Canzano: Oregon State president talks Pac-12 timeline and more
President Jayathi Murthy sat down for a 1-on-1 interview.
CORVALLIS — Jayathi Murthy is a central figure in the Pac-12 Conference’s mission. Oregon State’s president was hired in 2022 and entered the fray of college athletics at a critical time.
Oregon State and Washington State have a scheduling partnership with the Mountain West this football season. What happens after that? A conference rebuild? Join the ACC or Big 12? Something else?
The Pac-12’s path will include multiple, calculated steps or “two bites of the apple” as one source told me last week. Everyone believes super conferences are coming to college football. Does that include 40 or 50 teams? Or maybe 60? The Pac-12 needs a plan for 2025 and 2026 that positions it for the next realignment scramble.
Murthy sat down on Friday in her office for a 1-on-1 interview with me. We discussed her upbringing in India, the Pac-12’s strategy, The CW TV deal, ethics, branding, NVIDIA founder Jensen Huang, and more.
Q: You grew up in India at a time when people told young women there ‘You may graduate but you’ll never get a job’ and ‘It can’t be done.’ You must have had some voice in your household that told you ‘You can do this.’ Who was that?
JAYATHI MURTHY: My parents were it — my mother and father. My dad was a civil engineer who worked for Indian railways most of his life. My mother was trained as a marine zoologist. She got a graduate degree. She was never able to work as a marine zoologist. There just weren’t jobs for women then.
They were a part of this generation that came of age during Indian Independence, in 1947, when we broke off from the British. They were forward-thinking because they grew up in this time of royalty and revolution. They weren’t bound by ideas that everybody else was bound by. They had three daughters. Daughters weren’t the most prized sex at the time, but they gave us every chance that I could think of. I wanted to be an engineer like my dad. They were fine with that. And so I went off to the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.
I was one of two women in my class. I think there were maybe 10 women in the undergraduate program. They let me go. This was unheard of. And then I got out of school and wanted to go to graduate school. I’m not married and they sent me off to the US.
Q: That flight across the ocean must have felt like a big leap.
A: First flight ever. I’d never been on an airplane. And my first flight is a 30-hour flight or something. I’d never eaten airline food. I was given airline food and I thought it was delicious. I just couldn’t believe that I was on this huge adventure. Turbulence hit and I thought, ‘What the heck is that? Is this plane coming down?’ I mean, literally, I had no idea what this thing was. I had maybe $100 in my pocket, and that was it.
Q: What was it about mechanical engineering that drew you in?
A: I was good at school. I wanted to go off and be an astronomer or a writer or whatever. I had many, many interests. So it wasn’t just one thing. I happened to be good at math, too. I just thought my dad was the most brilliant person on Earth, and he could solve anything and think about anything. And so some of it was just that I wanted to be him. I was good at school, generally. And so I end up taking this big old entrance exam, and I get in. It’s sort of like getting into MIT — you don’t say ‘no.’ When you get in, you get in, and you say ‘yes.’ So a lot of it was not fully understanding what I was getting into. All my life, I found almost anything interesting. You put me in an English lit class, I’ll jump right in, and that’ll be my thing. I found my interest step by step.
Q: What do you like about living in the state of Oregon?
A: The physical beauty of the place throws me every single day. I mean, today I was up early. I had a 7 a.m. phone call, and I was walking around the garden between appointments, drinking a cup of tea, and thinking, ‘Oh, my gosh, where are we?’ I mean, this is just this beautiful place. For me, that matters. It roots you in the place. And so every day is a surprise. Every day is beautiful. And I love that.
Q: You drive a convertible. That young girl from India who was told ‘You’ll never get a job’ is driving around a convertible as a university president. If I had told your parents that when you were a little kid, would they have been surprised?
A: The convertible is my one indulgence. I’m not a convertible type person. And that thing is about 12 or 13 years old at this point. So it’s not a new thing. But I love that because it gives you this huge sense of freedom.
You’re right. With my parents, (a convertible) wouldn’t be the thing. We were never poor. My father was an engineer, so we were solidly middle class. But it was also a time of no indulgence. You saved and you were careful and you never overspent, never took debt. My dad wouldn’t even build a house until he had the entire chunk of money in the bank. I mean, he would never take a loan out. So I grew up in those kinds of circumstances, never indulging ourselves. And that continues to this day.
Q: When you arrived in Corvallis (in September of 2022), you stepped into this Pac-12 mess. What did that feel like, that whirlwind?
A: There are parts of it that are purely about athletics, and you’re trying to understand that. But a lot of it is money, a lot of it is people. And so we figured it out. We were in the middle of it very, very quickly. You have to deal with certainly athletics. You have to deal with alums. You have to deal with the campus that was in uproar, the entire communications and PR side of it. All the folks that we were doing fundraising for Reser Stadium. That was happening, and people were wondering where we were headed. So we did figure it out.
I’ve got a great team here, and I figured out that we’ve got some real superstars here. And I’ve always felt it was sort of like the Marvel Comics, right? I mean, you’ve got one guy that can throw bolts of lightning, and somebody else can summon up storms. And we literally have those kinds of people. And you figured out who’s talent was what. And they came together fast. I hate to say this is wonderful because it’s a crisis, but we really did come together as a team because it pulled us together and everybody is doing their bit. The legal folks are doing their bit. The comms folks are doing their bit. That was a pretty amazing experience.
Q: The conference imploded on that dramatic early-August morning. When you look back at that more than a year later, does what happened surprise you? Are you angry about what happened?
A: Yeah, I mean, there certainly was (anger) then. And to the extent that I look back, it does shake me up even now. But it’s done. It’s a year old. We have to look forward and we have to start architecting our own future. So I’m not spending a huge amount of energy on that. There was a time you could get me pretty riled up, but not so much now anymore.
Q: Pac-12 Commissioner, Teresa Gould, you’ve worked closely with her. What is that like on a day-to-day basis?
A: That is a talented woman. It’s absolutely obvious to me. I’m so proud that she’s the first woman, A5 Commissioner, that we appointed and we got her through the Pac-12. The thing that really surprised me about Teresa is how quickly we got to a place of trust very, very quickly. I mean, this was literally weeks in we were able to talk to each other in complete frankness. I will say anything I want to her. I mean, I don’t hold back. And the same is true of (Washington State President) Kirk Schulz because we’ve been in this cauldron together.
There’s a real sense that we are one institution, even though we’re all these different institutions. So there’s a point of trust and a point of frankness with her that I never felt before. She proved herself. I mean, you saw how she handled the whole College Football Playoff negotiation, just moved it from $300,000 to $3.6 million. I mean, that took a bunch of doing. She does it subtly. She’s built relationships. She’s got good relationships with the other commissioners, a good relationship with us, with (Oregon State AD) Scott Barnes, with (WSU AD) Anne McCoy. It’s a good group. And so I’m really thrilled to see her taking the reins. And you’ve got to really be appreciative of what she had to pull off, right? Pac-12 was a couple of hundred people. It’s down to a quarter of that. And so she’s had to let people go, people of long-standing, people who worked there for 20 or 25 years, reconfigure everything, set up Pac-12 networks, hire (Pac-12 Enterprises head) Michael Molinari and take on this huge responsibility. It’s amazing what she’s been able to pull off.
Q: Is there a timeline in your mind of when the Pac-12 needs to make a decision or pick a path?
A: Yeah, it’s closing in fast, right? I mean, we’re at the start of our two-year period. We’re going to have to move. It’s a balance. You’ve got to make sure you’re not losing opportunities because you’re moving really quickly. At the same time, there’s a price to pay in terms of uncertainty, right? Uncertainty is not good for recruitment. We’ve got to hang on to our coaches. Kirk Schulz is planning to step down in a year. And so you’re careful about not hitting a leadership transition that could really mess things up. So there are pressures on the other side I’m keenly aware of.
I think what I want our fans to know is that nobody’s sleeping on the job. I mean, we are on it at a level of intensity that may not be evident from the outside because we’re not able to talk about these things. But nobody should think that we’re just sort of letting it go or waiting for things to happen. We’re working the problem really hard.
They should also know that we are not risk-averse. I mean, I hope they know that from the way we handled this crisis. We’ve not just sat around and let things be done to us. We take risks. We’re willing to play the game a little more toughly than people might expect. And we’re doing that. And all of that is playing out underneath. I can’t talk about it. We’ve got great expertise helping us out. We have these incredibly long meetings once a week. And so it’s happening, all right?
I know people are really anxious, and that comes from the huge love, excitement, and commitment that Beaver Nation has. I mean, these are folks that are absolutely focused on OSU. I know that they’re impatient. I wish I could give them weekly reports. I cannot. But bear with us and know that we’ve got really smart people working on this.
Q: There are rumors out there daily. What is the danger in talking more openly about your master plan? Are there threats out there that would derail the plan?
A: Well, I mean, look, no commercial entity — ESPN and Fox and whoever else — will ever talk really about any conversations that are going on. I mean, it’s a threat to their business. The Pac-12 is not a public institution like a university is. Things are confidential. So we can’t talk about those parts of the universe anyway. There’s a lot of speculation. You know, John, you’ve been wonderful in terms of being absolutely factual and careful about the things that you report, but you know what the Internet is like. It’s just a nut house out there.
I began to understand how much is just cooked up when I look at what’s out in the media. I knew what the truth was, and I could see what was being reported. It was complete nonsense. And so don’t believe everything you hear. I try very hard not to be swayed by the nonsense. I keep a clear head. And there are times I won’t look at social media because it just drives you nuts.
Q: Your home football games will be carried on The CW and Fox this season. The CW deal gives the Pac-12 schools national exposure. How did you balance exposure vs. revenue when negotiating the TV deal? Did the revenue matter?
A: Revenue matters, but at this point, exposure is the thing that we’re looking for. We want to remain relevant. We want to remain visible while all of this plays out. And that’s a very big deal, which is why the (broadcast) deal that we announced Thursday is a big deal with baseball and Portland’s CW as well as the streaming parts of that.
(Note: Portland CW will broadcast 18 Oregon State baseball games next season. Fans will also be able to stream the games live on KOIN.com.)
Q: The market has seen some consolidation. Is there a larger appetite for college sports programming with the media companies? Are there others like The CW who are sitting on the sideline and come in and help drive new opportunities?
A: We’d be open to all of those opportunities. I know Teresa is looking at a whole lot of options for us. Streaming is an option. At this point, we’re willing to take risks.
Q: For the 2024 football season, you needed scheduling and partnered with the Mountain West. In 2025, you’ll again need a scheduling plan. Is that compartmentalized in your mind or is there synergy between what happens in 2025 and what you’ll ultimately do in 2026 and beyond?
A: There could be. The Mountain West, obviously, we’ve got an arrangement with them for 2024. 2025 is an option, and we’re certainly having conversations. There are obviously future options that could be of interest. That’s one path. It doesn’t have to be the only path, but it’s an important path for us.
Q: One of the paths involves a potential rebuild of the conference. As I talk to Mountain West presidents, one wondered: ‘Would the Pac-12 really do to us what others have done to them?’ Where do you stand on the holistic and collegial view of the ecosystem?
A: We want to be good partners, all right? I mean, there’s no question about it. We want to be good partners to whoever we partner with. At the same time, we want a competitive landscape for us, and we want a strong, competitive group that we play with and build our own talents and provide opportunities for our students. It’s a balance between those two. We won’t act unethically ever, but we have to do what’s right for OSU.
Q: Do you think others acted unethically in the Pac-12’s downfall?
A: I wouldn’t go so far, but I do think that people act in their self-interest, which is not surprising. I wouldn’t say unethical.
Q: There’s university branding and marketing, and there’s athletic department branding. There is a good example of successful athletic department branding sitting just 40 miles away and —
A: You mean Western Oregon? (laughter)
Q: Oregon has benefited from the glow of Nike. You’ve got some corporate partners and good relationships with former alumni who have built successful companies. Can Oregon State lean into those relationships?
A: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And so certainly on the academic side, there’s big interest in leaning into our relationship with NVIDIA, with Jensen Huang. We’ve just broken ground on the Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex. It’s going to come online in 2026. I was just sitting at this table yesterday trying to plot out what the research infrastructure is going to be and what we’re going to start growing. Our connection to the biggest Artificial Intelligence company in the world in the era of AI is a huge, huge plus. I’m not yet sure what the athletic side of that can be.
Q: Can you make him a football fan?
A: I’m going to try.
Q: Can you get him to a game?
A: Yeah, I'm going to try. But that is a connection that we can’t ignore. And so the strategic plan is (based on) building the entire AI, plus robotics, plus fast computation, plus everything sustainability, everything agriculture, everything forestry.
What does a modern land grant look like in the era of AI? I mean, that’s an exciting place to be. Everybody's got to understand how different this is from, say, an urban school like UCLA, where I used to be. Great school. But sustainability there means how do you unclog the 405 freeway at 5 p.m.? What do you do with EVs? How do you suck CO₂ out of the atmosphere that the factories are spewing? For us, it’s a different deal. For us, it’s clean oceans. How do you get your forest to work in a sustainable way? How do you do sustainable ag? And how do you use the power of AI to make rural sustainability workable? That’s the problem that we have, and it’s a very unique place to be.
Q: Is there a lane for AI in college sports?
A: Oh, absolutely. I mean, if they aren’t already doing it, they’re too late. I mean, yeah, absolutely.
Q: Could Oregon State be a player in that space?
A: Could be. Could be.
Q: That leads us to the balance between higher education and major college athletics. Those two things are not lining up in this era. How does that feel to you?
A: There is a contradiction, right? I mean, in a way, because you’ve got a public institution with public responsibilities. We’re not a money-making institution. Just by design, we don’t play with the market. And at the same time, we’ve got a part of our operation that is tied to the market and market value. And balancing these is quite difficult, right? And we’re running into that. For us, the North Star is clear. We have a commitment to our student-athletes. Their success matters and their well-being matters. That’s the North Star. We've got a commitment to our alums and fans, and we’ve got to deliver value for them. And we’ve got to give our students the best competitive experience. And how to work this out in this mix of public and private is where the problem lies.
Q: I want to get into the feedback you get from the Big 12 and ACC. What kind of conversations have you had? Do their media partners have an appetite for more expansions? Are those conversations you're even having?
A: I wish I could tell you all of that. I can’t. But of course, the big center of those conversations would really be Teresa. She leads.
Q: This season is important for Oregon State and Washington State. Beyond just the university’s own public relations team, has the Pac-12 hired a PR firm?
A: I think branding is really important. No question. Positioning and branding, particularly at this point in time, are really important. I know (Athletic Director) Scott Barnes is deeply, deeply aware of it. I know Teresa is deeply aware of it, and they’re working on it. The CW deal is a part of that. In a sense, it’s a part of that branding, too. Fox and The CW telling that story. So, yeah, absolutely, we’re aware of that.
Q: WSU lost Athletic Director Pat Chun to Washington and Kirk Schulz announced he is leaving his post in Pullman as president next summer. How concerning is that turnover?
A: Yeah, no question. I mean, transitions are hard. And this whole thing, transitions in the leadership, transfer portals, then coaches. So it’s been a big story of transition. We worked it out. We found our way through it. And I think the hard decisions are going to get made this year anyway, hopefully, before Kirk retires. Anne (McCoy) has been there for a while. She’s not new at all. She knows the place. That's what’s made it workable for us.
Q: What do you need from your alumni base and your student body this season?
A: I mean, look, they’ve been incredibly good right through this. You saw the crowds last season. I mean, they showed up. It wasn’t just words. And I really appreciate that. I appreciate the passion and the commitment. I want them to give us that commitment and that faith in us for just a little bit more while we work this out, right? We’re working hard and we need them to give us a bit of space and give us a little bit of faith and we'll see this through.
Q: When was your last vacation?
A: I had a big trip to India, which wasn’t a vacation. It was work, work, work. And then we took a week off and went to the Philippines. I don’t know if you know this about us — my husband is a big collector of countries. So his deal is he wants to go to every country in the world before he drops dead. And so he’s got to live a good long time before that happens. We’re on country number 75 or 76.
Q: So what’s next?
A: I want to go to Uzbekistan in Central Asia. Why? Because the Mughal Empire in India started with a guy called Babur, who actually is from Uzbekistan. So I wanted to see the historical underpinning of that whole thing.
Q: What do you get from seeing that up close?
A: I just love being in places that I don’t know anything about. I mean, it’s a lot of fun.
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John, she is an absolute stud and I’m sure you sensed that in-person. Our youngest graduated from OSU in June and I had a chance to watch her in a couple different settings that weekend. Powerful, wise presence. I’m devastated by where we find ourselves, but her wisdom and strength give me some hope. She is no BS and may get us out of this mess.
A: You mean Western Oregon? Haha
The orange blood is already pumping through her veins. Go Beavs!