Next steps for WSU and OSU after being left behind

PULLMAN — The final blow to the PAC-12 conference hit Friday, Sept. 1, as two of the remaining four PAC-12 schools announced departures from the conference to head to the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC).

Stanford and The University of California, Berkeley (Cal) have departed for the ACC, a conference which now will have 18 members, including 17 for football after Southern Methodist University (SMU) was also added to the conference along with the Cardinal and Golden Bears, staring in the 2024-25 season.

With the departure, Washington State University (WSU), and Oregon State University (OSU) are the only remaining PAC-12 schools left after the end of the 2023-24 school year.

With the ACC move, that conference now has teams from coast-to-coast. There are now teams in the conference from California, Tennessee, Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Texas, and Florida.

One problem that teams like Stanford and Cal will have to face is the travel next season for any conference games. Stanford to Florida is around 3,000 miles, which is a tall task to make teams travel at least once a week, or take a week off of school just to play three volleyball games. The conference commissioner and other ACC university high-ups have mentioned potentially using Dallas as a hub for games in the ACC to keep travel shorter.

Sources say that both Stanford and Cal are joining the ACC, and taking approximately 30% of television shares, while SMU is taking no television money for nine years.

This creates around $50-60 million dollars annually to be divided between all ACC schools. Some of that money goes into performance based incentives, such as the College Football Playoff and NCAA March Madness Tournaments. Teams participating in the events will get a larger share of the funds compared to teams in the in the conference who are not participating in the tournaments or playoffs.

The ACC is now operating in somewhat of a strength in numbers conference. By adding more members and adding incentives for having strong, successful athletic programs, they believe the TV deal will come to keep the conference afloat, and could even bump the ACC into a top-two conference in the near future.

As for WSU and OSU, it is all hands on deck to find a solution to the conference problem, where with each passing day fans, supporters, and donors grow increasingly worried about their universities financial future.

The easiest option for both teams is to join the Mountain West Conference. This option makes the most sense financially, but in terms of athletics, it is clear that both WSU and OSU are two steps ahead of the entire Mountain West in most sports.

Last week in the opening week of the College Football season, both WSU and OSU took on top Mountain West schools. WSU took on the Colorado State Rams, and beat them up, winning 50-24. The Beavers took on San Jose State, and comfortably handled them, winning 42-17.

There is potential for a “re-group” between WSU and OSU, which can buy both universities more time so they do not rush a decision and regret it down the road.

In this re-grouping scenario, both universities can claim all the deals and offers under the PAC-12 name, they just need to convince universities to leave to join a conference with two members, who still have yet to decide their fate.

In football, there is also the chance for the universities to go independent, as schools like Notre Dame have done in the past. In this scenario, both WSU and OSU will not be tied to a conference, meaning they can schedule games against seemingly any team willing to play them. This scenario could see both Universities “sandbag” their first half of the season, meaning they can schedule six easier games to hopefully win enough games each season to make a bowl game every year, or they can schedule 12 ranked games to make the school appealing to students and athletes who want to play the top teams every week, however, the idea of both WSU and OSU going independent for football on paper does not seem like the best fit for either university.

For the remaining two PAC-12 schools, patience is the key. Both universities need to work together to come to the solution for their new conference, but also keep in mind that the schools need to do what is best for themselves at the end of the day.