The original agreement included an option for six games for WSU and OSU in 2025. But the schools decided to let a deadline to exercise the option come and go.
Following the announced departure of most of the Pac-12, it left the schools still holding down the fort in quite the predicament when it came to football scheduling. Likely with no other options on such short notice, in stepped the Mountain West Conference, agreeing to 12 games for the tidy sum of $14 million in 2024.
The agreement gave the Washington State Cougars and Oregon State Beavers something they needed: games to play in front of a home crowd. And that’s about it. Neither team would be eligible for the conference championship and neither team’s home schedule was particularly inspiring. WSU’s half dozen contests, for instance, features five of the six teams voted to finish in the bottom half of the conference in the media poll (the game against SDSU was previously scheduled).
Extending the agreement to 2025 would’ve meant flipping the home and away games, giving the Cougs a big gate for the Boise State Broncos but that’s it. So it should come as no surprise that OSU’s long tenured athletic director Scott Barnes said last week that extending the deal was “to be determined. Certainly, it’s a strong option.” Jon Wilner reported late last week the Pac-12 wouldn’t be interested in extending the agreement, going so far as saying the chances of it happening now are basically dead.
So why would the Pac-12 abandon such an agreement? And where does the conference go from here football wise?
The deal wasn’t really a good one for the Pac-12
WSU and OSU weren’t exactly in a position to negotiate last fall when they finalized their agreement with the Mountain West. Left needing to fill out a lot of their schedule, a regional partner who was willing to alter their scheduling for a year for you was a natural fit.
But at a going rate of more than $1 million per contest, the schools didn’t exactly get what they were paying for. WSU’s best home game this year is … Wyoming? Maybe? And it’s the Saturday after Thanksgiving! No home games with the UNLV Rebels or Fresno State Bulldogs. Hell, both teams go to the Boise State Broncos (something tells me BSU wouldn’t have been interested in flipping that to two away games next year either)!
The best games are away. Next year doesn’t really improve things, especially for WSU. So why run it back for $14 million more?
Letting the deadline come and go doesn’t really effect anything
The Pac-12 didn’t really gain anything by meeting the Sept. 1 deadline to extend their scheduling agreement and I’m not convinced they really lost anything either. Even if the conferences are as far apart on the negotiating table as Wilner makes them out to be, Pac-12 reps, be they with the conference or the schools, have repeatedly stressed how important keeping their options open to them is.
The schools already have 13 games of the 24 they need scheduled for next year anyway; Oregon State would actually need to make room on their schedule for the six games they’d be getting. It’s entirely possible you could cobble together the remaining games that you need from a fully independent schedule which is leverage to take to the bargaining table.
Even if you can’t put a schedule together, you’d need to fall back to the Mountain West and what’s the worst that happens there? The conference already knows who you’d be playing and you’ll be a lighter in the wallet than you would’ve otherwise. Or, the worst worst case, you’d need to agree to merge into the conference, which was probably your final fallback option anyway.
Which brings us to what’s probably happening now because I doubt this is one big bluff to save a few million bucks:
They’re working on a schedule with the ACC or Big 12
Barnes said in that interview with Nick Daschel that there were “other potential relationships that we’re exploring and trying to finalize” and that he “think(s) we’ll have something put to bed soon”. That’s the first time anyone from either the school or conference publicly acknowledged such a dalliance though he didn’t specifically site who.
Rumors have swirled online for over a year about the Big 12 and what’s left of the Pac-12 though nothing beyond mostly nameless social media accounts. What does make a good deal of sense now is a set of games against schools in the ACC. For one, both Cal and Stanford have non-conference openings next year, a remarkably natural fit. Several other schools also need to add schools to their schedule and, importantly, the schools share a television partner in The CW that would surely love match ups between the conferences.
Whether they’re home or away games, a partial ACC schedule is exponentially more appealing to both Pac-12 schools than traveling to Fresno or Albuquerque.
So what happens after that?
Well, who really knows? FSU and Clemson are currently suing the ACC to break their grant of rights agreement and more realignment could be on the horizon, though those cases are going about as well for them as FSU did against Boston College. In such a situation, the Pac-12 has, and we’re visiting this word a lot, stressed “optionality”. Would that be jumping in with both feet to the ACC? Or would it still be trying to rebuild the Pac-12, which they’d need to do by August 2026?
Again, there’s no way to know now. But if the option is out there for a modified schedule with the ACC in 2025, a Power Four conference with a better television deal with ESPN and a shared deal with your current partner, you should take that over Friday night games against San Jose State.