So...does this mean Gonzaga men's basketball will be forced to play at least one game in Pullman now? Or will Gonzaga want the games against Wazzu played at Spokane Arena and consider it a "neutral site"? LOL... YKIYK
Your still not beating Gonzaga, lol. They hold the record for most consecutive Sweet 16 or farther appearances in the tournament, as for WSU when was the last time they made it to the Sweet 16?
I think his complaint is that GU - which used to beg OSU and WSU for games in the 1990s - has gotten too big for its britches and won't play the schools that helped them out when GU was a regional nobody.
Cost reduction, recruiting footprint, parent-friendly travel and creating strategic alliances, relationships and pathways forward with the best programs within the PAC=2, MW, WCC and Big West is a very smart tactical move in my mind moving forward. Football is strategically aligned with the MW, Hoops is strategically aligned with the WCC and Baseball with the former PAC schools and the Big West/WCC. I still believe the best path forward for all the members of these conferences is to create a newer alliance (Relegation may in fact be the answer here) pitting the best programs from each of these conferences, per sport, to create the best schedule (highest competition) which would solve a host of issues (media contract, parent friendly travel, west coast time zone...etc. I see this as a smart tactical move :)
On baseball, my thinking is for the Pac2 to try to keep the old PAC12 teams together since it would really help travel and makes sense with the weather. Do the Big 10, Big 12, & ACC (which you already mention Stanford & Cal bolting the ACC who are a top baseball conference) really need or want those teams in their baseball conferences. Frankly for softball, cross country, and track and field that would also be great to keep the old teams connected in a few sports Only basketball and football really matter in these media contracts anyways. One can hope.
It's an odd fit on the surface - OSU and Wazzu playing in a league with mostly Jesuit schools. However, I like it from especially the Olympic sports. And it's only for two years, while the rest of college sports gets its collective heads out of their you-know-where and take Chip Kelly's (among others') suggestion.
I’m a WCC alumnus (San Francisco, ‘77), very closely follow the conference, and am more familiar with WSU and OSU thanks to familial and other connections.
Superficially, there are “fit” issues here between OSU/WSU and the WCC, as a few of you already have posted. Chiefly, religiously affiliated vs land grant institutions, and campus size.
But those lines already have been blurred.
The WCC added BYU, with a many-multiples-larger student population (since left for the BIG12). They readmitted Pacific, which dropped its religious (Lutheran?) affiliation decades ago.
Currently sitting at nine members, I’ve long believed the WCC needed to expand as protective and geographic footprint measures. Gonzaga periodically whines about money (they already get a disproportionate share of media rights). Adding WSU and OSU creates natural travel partners for Gonzaga and Portland.
I’d also imagine the WCC might look to add a twelfth member -- Grand Canyon has always made sense to me -- expanding its media and recruiting footprint to a large market (Phoenix) and reestablishing a connection to the west coast post-ASU.
Traditions need to be preserved--except when they threaten your viability. I like this move.
Wouldn't Seattle U be a better fit as an add. They have a much better basketball and soccer pedigree (WCC strengths) and Seattle is also a very big market, Now that BYU is gone with OSU/WSU all 11 schools are in just 3 states (2 in Oregon, 2 in Washington, & 7 in California) Seattle U would add 1 more in the Pacific NW . I understand GCU but shoring up Seattle with Washington leaving might be more important than expanding into Arizona.
I am an idiot. Totally forgot to mention Seattle U. — another former WCC member that dropped to D-2 decades ago, then reversed course and returned to D-1.
(Also, I saw their men’s hoops team play in person at USF recently; they *looked* like a WCC team.)
Yes, their profile is a competitive and culture fit. I don’t know how the conference would handle five PNW programs but they’d figure that out.
I love the WCC too. I had lots of family and friends play sports (soccer, xcountry., & lacrosse) in WCC schools and got wonderful educations. For historical buffs many of our iconic basketball and soccer heroes played in the WCC starting with Bill Russell, 2x NC at USF who won more NBA championships than anyone ever, and Christine Sinclair, 2x NC at UP who has scored more goals than any man or women for her National team. Two of the greatest representatives of their sports EVER.
Hope the Pac2 get this bball & soccer deal with the WCC, at least the next 2 years, but I wouldn't mind it merging in the future if a PAC football relegatoion model can work with MWC while preserving the rest of their sports in their current conference.
Seattle was in the league when I enrolled at USF in ‘73. Strong basketball program. (They had a guard, Frank Oleynk, who was John Stockton before John Stockton.)
The west coast has always had very strong Olympic sports, probably due to the climate. The Midwest and east coast are cold all the way into May and athletes choose to stay in warmer climates (if not dryer) for training and competition. I have noted before that baseball is very competitive on the west coast across conferences. Pepperdine has long had a solid program as has UC Irvine and Santa Clara. In swimming, Santa Clara was once the center of the universe (their swim club with Don Schollander and Donna De Verona). I see the Olympic sports redefining the idea of "conference" to once again be regional in nature
ACC is on a similar path that the PAC-12 was on 2 seasons ago. That conference could be drastically different in a year or two. Stanford and Cal could easily come back into the fold because they are earning ZERO money for several years, so they lose nothing. The Breaking of the PAC-12 was the first earthquake, there are many more to come before A St. Helens like blowout will redefine the college sports world (football breaking away, which they should). A breaking away of the Top-48 schools would push all the others into a higher level FCS style championship where a true champion in college football could actually be crowned a champion. There are really only about 12 teams that are given a realistic chance to even be in the FBS championship game, let alone win the title. It's a hopelessly corrupt system led by people who have been corrupting for many many many years. I say let them have their debased system, and fold the rest into a playoff that defines what our country should be about - equal opportunity. They talk about a Power base of 64 schools, but I'm not sure they really even want that many. It's clear they are just fine with the BIG and SEC as they are and the rest can go hell and back (in their mind, not mine).
Schools like KState, Minnesota, Illinois, Texas Tech and the like are similar to OSU...they have no chance of ever making it within the confines of the current system of playing in the playoff or national championship. The sooner people realize this and break away to create a better system the better the sport will be.
Love the idea of playing in the WCC for Olympic sports. It just makes sense, at least for now. Also very interesting but not surprising that parents of these athletes are more concerned with travel than competition. Anyone with a smidgen of common sense can see this is going to be a HUGE issue for UO, UW, SC, UCLA, Stanford and Cal going forward. The travel alone is going to kill the Olympic sports at those schools. So much for Stanford being perennial all sports champs in the NCAA. They'll be lucky to finish in the top 50 in a few years.
Not hard to figure out. Olympic sports are more student athletes, not just athletes. Who wants to spend the entire season out of class and in airports and hotels instead? If I would've previously considered Stanford or Cal because of academics and athletics, if I'm going to have to spend half the year on the Atlantic coast, I might as well apply to and attend Duke or UNC. It applies across the board to all of those sports. The best athletes in those sports will start looking elsewhere so they can be in position to succeed academically.
Apparently it’s is hard to figure out. As a former student athlete, the only time that might matter is on non-direct flights to the east coast, that might lengthen the travel days. That’s 2-3 times per year, not “half the season”. If you’re going to drive from Corvallis to Eugene or PDX and then fly to the Bay Area vs Wisconsin, the difference is like 1-2 extra hours. It’s still a travel day. Nobody is missing extra classes. In fact, I’d prefer flying to a freaking 10 hour bus ride. In that regard it’s shorter and less demanding. And do you really think teams aren’t staying in hotels on the west coast trips?
The ONLY disadvantages I see are the cost to the school, which means I might have to reuse my shoes and extra game instead of giving them to a fan, or that my family might miss some games (the real bummer).
NONE of those disadvantages will cause “Stanford” to collapse. Sheesh.
You’re upset about the demise of the PAC-12 and I get that. But nothing you said rings true in the real world.
You're talking football. I agree, the travel won't affect football at all. Tell that to the Olympic sports. If you truly are a former D1 student athlete, surely you know their travel is more extensive than an 8 or 9 game conference football season.
I don’t mean to be so crotchety about it. If I was an OSU Olympic athlete, I’d want to compete against the best wherever that took me. My parents would t like it, but I’d rather play Penn State than Cal State Nobody
Not in baseball (again, you're thinking football, which in that case I'd agree)...Cal State Fullerton is a much better draw in nearly every other sport than Penn State.
Former athlete. I’m talking Olympic and other non-revenue sports. Volleyball. Softball. Track.
My point is that a travels day is a travel day. Then game day. Then travel day. The difference in commitment between SoCal and the mid west or even the east coast is negligible.
Time change is the killer more than the extra hours flying across the continent. It's bound to have some effect on athletes. That's why actual Olympic athletes generally fly to their event a week ahead of time. Otherwise they'd not be at their peak performance.
And those with non-direct flights will be subject not just to lay-over time added to their travel hours, but the real potential for winter weather and other delays. It's not going to be pretty for a whole lot of those so-called Olympic athletes.
Great update. Not at all surprised the parents of the kids participating in the "other sports" are more concerned about the travel component vs. who their kids are competing against. Parents of kids live in the real world and demonstrate eminently more common sense than university chancellors/presidents, their attorneys and conference commissioners.
Ha! This is what I said early on with the WCC. It just made too much sense with WSU so close to Gonzaga and OSU to UofP plus 4 NorCal schools not far away. It also allows them to recruit S Cal kids with a promise of multiple games down there. As John said, parents just want to be able to see their kids play.
This is a great update John. Thanks for keeping us informed and I for one like it. I hope the WCC votes for it. I guess those of us at the Santa Clara women's bball game last Friday night might be right guessing it could be a future conference game next year.
One door closes another one opens! We’ve spent too much time fretting over football when clearly there is more to the student athlete experience.. one of these days we’ll look back on all of this and really appreciate those who have fought the fight. It will be a proud topic to share with parents of prospective Beavs and Cougs.Things are looking up!
There's been chatter about Gonzaga leaving the WCC. This could make sense for the other WCC teams to build up the league (temporarily) as a buffer. It could also allow them to do some relationship building with WSU and OSU in the hope of getting a future invite as a non-football member of the next generation Pac.
So...does this mean Gonzaga men's basketball will be forced to play at least one game in Pullman now? Or will Gonzaga want the games against Wazzu played at Spokane Arena and consider it a "neutral site"? LOL... YKIYK
Your still not beating Gonzaga, lol. They hold the record for most consecutive Sweet 16 or farther appearances in the tournament, as for WSU when was the last time they made it to the Sweet 16?
I think his complaint is that GU - which used to beg OSU and WSU for games in the 1990s - has gotten too big for its britches and won't play the schools that helped them out when GU was a regional nobody.
Cost reduction, recruiting footprint, parent-friendly travel and creating strategic alliances, relationships and pathways forward with the best programs within the PAC=2, MW, WCC and Big West is a very smart tactical move in my mind moving forward. Football is strategically aligned with the MW, Hoops is strategically aligned with the WCC and Baseball with the former PAC schools and the Big West/WCC. I still believe the best path forward for all the members of these conferences is to create a newer alliance (Relegation may in fact be the answer here) pitting the best programs from each of these conferences, per sport, to create the best schedule (highest competition) which would solve a host of issues (media contract, parent friendly travel, west coast time zone...etc. I see this as a smart tactical move :)
I see it as a smart strategic move as well. Starting to feel like there are some very real silver linings to the departure of the Traitor Ten!
Both schools already play many of these teams in the non-conference slate (speaking specifically for baseball/softball and other Olympic sports).
For baseball in particular:
1. WSU
2. Gonzaga
3. OSU
4. Hawaii
5. Cal St. Fullerton
6. Long Beach State
7. UC-Irvine
8. Santa Barbara
9. Fresno State
10. San Diego State
11. Stanford
12. California
Would be one helluva conference.
On baseball, my thinking is for the Pac2 to try to keep the old PAC12 teams together since it would really help travel and makes sense with the weather. Do the Big 10, Big 12, & ACC (which you already mention Stanford & Cal bolting the ACC who are a top baseball conference) really need or want those teams in their baseball conferences. Frankly for softball, cross country, and track and field that would also be great to keep the old teams connected in a few sports Only basketball and football really matter in these media contracts anyways. One can hope.
It's an odd fit on the surface - OSU and Wazzu playing in a league with mostly Jesuit schools. However, I like it from especially the Olympic sports. And it's only for two years, while the rest of college sports gets its collective heads out of their you-know-where and take Chip Kelly's (among others') suggestion.
Imagine the school size compared to all those private schools we would be a behemoth.
Well, then.
I’m a WCC alumnus (San Francisco, ‘77), very closely follow the conference, and am more familiar with WSU and OSU thanks to familial and other connections.
Superficially, there are “fit” issues here between OSU/WSU and the WCC, as a few of you already have posted. Chiefly, religiously affiliated vs land grant institutions, and campus size.
But those lines already have been blurred.
The WCC added BYU, with a many-multiples-larger student population (since left for the BIG12). They readmitted Pacific, which dropped its religious (Lutheran?) affiliation decades ago.
Currently sitting at nine members, I’ve long believed the WCC needed to expand as protective and geographic footprint measures. Gonzaga periodically whines about money (they already get a disproportionate share of media rights). Adding WSU and OSU creates natural travel partners for Gonzaga and Portland.
I’d also imagine the WCC might look to add a twelfth member -- Grand Canyon has always made sense to me -- expanding its media and recruiting footprint to a large market (Phoenix) and reestablishing a connection to the west coast post-ASU.
Traditions need to be preserved--except when they threaten your viability. I like this move.
Wouldn't Seattle U be a better fit as an add. They have a much better basketball and soccer pedigree (WCC strengths) and Seattle is also a very big market, Now that BYU is gone with OSU/WSU all 11 schools are in just 3 states (2 in Oregon, 2 in Washington, & 7 in California) Seattle U would add 1 more in the Pacific NW . I understand GCU but shoring up Seattle with Washington leaving might be more important than expanding into Arizona.
I am an idiot. Totally forgot to mention Seattle U. — another former WCC member that dropped to D-2 decades ago, then reversed course and returned to D-1.
(Also, I saw their men’s hoops team play in person at USF recently; they *looked* like a WCC team.)
Yes, their profile is a competitive and culture fit. I don’t know how the conference would handle five PNW programs but they’d figure that out.
I love the WCC too. I had lots of family and friends play sports (soccer, xcountry., & lacrosse) in WCC schools and got wonderful educations. For historical buffs many of our iconic basketball and soccer heroes played in the WCC starting with Bill Russell, 2x NC at USF who won more NBA championships than anyone ever, and Christine Sinclair, 2x NC at UP who has scored more goals than any man or women for her National team. Two of the greatest representatives of their sports EVER.
Hope the Pac2 get this bball & soccer deal with the WCC, at least the next 2 years, but I wouldn't mind it merging in the future if a PAC football relegatoion model can work with MWC while preserving the rest of their sports in their current conference.
Seattle was in the league when I enrolled at USF in ‘73. Strong basketball program. (They had a guard, Frank Oleynk, who was John Stockton before John Stockton.)
As a parent of a Gonzaga student athlete and an OSU Marching Band member, this article pushed me over the edge into paid subscriber.
Basketball and soccer aside, WCC women's rowing is going to get a lot more competitive.
The west coast has always had very strong Olympic sports, probably due to the climate. The Midwest and east coast are cold all the way into May and athletes choose to stay in warmer climates (if not dryer) for training and competition. I have noted before that baseball is very competitive on the west coast across conferences. Pepperdine has long had a solid program as has UC Irvine and Santa Clara. In swimming, Santa Clara was once the center of the universe (their swim club with Don Schollander and Donna De Verona). I see the Olympic sports redefining the idea of "conference" to once again be regional in nature
ACC is on a similar path that the PAC-12 was on 2 seasons ago. That conference could be drastically different in a year or two. Stanford and Cal could easily come back into the fold because they are earning ZERO money for several years, so they lose nothing. The Breaking of the PAC-12 was the first earthquake, there are many more to come before A St. Helens like blowout will redefine the college sports world (football breaking away, which they should). A breaking away of the Top-48 schools would push all the others into a higher level FCS style championship where a true champion in college football could actually be crowned a champion. There are really only about 12 teams that are given a realistic chance to even be in the FBS championship game, let alone win the title. It's a hopelessly corrupt system led by people who have been corrupting for many many many years. I say let them have their debased system, and fold the rest into a playoff that defines what our country should be about - equal opportunity. They talk about a Power base of 64 schools, but I'm not sure they really even want that many. It's clear they are just fine with the BIG and SEC as they are and the rest can go hell and back (in their mind, not mine).
Schools like KState, Minnesota, Illinois, Texas Tech and the like are similar to OSU...they have no chance of ever making it within the confines of the current system of playing in the playoff or national championship. The sooner people realize this and break away to create a better system the better the sport will be.
Merry Christmas John. Anna. & Girls. I appreciate your column.
The WCC makes perfect sense. I’m especially interested in seeing what OSU does with their fantastic gymnastics program.
Love the idea of playing in the WCC for Olympic sports. It just makes sense, at least for now. Also very interesting but not surprising that parents of these athletes are more concerned with travel than competition. Anyone with a smidgen of common sense can see this is going to be a HUGE issue for UO, UW, SC, UCLA, Stanford and Cal going forward. The travel alone is going to kill the Olympic sports at those schools. So much for Stanford being perennial all sports champs in the NCAA. They'll be lucky to finish in the top 50 in a few years.
How does travel translate to losing competitiveness and closing down sports?
Not hard to figure out. Olympic sports are more student athletes, not just athletes. Who wants to spend the entire season out of class and in airports and hotels instead? If I would've previously considered Stanford or Cal because of academics and athletics, if I'm going to have to spend half the year on the Atlantic coast, I might as well apply to and attend Duke or UNC. It applies across the board to all of those sports. The best athletes in those sports will start looking elsewhere so they can be in position to succeed academically.
Apparently it’s is hard to figure out. As a former student athlete, the only time that might matter is on non-direct flights to the east coast, that might lengthen the travel days. That’s 2-3 times per year, not “half the season”. If you’re going to drive from Corvallis to Eugene or PDX and then fly to the Bay Area vs Wisconsin, the difference is like 1-2 extra hours. It’s still a travel day. Nobody is missing extra classes. In fact, I’d prefer flying to a freaking 10 hour bus ride. In that regard it’s shorter and less demanding. And do you really think teams aren’t staying in hotels on the west coast trips?
The ONLY disadvantages I see are the cost to the school, which means I might have to reuse my shoes and extra game instead of giving them to a fan, or that my family might miss some games (the real bummer).
NONE of those disadvantages will cause “Stanford” to collapse. Sheesh.
You’re upset about the demise of the PAC-12 and I get that. But nothing you said rings true in the real world.
You're talking football. I agree, the travel won't affect football at all. Tell that to the Olympic sports. If you truly are a former D1 student athlete, surely you know their travel is more extensive than an 8 or 9 game conference football season.
I don’t mean to be so crotchety about it. If I was an OSU Olympic athlete, I’d want to compete against the best wherever that took me. My parents would t like it, but I’d rather play Penn State than Cal State Nobody
Not in baseball (again, you're thinking football, which in that case I'd agree)...Cal State Fullerton is a much better draw in nearly every other sport than Penn State.
Former athlete. I’m talking Olympic and other non-revenue sports. Volleyball. Softball. Track.
My point is that a travels day is a travel day. Then game day. Then travel day. The difference in commitment between SoCal and the mid west or even the east coast is negligible.
Time change is the killer more than the extra hours flying across the continent. It's bound to have some effect on athletes. That's why actual Olympic athletes generally fly to their event a week ahead of time. Otherwise they'd not be at their peak performance.
And those with non-direct flights will be subject not just to lay-over time added to their travel hours, but the real potential for winter weather and other delays. It's not going to be pretty for a whole lot of those so-called Olympic athletes.
A flight is a flight. If they were bussing to Penn State I’d be in your camp
Great update. Not at all surprised the parents of the kids participating in the "other sports" are more concerned about the travel component vs. who their kids are competing against. Parents of kids live in the real world and demonstrate eminently more common sense than university chancellors/presidents, their attorneys and conference commissioners.
Ha! This is what I said early on with the WCC. It just made too much sense with WSU so close to Gonzaga and OSU to UofP plus 4 NorCal schools not far away. It also allows them to recruit S Cal kids with a promise of multiple games down there. As John said, parents just want to be able to see their kids play.
The portal raids on WCC basketball players have weakened many of school’s
rosters. Adding the two orphans can
help the league. BYU’s exit can be
soothed with the two new additions.
All in all, a satisfactory first step.
This is a great update John. Thanks for keeping us informed and I for one like it. I hope the WCC votes for it. I guess those of us at the Santa Clara women's bball game last Friday night might be right guessing it could be a future conference game next year.
One door closes another one opens! We’ve spent too much time fretting over football when clearly there is more to the student athlete experience.. one of these days we’ll look back on all of this and really appreciate those who have fought the fight. It will be a proud topic to share with parents of prospective Beavs and Cougs.Things are looking up!
There's been chatter about Gonzaga leaving the WCC. This could make sense for the other WCC teams to build up the league (temporarily) as a buffer. It could also allow them to do some relationship building with WSU and OSU in the hope of getting a future invite as a non-football member of the next generation Pac.