEC teams in their OOC to improve SOS
        2-year experiment just to move to the AAC in 2026 anyway because the new MWC media deal is not strong
        Potential to have Big XII take OSU and SDSU and not WSU leaving WSU in the dust
        Play in a never-going-to-get a Power Conference classification conference

        Am I missing anything?

      • Basically how it comes off.
        Make it sound like we care about athlete mental health and short travel distances rather than money, when reality is there just isnt money to care about.

        I do think staying more local is better than joining a conference east of the Rockies however, if only to help recruit locally so families can see their kids play more easily.

        • Beavs do recruit players from Texas and Florida. So having a footprint in those States would be huge, but at the same time, we also recruit in the MWC footprint as well. So I can see it both ways. Just matters on which conference can offer the best exposure with maximizing the Pac-12 Network. The Pac-12 Network will be our biggest asset to get the games on a streaming service and get linear options. Being on the CBS Sports Network where they don’t announce their viewership will keep our ratings #’s low and in a hole we will never be able to get out of nationally. So going to knowing how many subscribers you have vs viewership is a better way to know how many people watch or follow your conference. MWC vs AAC or a combo of both. My vote is best of AAC and best of MWC and then let the bottom MWC and bottom AAC merge. OR merge AAC and MWC and have a super conference of 28 team super conference all on a streaming service. lol /sarc about 28 team super conference.

    • In other words, nothing new we haven’t already heard before. It’s more for formality and most likely requesting Barnes getting approval to make the best decision on his own without the Board of Trustees meeting again? We’re finally on our own away from anyone else forcing our hand into, but yet, we’re still being forced into a situation we do not want to be in the first place. Really wish we had about 2-4 Big XII teams remaining with us, but we saw Colorado jump back to the Big XII real quick.

    • I guess I’m naive, but whats the rush to jump to a non power 5 conference? Will the MWC or AAC or whomever not happily welcome the Beavs in 5 or 10 months? Let the season play out and kick some arse and see what happens.

      • Schedules have to be finalized and made by January. Oregon State is scheduled to play @ BSU in 2024. So they need to make a decision if BSU will be added to the rebuilt Pac-12 or will be a conference foe if we join the MWC and dissolve the Pac-12 altogether. Also, we need a conference built if Stanford and Cal go to the ACC because if they do, the 2-year grace period is no longer an option. Minimum of 4 teams to compete in a conference in a grace period of up to 2 years. So time is truly of the essence. Also, we aren’t getting a bid to a power conference, even if we win the National Championship this year. It would be looked as an outlier, not a consistent product of success.

  77. 3
    6

    And no mention of lawsuits, PAC assets, PAC revenue for this year, passive information dump rather than telling the board of trustees how we just got kicked in the groin and stabbed in the back by every member of the PAC12 except WSU?

    BTW who are the board of trustees? Do they understand what has been happening or even care? Are they just academic nerds?

    Barnes asking for autonomy in decision making may be fine but he has limited options and they seem to be fewer by the day.

    I think everyone in conference hated losing to OSU and WSU over the years and this is their combined payback. All intended to push OSU/WSU to MWC.

    • Incorrect timeline:
      “…when the University of Oregon and the University of Washington join the Midwest-centric Big 10 next year. These were only the latest Pac-12 defectors; UCLA, USC, Arizona, Arizona State, Utah, and the University of Colorado had already announced that they would be leaving next year as well.”

      We know UW and the University of Phil left before the Pac 9 could sign off on the new deal, as all had agreed they would do, the night before.

      • That incorrect timeline is then followed by a statement that disallows the fact all of the Pac 9 were going to sign a “good enough” deal, until Fox spent more on the PNW hussies.

  78. AP press release today, noon EST

    The ACC’s university presidents and chancellors have the final say on expansion and the full board was not involved in Thursday night’s talks. As of Friday morning, the next formal meeting of ACC leadership had not been scheduled.

  79. 23

    Zoomed into the board meeting:

    Some stuff about clarifying language for no-firearms policy on campus and updates on OSU-Cascades and Elliot Research Forest.

    Murthy and Barnes then talked about Athletics.

    Murthy and Barnes gave an overview of the sequence of events that led to the fall of the Pac-12, and then gave the presentation laying out their decision-making principals moving forward.

    https://leadership.oregonstate.edu/sites/leadership.oregonstate.edu/files/2023-08/bot-6b-presentation-athletics_update.pdf

    Barnes mentioned that they’ve had extensive conversations with coaches and student-athletes, with the athletes heavily weighing both travel and retaining Power 5 status as priorities.

    17 sports, 16 NCAA sponsored (Men’s rowing is OSU sponsored), open to being creative in re-building the Pac-12 by creating affiliate-memberships to fill out the conference for Olympic sports or finding good homes for each sport based on the conference that best suits them.

    Because the debt-service on Reser is so manageable, a large portion of funds needed for all 17 sports can be supported by annual revenue from Reser.

    Overall we get about 35 million from current Pac-12, whatever happens OSU will have to operate at significantly less.

    They then took questions/comments from board members:

    Compliments to Barnes for being the public face and voicing frustration around the situation to the media, and conveying the overall ridiculousness of the stress put on student-athletes to compete in cross-country conferences. Asked Murthy and Barnes what they mean by wanting to see OSU stay in the “highest conference possible”?

    Barnes explained the Power 5 and what it means for resources and access to the CFP, in contrast to the G5. Again mentioned how important it is to current and future athletes to remain in the Power 5, and that this is top-priority in considering their options in re-building the Pac-12 or joining another conference, would prefer to keep all 17 sports in one conference but will seek affiliate-member options if it is detrimental to student-athlete success.

    Murthy and Barnes both spoke to how they are being proactive and aggressive in evaluating all options, with re-building the Pac-12 much easier (while still hard) if Stanford and CAL stay. Talking to many other conferences and exploring all options depending on how the dominos fall, mindful of leveraging Pac-12 assets and potential legal avenues.

    One board member is really pissed that the schools that are jumping ship aren’t being punished more overtly for their current conflict-of-interest being lame-ducks in the conference this season, another board member chimed in to explain that she feels it’s clear that there is likely a pathway to anti-trust and other legal ramifications (they were both obviously pretty pissed and it was good to see/hear).

    Overall, I was impressed by Murthy and others on the board that seemed much more knowledgeable about the sports and the powers at play that led to this situation than I anticipated. Same old talking points on the matter from Barnes, but I don’t disagree with anything he had to say.

    My read of the tea-leaves is that they are moving through it with a Pac-12 rebuild as Plan A, regardless if Calford stay or not, and that the path they take to get there is likely to be multi-faceted. This checks out with all the rumors.

    • Was there any talk about conversations with other p5 conferences about joining? I’m wondering if they tried to apply anywhere or they just assumed someone would come to them.

        • I’m guessing they aren’t going to make any of that known publicly while still trying to navigate the situation.

          The board members seriously discussing legal and other means of punitive actions is really great to hear, even if nothing comes of it at least we know it is a possible avenue they are considering

          Thanks again , zen

      • https://news.wsu.edu/news/2023/08/25/mountain-west-conference-pitches-benefits-of-affiliation-to-wsu/

        Expected to pitch us, and Aresco is expected to do the same for both schools. The AAC not only has a more lucrative media deal. They have such without a grant of rights, which reduces that value quite a bit. They also have several top flight schools with money and chips on their shoulders. Without a GOR, they can dissolve and resolve as the new Pac-whatever–Pacific American/Atlantic, or Pan American? Name the conference after a defunct airline. That’s the ticket.

        The MWC GOR ends in 2026, and we know the exit fees.

    • 1
      1

      Retaining P5 status. Well that’s likely not going to happen even with a rebuilt Pac of the top G5 schools. It might not look very good from Dec thru May with xfer portal across many sports with losing P5 status. Recruiting would likely see a lot of commits turn to other options as well. Brutal

  80. So ESPN refused to negotiate with PAC12 after a certain point claiming no more cash going into college football but in reality they were prepared to pay Big12 and now ACC bounty money and sweeten their respective tv deals to pick apart the PAC12. Unbelievably gross and manipulative but seems like grounds for a lawsuit.
    They floated $80-$100 mill for Big12 to go add several more teams and now floating ACC about $72 mil to try and add Calford and SMU.
    So they could have negotiated in good faith and added about $170 mill to the PAC deal, plus the Apple guarantee would have been $23 mill per school which adds up to $40 mil per school. Which at that point isn’t as far off as we’ve been told.
    The issue is not that ESPN wasn’t able to spend the money, it is that they didn’t want to spend it while allowing Apple enter the fray. The frustrating irony is now that they’ve destroyed the PAC12, they will be bought by Apple anyway.

    • That’s $125 million to the Big 12. If $72 million is correct for Calfurd, that’s $200 million from ESPN for those six teams, and about the same from Fox for the four running to the B1G.
      $400 million to keep a competitor from entering the market. I don’t know if OSU or WSU have standing, but apple certainly has.

    • Not a lot of substance. I generally open up the article, hold ctrl + A then ctrl + C and put the article in a word document. then I can read the full article. ;)

      The pitch from MWC was regional play and potential to go to Fox and CBS to renegotiate the TV deal if adding WSU and OSU. Payout is around $3.7M per school, but $6M for BSU. They want to get back to the top G5 conference again(biggest take away). They are not the strongest G5 conference and they admitted it in the pitch. whoops. Also, MWC has 6 R-1 research schools.

      As for AAC has a media deal with ESPN that goes through the 2030-2031 season. The payout is between $8-9M per school, but recently added teams get less. Losing SMU may help add revenue to the new Pac-2 schools. Tulane, Rice and USF are all AAU members. Conference is based in Texas. and the last senetence is very telling:

      “but a final resolution isn’t expected until after the AAC makes its pitches and visits, which is at least a week away. It also first depends on what happens with Stanford and Cal.”

      • The AAC also this going for them:

        “And with the AAC, there was a significant subplot; the conference wanted a grant-of-rights agreement that would lock schools in for the long term (making it so they’d have to pay substantial penalties if they chose to leave), arguing that they could get much more money that way, while top schools like UCF and Memphis wanted to keep their options open.

        In the end, the AAC signed a long-term deal without a grant of rights. But they still managed to make a major increase in the amount of money they’re getting, which will be almost four times what it was. And a big part of that is about moving more of their content to ESPN+, ESPN’s over-the-top streaming service.”
        https://awfulannouncing.com/ncaa/espn-1-billion-deal-aac-espn-plus.html

        They’re not only worth more than the MWC (whose deal ends in 2026). They have no grant of rights with their dal, which means they either pay an exit fee–which has been tested in court and will hold up–or they can simply dissolve their conference and be done with the deal… that is mostly a streaming deal.

        I would be interested in relocating people already familiar with having to stream their content to what we were offered previously–obviously for less, but we know its value on the cheap end without a GOR. And I would like to see Stanford and Cal step up to the plate and help lead the rebuild, instead of running off for the security of enabling media networks.

    • I’d take it. This is actually the closest we could get to “rebuilding the PAC”; just join up with the majority of teams that left.

    • If Stanford and Cal don’t go to the ACC, their next best option is to try to rebuild the PAC4. They don’t want to go to the MW or the BIG12.

      They’ll need to get that figured out before the first game. Then Beavs will get a lot of clarity as to the next steps forward.

      • It would be hilarious is Calford thumbed their noses at the B12, but then they took OSU/WSU for 30mil/year and Calford was left to “rebuild” the PAC with MWC and AAC all on their own.

        • 1
          3

          I wouldn’t laugh.
          Why would we leave what remains of the PAC and two easy regional travel destinations in California for the wildlands?
          The beginning of the conference was with us and Cal and two others who really don’t matter now. We can do it with the four who remain.

    • What Stanford and Cal have to realize, this is all about survival. There will be more realignment in the future. This is why all media contracts are running through 2031 right now. AAC, B1G, Big XII, and SEC are all under their current contracts until 2031. ACC is still 2036. I would assume MWC will have a deal that will end in 2031 as well. The reason is that media will move to Streaming for sports and move away from Linear.

      There’s a rumor right now that if the ACC doesn’t vote in CalFord and SMU, then the Big XII will take remaining Pac-4 teams at $31.7M each per “sources” on X(Twitter) thanks to ESPN stepping in and talking with BY/Big XII. I think the Amazon talks is what is driving this right now, but I could be wrong. The money has been there, but not everyone in the Pac-12 wanted to take uneven shares so teams left and found new conferences. Stanford and Cal need to realize survival is key and the conference you’re in now, won’t necessarily be the conference you’ll end up staying in long term in 6+ years.

  81. 10
    1

    For as long as I have been old enough to care, I’ve wanted to see my Beavers play in the Rose Bowl…granted, there’s more to it than winning the PACX now with the CFP and different bowl affiliations, but here we are in a now or never situation. What a world we live in.

    But salmon fishing is good, and archery season is just around the corner, so I guess life goes on.

    Go Beavs.

    GWH

  82. Rezjohn Wright was released today by Carolina Panthers (along with Jake Luton). Never totally sold on Wright, but hopefully he can catch on with another team. Victor Bolden (Texans) and Kyle Peko (Broncos) were two other names I saw on the cut list.

    • 4
      1

      Feels more like an attempt to give Cal/Stanford a little leverage to up their ACC offer. There’s no scenario where the Big12 needs to overpay for 4 schools they dont even want.
      My guess is the Big12 would love to see the ACC take on Cal/Stanford for even more money than they originally offered, and then pick up OSU/WSU in the Big12 for table scraps.
      And OSU/WSU would take a table scraps Big12 deal over any offer the MWC/AAC can come up with in a heartbeat.

      • ESPN is on the hook for $72 million for Cal and Stanford going to the ACC. Then if OSU and Wazzu go to the AAC that would be another 20-24 million. Between the 4 schools that’s 92-96 million. If all 4 go to the BIG12 it will only cost them $84 million. At that point the extra $ left with the PAC-12 pushes the deal up to $30 million per school. The only way the ACC votes in Stanford and Cal is if most of the $72 million goes to incentives and not to Cal and Stanford. Word is ESPN is not thrilled about seeing the extra cash going to Clemson and FSU while they are doing everything they can to abandon the ACC. Lots of moving parts here but it seems that maybe people are starting to figure out what a shit show this is and common sense is starting to take over. The big question is will Stanford hold their nose and ok a move to the BIG12? Also the threat of antitrust lawsuits is also in play. Easiest way to make this all go away is stuff the final PAC4 teams into the BIG12. Also saves ESPN a few $.

      • The part about Luck was interesting.
        The first options stated were a rebuild or a merger, with outright joining another conference being almost an afterthought.

        Other than that, there’s not much detail she can tell. But it’s interesting that she’s at least entertaining questions about what were mostly just rumor mill stuff and numbers flying around from every loose source.

        It sounds like we have more leverage than just being us and Wazzu, if it comes to that.

  83. 2
    1

    “BoDacious” ad vanner in USAToday spirts section. Lame catch phrase.

    Watch them pad his stats in non-con and in any league game they can…they have no choice now….

    Jaydon Grant’s favorite 4th down QB…

  84. 2
    2

    I guess when voting for Heisman you get to drop a couple games. Caleb really took it to the Beavs last year. All we gave them was 4 pics. But he skillfully tore us apart for that lop sided come back victory of 3 points. I hope USC wins all their games until we meet them in Vegas. Then we can kick them to the door for their las Pac 12 game.

  85. @MHver3:

    “So here’s what I found out about the Pac4 and B12

    ESPN has started pushing Calford to B12 because ACC can’t get past their stalemate.

    Fox won’t be paying. ESPN would pay and pay for all 4 since it would end up being about the same as what they’d have to pay ACC for 3

    Extra inventory could be sold to Amazon if the Espn/Amazon deal goes through with Amazon having B12 produce the games (hello PACN infrastructure).

    Still leaves an opening for 2-4 eastern additions later on. No one is going beyond 24 in the era of super conferences.”

      • 5
        1

        Wanting to watch the pac 12 network where we get money from on a future opponent possibly 2? I’m not going to watch non opponents this year but I’m interested to see teams on our schedule to get a feel for where we stand. I’m not going to watch teams outside of our current conference. All of those teams I won’t be watching next year.

      • Listening to these asshat P12 Network crew go on and on about how broken the system is to no incentivize USC to play in the P12 championship game without even naming the elephant in the room that the conf doesn’t even exist anymore…smh.

        • They are looking out for themselves and trying to jump to the next job. Ain’t going to get hired trashing your old employer on tv.

  86. 3
    2

    Interesting to hear San Jose has a drone tape their practices. I’ve never heard of OSU doing this. It would be a great view for watching film. Might be something worth stealing.

      • 1
        1

        Ya I know that but I feel like a directly over the top view be better though. You would get a better angle and view. Possibly even focus on certain players.

      • 3
        1

        Anyone using a scissor lift for any application other than indoor or secured to an exterior wall needs to speak to OSHA… every day… for days on end.

        Who is that stupid?

  87. 2
    28

    It’s gonna be the most Beav thing ever next Sunday.

    After we lose to San Jose State, the powers that he will say see? Can’t even beat a MWC team.

    So that’s where they belong.

    Calling it now.

  88. 1
    1

    If there was one coach OSU should have hired after the ‘09 Civil War loss, who would it be?

    I think Gary Patterson would have stomped Oregon and given us a few Rose Bowls.

  89. Brett McMurphy reporting about the reports of Big12 courting remaining Pac teams:

    “Despite various reports to the contrary, Big 12 has not had conversations w/any of the Pac-4 schools & has no intention in engaging w/those schools, multiple Big 12 sources told @ActionNetworkHQ”

    • 5
      3

      It doesn’t really make sense for the Big 12 to take WSU or OSU. I mean, it would be best for those schools if they did, but I don’t see what they’d be gaining in doing so. At least with the Cal schools they’d gain big markets and recruiting ties. What do OSU and WSU add to the Big 12?

        • That’s where I think things will eventually shake out.
          Stanford/Cal to ACC, then Big12 scoops up a desperate OSU/WSU for a bargain price, plus they absorb a network platform for pennies on the dollar. MWC/AAC remain in their same basic form other than SMU leaving the AAC.

          • 1
            1

            The conference assets don’t translate into a new conference, unless the conference retains its form.
            Other conferences can merge with us, as we vote them in. But we can’t just join another conference in the end and expect us to get anything other than 1/12th of what is left.

  90. ASU self-imposes 1-year bowl ban. So that’s one fake PAC team that won’t be bowling.

    Pretty smart to self-impose a bowl ban in a year you know you’ll be bad.

    • They aren’t going bowling even if they didn’t self impose. That team is garbage starting a new rebuild with a first time head coach. They’ll be lucky to win 4 games and fighting with Colorado and Stanford to stay out of the cellar.

      Self imposed bowl ban is a joke. Might as well get it out of the way when you suck.

  91. OT: Eggers up with a piece on Wade Meckler. Miiitch had to change his opinion of Wade early on, shows and open mind? Or just a measure of Meckler’s talent and grit?

    Interesting that Wade didn’t respond to Eggers requests for input. Good stuff, though, from Pat Bailey and Ryan Gipson and others; and a quote from his mom about Meckler that channels Pat Casey……..“He hates losing more than he loves winning,”

    https://www.kerryeggers.com/stories/work-ethic-tenacity-gets-meckler-to-the-bigs

  92. Luton cut again.

    Kudos to him for still somehow pulling in NFL checks, but not sure how he’s still around.

    He’s had 6 different team stints in 3 years in the NFL.

  93. 1
    1

    If Big 12 took all 4 west coast teams, they would have 8 schools of the Pac 12 footprint to mitigate travel. Then take a Florida team and SDSU to give them a cushion against the next round of realignment. They could have an east and west division where most of your games are in your division. I did see something called Big 12 Network that you have to access from ESPN+. But maybe there is infrastructure that would be beneficial for a Big 12 network that they don’t get without all 4.

  94. 1
    4

    @MikeSilver: (guy from sf chronicle that “confirmed” that Calford were exploring Pac4-to-B12 because ACC wasn’t going to budge)

    “It looks increasingly likely that Cal, Stanford and SMU and the ACC will close a deal to bring those three schools to the conference, in all sports in which the ACC competes”

    It’s so messed up that they toy with us while trying to use media-leaks for leverage in one way or another, but to be expected.

    Luck o’ da beavs.

  95. The goofy thing about Big12 and Brett Yormark are his statements about desiring a conference with teams in every time zone is that without the PAC4 he doesn’t have the pacific time zone. My guess is they want Stanford to just go independent and then add Cal, OSU, WSU and Gonzaga (basketball). They probably pick up SDSU and Boise St in a year. This would get them to 20 with 4 spots for ACC once crumbles to help with east coast travel teams, WVU and UCF.

    Stanford’s academic arrogance is holding up the final landing spots for several teams. It seems like a game of chicken for how to get Stanford either to relax their academic viewpoints regarding other schools or just depart from the PAC4 and go independent.
    OSU needs to wait them out in order to have the PAC12 assets along with the PAC network to make them more attractive to add to Big12.

    Perhaps Big10 swoops in late with an invite to bring all 3 rivalries back together but I doubt it.

    I wish someone would do a dig on who at ESPN is telling ACC and Big12 to poach and when. Some ESPN executives are resetting the entire university athletics landscape from behind a curtain somewhere in Bristol, Connecticut and no one will ever know who they are.
    Too bad there aren’t enough schools with the sense to see how badly they are all being played by some tv money. It would be awesome to see some form of blowback in unity by a large portion of these schools that should be seeing the writing on the wall for them as well. If they are featured regularly on ESPN and Fox they will be dropped in the next consolidation. Only about 30 teams have a good chance of being featured which means the rest will be on the chopping block.

    • If Stanford and Cal do end up in the ACC Wazzu and OSU need to communicate with the ESPN / BIG12 we will take $15 million per year. If we “merge” with the AAC estimates are we get about $10-$12 Million from ESPN. Might as well angle to get into a better conference with better travel for basically the same price. There will be extra $ left in the PAC-12 and we can use that to help fill the deficit for a minimum couple of years and the BIG12 would get network assets. We need to do anything we can to get it the BIG12. AAC and even worse MWC are the abyss we will never recover from.

    • Yep, a 30 team league of semi pros, an actual NFL minor paid for with television money, state taxes and student tuition.

      Trying to think of what those 30 are…seems like a bunch of teams who think they should be, have had long stretches where they haven’t done shit, so what makes them top 30? I mean Army has the best team 8n the country 100 years ago, so what?

      Anyhoo, who are the 30?

      ND

      tOSU
      Mich

      Bama
      OU

      FSU
      Clemson

      SC
      UW

      • Alabama
        Arkansas
        Auburn
        CAL
        Clemson
        Florida
        Florida State
        Georgia
        Iowa
        Kansas State
        Kentucky
        LSU
        Miami
        Michigan
        Michigan State
        Nebraska
        North Carolina
        Notre Dame
        Ohio State
        Oklahoma
        Ole Miss
        Oregon
        Penn State
        South Carolina
        Stanford
        Tennessee
        Texas
        Texas A&M
        UCLA
        USC
        Washington
        Wisconsin

        Something like this split into four divisions and a 12-team playoff with a wild-card round is the future, just the way it is.

        Some of the religious schools like BYU, Baylor, and TCU could buy their way in and there are plenty of cuspers that could get swapped for others depends on how the cookies crumble.

        It doesn’t matter how good any of those programs have been on the field, just the value of their brand from a media perspective (Calford).

    • 3
      2

      The Oregon State football schedule so far this year is CBS, FS1, and FOX. No ESPN as of yet. So maybe Big Ten would take Oregon State and WSU to get to 20 teams for the Big Ten, but what value would Oregon State and WSU have for the Big Ten? Our stadiums are smaller, not as storied, not AAU, and lastly, it doesn’t seem like a good fit for us. I would rather be in the Big XII than the B1G. I don’t want anything to do with Oregon, UW, USC, and UCLA anymore. I’ve moved on at this point.

      • Oregon, USC, and Arizona all get the Saturday PTN slots, though, they look like all fcs games.
        I didn’t realize the CW was already scheduled.

  96. Big12 has similar programs to OSU and will likely become the melting pot for all castoff “second rate programs” that TV execs aren’t convinced being added value to their select teams.

    I’d almost expect Big12 to begin adding more teams and becoming the first super conference as a way of staving off the final consolidation.
    If Big12 decides to go to 24 or 28 teams by adding some combo of PAC4, ACC, MWC, AAC and possibly poach a couple of bottom dwelling Big10 teams, they could effectively flip the story and say SEC/Big10 are old and stale.
    But I then realize it is all simply PR to cover ESPN dictating the moves behind the scenes.

  97. 1
    1

    A WSU beat writer has gathered some snippets from the Pac12 bylaws that touch on some of the methods for distribution of Pac12 assets if teams announce they are leaving the conference.
    Basically any team that makes an announcement of their intent to leave prior to Aug 1st 2024, loses their entitlement to conferences assets and those assets get absorbed bu the remaining teams.
    So in a scenario where Cal/Stanford do get invited to the ACC amd announce their intentions to leave, that would leave OSU/WSU with the remaining assets. But….OSU and WSU would need to remain as Pac12 conference members through Aug 1st 2024 if they want to retain those assets. If they leave prior to they, they end up just like the other 10 teams and get an equal share.
    So, the ideal scenario for WSU/OSU may actually be to hold tight and try to rebuild a Pac conference, if only because that pool of assets would hold more value than any media payout they’ve been rumored to have available to them.
    It may be a dangerous balancing act though. Can they afford to pry teams from other G5 conferences and still make everything worthwhile?

    https://twitter.com/GregWWoods/status/1695955449529663576?t=642nhBH7xogYASoR49rNmQ&s=19

    • Those are the scenarios that Wilner has gamed out.

      The PAC12 would need to live on as a legal entity to reap those benefits. But I’m not sure those benefits are worth it. The only conference who would want to merge together is the MW. AAC won’t because of their ties to ESPN.

      If this does happen, the Beavs need to demand to be given a larger portion of the revenue. Or keep the tourney revenue between them and WSU.

      • So the MWC merger is probably the financially preferred option in the short-term. AAC might be better in the long-term, but there’s not a strong argument those programs are a better group to be with.

        Maybe they even pull a MWC-AAC merger under the PAC name?

        • I almost prefer playing the long game and staying as the Pac2 until after August 1st 2024, and then joining the Big12 while also selling the Pac12 network to the Big12 ,maintaining a stake in that ownership.
          If the network does well for the Big12, WSU/OSU receive some financial incentive from that success outside of the normal media share they agree to.

          • I’m going off what I’ve read from that MHVER3 guy. By no means a solid source, but he seems to have a pretty good grasp of the Big12 and media dealings.

            If ESPN owns every game, does that mean they’re sending a crew to cover every single Big12 game? Seems like that would stretch ESPN resources pretty far, given how crappy their broadcast quality is for lower tier games in prior years.
            I figured ESPN controlled a portion of the broadcasts (like Tier 1 games) and then had to sell off the rights to the other games to get broadcast on other platforms. if that’s the case, would make sense to me to have those games produced in house and then broadcast on a conference owned platform (just like the Pac12 network was doing)

            But I fully admit I’m just learning through what I see online and don’t have any first hand knowledge of the Big12 setup.

          • This is one of the ways the B1G has gained value. They started off with 51% equity in the network, and have sold equity during subsequent negotiations. They now hold 39% equity.

            It’s easily observable that even equitable (not even operational) competition has more latent value than nothing. Imagine its value as direct competition.

  98. Seeing a lot of ads for BIG streaming on Peacock+, and I think they imply that all games are available. Isn’t this kind of similar to the “Apple deal”? Been reading on this site that ESPN and Fox conspired to tank the Pac 12 because they couldn’t keep up with Apple streaming.

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