Canzano: A historic sit-down with Pac-12 Commissioner
Teresa Gould talks media rights, expansion, and more
The basement of Hotel Vintage has giant wine barrels stacked against the brick wall. Strings of lights dangle from the ceiling, and the ducts of the heating system hum overhead.
Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould settled into a chair this week for a 1-on-1 interview with me. Gould had dinner the evening before at Huber’s — Portland’s oldest restaurant — and now she was in another historic spot.
The birthplace of the Pac-12.
The presidents of Oregon State, Oregon, Cal, and Washington sat in the same space this week in 1915. Stanford’s president also attended the meeting, but did not join that day. It was called The Imperial Hotel back then. Those four campus leaders formed what would eventually become the conference of Jackie Robinson, Bill Walton, John Elway, and other greats.
As Gould sat down this week, she said, “I don’t believe in ghosts and UFOs, but I believe in fate.”
The new-world Pac-12 officially relaunches in July with nine members. The conference, which consisted of only Oregon State and Washington State for two years, has been immersed in an unprecedented rebuild.
The “Pac-2” sued the 10 departing members, won a settlement, added seven new members, negotiated a media-rights deal that gives it broad linear distribution, and has operated for the last 18 months in uncharted territory.
Gould is currently focused on hiring the league’s deputy commissioner, and her visit to Portland included a stop with a marketing agency that is doing branding work for the conference.
How does she feel about the Pac-12’s media deal? Was ESPN and FOX not being part of the current packages strategic, or what? What’s the next move in expansion for the Pac-12? And will there eventually be more money in the College Football Playoff for her conference members?
The full video of our interview is worth your time.
Watch the video on YouTube:
Some highlights…
Q: Will she look back at the jokes about the “Pac-2” and laugh or find it interesting someday?
Gould: “I don’t know if I found that interesting, John. You might have recalled one night I was out at an Oregon State volleyball match, and there was a gentleman across the gym with a Pac-2 shirt on. I went over and had a conversation with him and introduced myself. I think I’ll go back and look at that time and really have a lot of pride in Oregon State and Washington State and the leadership of those two institutions and what we were able to do together, the grit, the fight, the resilience, the pride that we collectively took around the legacy and the tradition and the brand and the opportunity that we had together to really make history and allow it to continue long into the future is something I’ll look back on in my career, and it will probably be the most meaningful It’s the most powerful thing that we’ve ever been able to do together.”
Q: What was the strategy with the media-rights deal that includes CBS, The CW, and USA Sports?
Gould: “When we went into this process, first of all, the media rights sales process was somewhat unprecedented because we were going into it without incumbent packages, without incumbent partners. So we really got to start over and make it what we wanted it to be. We absolutely valued and prioritized exposure for sure. We are launching a new league, and exposure and reach, and being able to allow our fans all over the country to easily access our live events was critically important, but we were also looking for partners that had the same vision that we had in terms of telling student-athletes stories and amplifying the Pac-12 brand. We’re thrilled with where we landed and the partners that we have. I think our fans are excited, too, about the exposure and having 100 percent of our football games on linear television, three-fourths of our men’s basketball games on linear television. I think we’re positioned right where we want to be as we launch this new league.”
Q: Where are you with expansion? Is this done for 2026?
Gould: “Well, I think for sure for 2026, we are set with the membership that we have, and we feel really good about the football membership that we have. We’re closing out the regular season with six of our eight football-playing members, bowl eligible. That’s 75 percent of our membership. I think that just reinforces what we’ve been saying all along, which is this is a deep competitive top-five conference.
“We’re having conversations right now about what 2026 looks like from a football scheduling perspective. Certainly, the coaches and the ADs are very anxious to know what that looks like. We have a lot of different potential options to solve that scheduling issue on the table, but we really want to wait it out over the next month or so, see what happens with CFP. You’ve seen recently that that decision has been delayed now until January 23rd. That’s not the only factor for us to consider, but it is a factor. We feel like we are going to be in a position to have our champion in the CFP year in and year out. We have to consider what that format looks like. We’ll see what that looks like in the CFP management committee room. We’ll evaluate the different options that are available to us, and then we’ll attack that 2026 (football) schedule.”
Q: When the media rights deal got done, there wasn’t the usual leak of financial details. That led a lot of people to believe the numbers weren’t great. What do you say to that?
Gould: “Well, first, I would say we’re not done. So let’s start there. We do still have another package with the Olympic sports inventory and the men’s basketball and women’s basketball inventory. So I would start there. Secondly, I would say, look, we are looking at overall value, and that is a complicated thing in these packages, because there are a lot of different elements in these contracts. And oftentimes when there are leaks, either the leaks are not accurate, or they’re confusing, because media rights is one component of our overall revenue streams that lead to membership distributions. So I feel really good about where we are and where we landed with our media rights.”
Q: What are you looking for when it comes to future members?
Gould: “… We want brand elevation. We want brands that are relevant, that want to continue to invest in growing their brands, and we want programs that are willing to invest. This is ultimately about these institutions. Athletics is the mechanism for it, but this is about elevating the brands of institutions. We’re going to be very thoughtful about our criteria and our decision-making as we think about how we grow moving forward.”
Q: ESPN and FOX were not part of your media-rights packages, so far. I had one of your university presidents say that if ESPN cared about us, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. Was it intentional to have ESPN and FOX not be part of the deal, or is that just how it worked out?
Gould: “It was absolutely not intentional. We maintain very strong relationships with both ESPN and Fox, both personally and as a company. There will be other opportunities for us to work with ESPN and FOX in other ventures, whether it’s bowls or other things. It just happened to be that the three partners we landed with were the right partners for us at this point in time.”
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She’s a smart confident commissioner. Too bad she wasn’t calling the shots a few years back. Oh well, forward to 2026 and beyond.
Nice interview, John.
Sure is a breath of fresh air after Kliavkoff and Scott. Those two put us where we are today. Gould sounds realistic and positive.