Canzano: Thoughts, opinions, goodbyes, and whispers for your Sunday
Pac-12, Oregon football, eyes on USC, plus weddings, Trail Blazers draft, and more...
The Pac-12 Network feed will go dark at midnight on Sunday.
Pac-12 after dark?
It’s gone.
I’ve spent a lot of time in recent months reporting and writing about the downfall of the conference, lousy leadership, and a line of painful strategic mistakes. On July 1 the conference’s network will officially be in the rearview mirror, and in August, 10 of the current Pac-12 schools will officially depart for new conferences.
Some thoughts for your Sunday:
• I was asked to be the officiant at a wedding on Sunday. I’m serving as the minister. More on that in a bit. The couple and their wedding party flew in from Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. They have 40 people coming to Oregon wine country for the ceremony on Sunday and asked if I would help.
At the rehearsal dinner on Saturday night, I overheard a conversation from the other end of the table. It was fans of Minnesota and Iowa football lamenting that they didn’t like the idea of four Pacific Time Zone schools joining an already top-heavy conference.
They were particularly miffed about Oregon, Washington, and USC entering the fray because it meant that the mid-tier schools in the Big Ten now had to not only deal with Ohio State and Michigan, but also the Ducks, Huskies, and Trojans.
“In a good year,” an Iowa fan said, “what are we now, fifth or sixth, best-case?”
• I won’t mention any of this college football stuff during the ceremony, but I found it interesting. I hadn’t thought much about the plight of Iowa, Minnesota, Purdue, Wisconsin, and the other Big Ten schools now faced with having to climb over the new West Coast programs that are joining.
• There was considerable empathy for the “Pac-2” at the other end of the table. I just eavesdropped on the Big Ten chatter. But if fans of the Gophers, Hawkeyes, and Badgers know all about Oregon State and Washington State’s plight, then everyone in America knows. I wonder if OSU and WSU will seize that attention and form a positive and productive narrative in the next six months.
• The bride and groom have asked me to be “entertaining” and keep the wedding proceedings to a “maximum” of 15 minutes. If you’ve ever served as the officiant at a wedding give me some pro tips in the comment section. As preparation, I had coffee with a pastor friend. To build my confidence, he informed me that I didn’t need to be ordained as a minister in Oregon. Turns out anyone can perform a wedding ceremony.
• I plan to keep the ceremony light, but meaningful. I want to honor the couple’s bond and be good — but not great — on the stage. It’s their special day. But I don’t want to be SO good that I get asked to do more weddings. Can you imagine? The life of a clergyman is a slippery slope. What’s next? Baptisms? Funerals? Not qualified. And I certainly don’t want friends dining in a group setting to turn to me and ask me to lead the prayer all the time. (I informed my wife of this concern recently and she said: “You’re ridiculous” and walked away.)
• Fun fact: I’ve been the “Best Man” at seven different weddings. I’m OK with this being my first and only wedding playing the role of minister.
• The couple is putting a lot of faith in me. But I learned on Saturday that they have a backup plan. They asked a person in their wedding party to get ordained in case I couldn’t make it. Turns out I won’t be the only minister in attendance on Sunday. I am not offended. But I am requiring that they refer to me during the reception as “Mr. Prime Minister.”
• Oregon’s over/under win total in the first Big Ten season is listed at 10.5 regular-season victories. It feels like the exact right number. But if you put a gun to my head I’d take the “over.” I reserve the right to change my mind as the season approaches, but I think the Ducks are more likely to get to 11 wins than end up stuck on 10 or nine.
• I’m fascinated to see how USC fares in the next couple of seasons in football. I mean, are they still USC? Meaning, do the Trojans keep their shine, recruit Southern California well, and routinely make the playoff? Or do they find Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan, and Oregon looking down on them in the next 24 months?
• If you haven’t read Ashley Adamson’s guest column published on this platform last week, give it your attention. It was heartfelt, raw, and dripping with authenticity. Readers responded powerfully to her thoughts and feelings about the end of the Pac-12 Network.
• On that note, I received an email from Adamson on Saturday with the subject line “overwhelmed.” Adamson was in Maui on a family vacation last week. During her flight back to San Francisco she wrote:
“Just started reading all the comments on the story, per a nudge from my dad. And here I am in full tears. What a treasure to hear so many kind thoughts and wishes from so many of your readers. Thank you again, John, what a total gift you gave my heart on an otherwise difficult and sad day.”
Her piece was the gift. It humanized the experience of being in the inner sanctum of the Pac-12 Network offices during the crisis and eventual downfall of the conference. There were people involved — 141 of them — who lost their jobs.
• Adamson joined Jon Wilner and me on the latest episode of “Canzano & Wilner: The Podcast.” If you want to hear her talk through the emotions and discuss what comes next in her career (Spoiler: She’s moving to the Big Ten Network) give it a listen:
• Since we’re on the subject of podcasts, Guy Haberman of the Pac-12 Network joined me on the statewide radio show on Thursday for a 1-on-1 about his experience. He talked for a bit about working alongside fellow broadcaster Bill Walton.
“The thing people should know about Bill is that he worked really hard, and he really prepared,” Haberman told me. “He didn’t just want to talk about the players based on the media guide or bio on the website. He wanted to talk to them, he wanted to know what the trainer’s name was. He wanted to know all this stuff so he’d go to both practices the day before and go to both shootarounds the day of.”
Haberman also spoke about the first basketball broadcast he did alongside Walton. They were at the press table, and 10 minutes before the game, Walton turned and asked Haberman if they could have dinner after the game.
“What does he do? The whole dinner he is asking questions (about me),” Haberman said.
It was a great interview:
• I went 1-on-1 with Washington State President Kirk Schulz in a wide-ranging interview published last week. Schulz announced his retirement recently. He’ll stay on the job through June 2025.
• Schulz laid out the first timeline I’ve seen for a potential rebuild of the Pac-12. He said: “I think early in 2025, we’ve got to make a decision about where we’re going to be for the next four or five years.”
• Of course, Washington State and Oregon State need to run out every ground ball and track what’s happening in the ACC and elsewhere for possible opportunities. But if it comes to a straight rebuild of the Pac-12, it sounds like the schools know they have to get serious about their path sometime after the end of college football season.
As Schulz said: “I know that supposedly we have more time than that with the NCAA and those things, but if we’re not careful, we’re going to keep kicking the can down the road.”
• Schulz talked about the $255 million war chest available to the Pac-12 schools. How much of it might be used to rebuild vs. subsidize WSU and OSU over the next couple of years? I was told by Commissioner Teresa Gould months ago that $65 million of the settlement funds were being earmarked for potential penalties and exit fees. But the bulk of the war chest will be used to subsidize the loss of media-rights revenue in the next two years.
Said Schulz: “… if you start looking at the media for the two schools over a couple of years, some of the legal stuff coming down the road, the need to keep a small conference office there, fees that we do have to pay to the Mountain West and other places to participate, you can burn through it pretty quickly.”
• There are multiple timelines and options to keep in mind. The Pac-12 has two years to get to the NCAA minimum of eight teams. That strategy will set the stage for the next five or six years for the two schools. Then, there’s what happens to the ecosystem when the Big Ten (2029-2030) and SEC (2033-34) media rights deals begin to get negotiated again. Most industry insiders expect more chaos, further realignment, and potential consolidation as the costs to compete at the highest levels rise.
• I asked Schulz about the stranglehold that the SEC and Big Ten have on major college athletics. Those two conferences have positioned themselves as tentpoles and openly wielded their leverage, particularly when it came to the College Football Playoff distributions.
Said Schulz: “Clearly, USC played a major role in decision-making in the Pac-12 for years. Within the Big Ten, certainly, Michigan and Ohio State traditionally have played an outsized role in decision-making in those conferences, that type of thing. I watched that shift over the last five years. Now, commissioners are really running things and they consult with presidents. Whether that’s good or not, I think, can be argued. But I do think we’re just in a different world where we’ve got commissioners running athletics and the presidents have taken a step back and frankly have been unwilling, generally, to be engaged at the level they need to until it’s too late.
“Once all this stuff went down with the playoff and with the unequal distributions between the conferences and stuff like that, a few presidents are going, ‘Well, this isn't the way we want to do things.’ It’s like, where were you a year ago?!? And so I really think that we’ve watched that shift.”
• Trail Blazers General Manager Joe Cronin and his staff did the best they could with two first-round picks in an iffy NBA Draft. The Blazers traded the No. 14 pick and picked up a player (Deni Avdija) who isn’t 19 or 20 years old. They used the trade to get under the cap. Then, Portland selected UConn’s Donovan Clingan with the No. 7 pick.
• The draft-day moves made sense. Cronin appears to have a plan. I like that. Avdija, 23, just signed a four-year, $55 million contract that kicks in next week. It was a nice little trade and Clingan (7-foot-2) is a rim protector with interesting upside.
• That said, before the draft, the sports book had the Blazers at 1,000-to-1 to win the 2024-25 NBA title. After the draft? Same long odds. The win total for next season is still going to be ugly.
• I’d feel better about the Trail Blazers if they had an invested and engaged ownership group. They’re stranded in NBA purgatory with a trustee still in charge this summer. I expect no meaningful free-agent moves. The franchise needs to be set free and sold. No way around it. I’ve said it a thousand times, but here’s No. 1,001.
Now, I need to go see about this wedding…
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Wow John, what a packed column today! Love reading about you being asked to officiate at a wedding. Will be interesting to read about your experience after the wedding.
A question posed by Seinfeld: “has anyone asked the bride why she doesn’t just marry the best man?”
I’ve officiated 3 weddings. Keep it simple and about them. When having them repeat their vows, keep the phrases short so they can remember the phrase (they are nervous and will forget).
You talk & write for a living, you’ll be great!