For Oregon State, Wazzu and the Mountain West, future coming into focus after Pac-12 chaos

Jordan Pope’s rainbow 3-pointer seemed to hang in the air forever before finally falling through the basket as the buzzer sounded.

Oregon State 83, No. 9 Arizona 80.

Pac-12 Network commentator Bill Walton yelled out. Beavers fans flooded the Gill Coliseum court. A top-10 upset pulled by their men’s basketball team on Jan. 25 was a rare moment of reprieve and celebration after the community weathered five hard months since the near-dissolution of the Pac-12, capped by football coach and alumnus Jonathan Smith leaving for Michigan State. Oregon State athletic director Scott Barnes, who was at the Arizona game, made sure to take in the moment.

“In times like this, it helps you understand what you’re trying to achieve,” Barnes told The Athletic the next day.

Ghdskjfghrsiretnaioenfkalsdjfads#GoBeavs pic.twitter.com/Ox8aqhILPF

— Oregon State Hoops (@BeaverMBB) January 26, 2024

Barnes and Washington State athletic director Pat Chun have said many times that there’s no manual for the path they’ve taken since Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State and Utah decided to jump to the Big 12 and Oregon and Washington chose to follow USC and UCLA to the Big Ten, leaving Oregon State and Washington State as the only remaining Pac-12 representatives beyond this summer. Barnes joked that he talks to Chun more than his wife. Major conferences have been abandoned before, like the Southwest Conference and the Big East. But never have just two teams been left behind, and never before have the leftovers tried to hold on like this.

After months of difficulties, legal fights and nonstop calls with each other, Oregon State and Washington State have largely settled their short-term plans and their long-term options.

“We have some certainty for the next two years, and that gives us time,” Chun said.

The schedules for most sports are set for 2024-25. The two schools won their legal fight with the outgoing Pac-12 members, granting them control of conference decisions. The finishing touches of a settlement between the two sides that was announced in December are still being hammered out.

NCAA bylaws grant conferences a two-year grace period to get back to a minimum eight members in the event of departures. After that, OSU and WSU’s options boil down to two main possibilities: join a Power 4 conference or rebuild their league, most likely with all Mountain West schools thanks to details in OSU and WSU’s new football contract with the league.

“Priority one is to join an existing power conference. Option two is to build back a power conference with the Pac-12 banner,” Barnes said. “An option might be what we call a reverse merger that might include adding existing Mountain West and the like. But that all needs to be developed over the next several months while keeping an eye on the landscape.”

Oregon State and Washington State’s football programs reached an agreement to play at least six Mountain West games in 2024. Most of their other sports, including basketball, will spend two seasons in the West Coast Conference. Oregon State baseball will play an independent schedule in 2025.

But the agreement with the Mountain West, obtained by The Athletic through a public records request, is a lot more than simply a few football games in exchange for $14 million.

The contract, executed on Dec. 1, says that from the moment of its effective date, the schools will “negotiate in good faith the consummation, as promptly as reasonably practicable, of a definitive transaction pursuant to which all MWC Member Institutions join Pac-12 as Pac-12 member institutions with no MWC Exit Fee payable by any MWC Member Institution to MWC. The invitations, if made, would be effective as of the 2025-2026 NCAA season or the 2026-2027 NCAA season.”

What really protects the Mountain West is that the obligations of the contract survive for two years past the end date of the agreement, which is currently Aug. 1, 2025 but could be extended to 2026. OSU and WSU face penalties if they were to join a conference other than the Mountain West or a Power 4 league during that time.

Oregon State and Washington State would also owe significant withdrawal fees, on a sliding scale, if they were to invite some but not all Mountain West schools to the Pac-12. Adding one school would cost $10 million. Adding six schools would cost $67.5 million; 11 schools would cost $137.5 million, not including their exit fees for leaving the Mountain West.

But if the Pac-2 invites all 12 Mountain West schools to reverse-merge into a Pac-14? That would cost nothing. The conference had leverage and used it, in an attempt to protect all of its teams from being left behind.

“The survival and protection of the league was a priority,” Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez told The Athletic. “… We wanted to make sure what happened to the Pac-12 didn’t happen to us.”

One wild-card scenario: Nine of the 12 Mountain West schools can vote to dissolve the conference, allowing them to leave for the Pac-12 without any exit fees. To this point, that possibility has not had enough votes to be an option.

Both sides said talk of an actual merger has not begun and is still far off. They need to see where the landscape of college sports is heading, and that outlook changes every day. Last week, the Big Ten and SEC announced the creation of a joint advisory committee to explore their own solutions to college sports’ key issues. Two years from now is a long time.

“I would only read into it as an option,” Chun said of a full Mountain West merger. “We want to go through every foreseeable option for both schools.”

Nevarez met with Oregon State and Washington State in the fall to pitch them on joining the league, which will soon be the only West Coast-based FBS conference. School officials were impressed with Nevarez, who previously led the WCC, but didn’t want to commit to the conference.

“They’re great schools,” Nevarez said. “They look like us and have a lot of nonconference games with us anyway.”

Some officials around college sports wish Oregon State and Washington State would give up the fight and simply merge with the Mountain West, smooth out their transition and use the Pac-12 money to prop up the rest of their athletic departments. “They just haven’t accepted that reality,” one high-ranking official from another conference said.

But OSU and WSU leaders have maintained they will continue to fund and carry themselves at a Power 5 level, and given the massive realignment moves that have taken place in the past three years, buying themselves time could open unforeseen possibilities.

For now, with scheduling settled, OSU and WSU have other decisions to make in the coming months. They need a media rights deal for their home football games this fall; those talks should pick up this month. They need to arrange bowl agreements. They need to figure out just how much money and assets they have from the Pac-12, including what to do with the Pac-12 Network. They need to decide on commissioner George Kliavkoff’s future. That last move will likely come quickly after the legal settlement with the Pac-12 is finalized.

They’re also holding up the College Football Playoff. In November, the conference commissioners who make up the CFP management committee recommended a move from a 6+6 model with six automatic bids for conference champions to a 5+7 model with five auto-bids due to the Pac-12’s collapse (Kliavkoff abstained from voting). But that change needs a unanimous vote from the CFP board of managers, a group made up of school presidents from each conference, and Washington State president Kirk Schulz is the Pac-12’s representative. He hasn’t signed off on it.

Schulz has instead put forth a proposal that would guarantee certain revenue and voting power for the remaining Pac-2 similar to Power 5 schools as part of a 5+7 move, sources involved in the discussions tell The Athletic. That proposal has earned little to no reception from other conferences, and board members came out of January’s meeting at the national championship game frustrated. Mississippi State president Mark Keenum said he would be shocked if the CFP didn’t have a 5+7 model for 2024 and that it could be sorted out within a month. It has now been a month and it hasn’t happened, and the presidents’ next scheduled meeting is in May, though they’re likely to meet virtually before then to resolve it.

“(The 5+7 model) is not done yet because the Pac-12 is not prepared to vote on it yet,” CFP executive director Bill Hancock said.

Many hurdles remain, but Oregon State and Washington State have bought themselves time. They believe there is value in keeping the Pac-12 — or whatever it’s called in the future — alive both literally and from a brand standpoint. That’s the plan for now.

Barnes said he constantly thinks back to April 22 of last year, when he had a heart attack in Fresno. He was in town being honored by Fresno State, his alma mater. He spent four days in the ICU after the incident. Upon getting back to work in Corvallis, he had to try to keep the Pac-12 from falling apart. His workload has only increased.

Oregon State and Washington State were left behind by their soon-to-be-former Pac-12 mates. They refuse to be left behind by everyone else.

“Times like this, we pull together and we fight together and it’s sort of galvanized us,” Barnes said. “That’s what it’s done. I’m sort of built in a different way. This stuff energizes me. As much as folks say it’s an impossible task, it’s not. … We intend to be a Power 5 program in the future. Whether that’s build back or join an existing conference, that’s our goal. Our sight is laser-focused on that.”

(Photo: James Snook / USA Today)