Well, This Sucks
Loss affects everyone differently. When a loved one dies unexpectedly, everyone in the family reacts differently. Some will look for who to blame: God, the doctors, someone you can sue, etc. Some will make it about themselves, making a post on Instagram and talking about how Meemaw died just after they got to the hospital, “as if she was waiting just for me to finally say goodbye.” Some will just close themselves off from the world, preferring to be alone with their feelings.
So it has gone with Beaver Nation over the weekend. We’ve looked for who to blame. We’ve made it about us, wondering why others didn’t think about us in this situation. We’ve threatened to be done with college sports altogether. A poll on Benny’s House, a popular Beaver message board (posted prior to the actual disintegration of the conference) asked if the conference broke up, what would be your reaction? 37% each said “will continue to support the Beavs as I always have” and “will be done with college sports altogether.” The remaining 25% or so said their connection to OSU would still be there, but change in some way.
What went wrong, and who’s to blame?
Geography
There’s plenty of blame to go around for sure, but in my mind, the biggest reason the Pac-12 Conference ceased to exist is geography. Consider this map:
Just 16% of the country lives in the Pacific Time Zone. Only 6.2% live in the time zone adjacent.
This is mirrored by a map of FBS playing schools:
Look at this nonsense. The closest FBS non conference opponent Oregon State could play is Boise State. You know what two cities are closer together than Portland and Boise? Columbus, Ohio, and Washington, D.C.
The TV Industry
Sure, I could’ve made this the top one on the list, but it’s mostly influenced by geography. It seems wild to think about now, but Larry Scott brokered the largest media contract in college sports history back in 2012, when the Pac-12 signed a $3B deal with ESPN/Fox for the conference’s tier one rights. Part of that deal though was that the networks got to put the games in the time slots they wanted - namely night games when nobody else in the country was playing, because geography.
While eyeballs on Pac-12 games have always probably lagged behind other conferences (refer to the population map above), now playing games that sometimes didn’t kick off until 11:00pm on the east coast undoubtedly widened that gap. We got the money, but the networks got late night inventory. Fewer eyeballs gave the networks a decade of data to say that “nobody watches your games” which drove down the value of a media deal. Meanwhile, with ESPN/Fox so heavily invested in the B1G/SEC, they had a vested interest in promoting those conferences as much as possible. Least valuable property gets the least attention, which makes it less valuable and gets less attention. And so on and so on.
I’d imagine that they weren’t keen on signing back on at the price they paid before. National perception of the conference over the last five years or so (much of it justified, but a considerable amount fueled by a media narrative that took hold and never let go) was that it was not good football, the referees were terrible, and that nobody watched our football games. I don’t think any of these 3 things are entirely true (can anyone prove our refs are worse than other conferences, or do just our mistakes get amplified because #pac12refs? For instance, if you ask random people who the worst MLB umpire is, the answer will overwhelmingly be Angel Hernandez. If you filter data collected by UmpScorecards.com, there are several umpires you’ve probably never heard of that have lower accuracy on their ball/strike calls. They don’t get every one of their blown calls reposted on Twitter though.
OSU and Washington State in particular were very hurt by the TV aspect. Washington State was able to garner a little notoriety by luring Mike Leach - a coach with a lot of cache as a personality but questionably employable as he was fired from Texas Tech after allegations he locked a player in a closet as “punishment” for not playing through a concussion, but by and large, they suffered the same fate we did. Games on channels like Pac-12 Network and FS1 that nobody watches regardless of the matchup and at times when most people are asleep. We had bad ratings because we rarely get the opportunity to get good ratings. Last year, our games against USC and Utah, the two best teams in the conference, were on the Pac-12 Network. We played Arizona State on ESPN2 at 11:15 in the morning, which is a weird time when most people are right in the middle of the 4th quarter of the 9:00am games (that week two teams that made the CFP, Michigan and TCU, were each playing at 9:00). OSU’s lead-in game that day featured Central Florida as a 15.5 point favorite over a 3-7 Navy team (of course, Navy won outright.) All of those factors (channel, game time, lead-in, who is playing on other channels at the same time) play a large role in what kind of TV rating you get. Who you are really only really matters for two or three teams in every conference, in my opinion.
Ineffective leadership
At almost all levels, this factor killed the conference. Larry Scott and his big ideas and his San Francisco address and penthouse hotel suites dreamed big, almost never hit the mark, and did absolutely nothing to mitigate the damage when those big ideas didn’t pan out. We sent two basketball teams to China every year from 2015-2019. I didn’t even know this happened. I only remember the one UCLA game because one of the Ball brothers stole some sunglasses and needed Donald Trump to get involved to get his ass back home. The idea was to capture Chinese viewership I suppose, but was there ever any evidence that this was working? Attendance for the final game played in China (ASU vs. Colorado in 2019) was reported at 4,328, for a game played in Shanghai, a city of over 26 million people. I never heard of any sort of increased revenue from this Pac-12 Global strategy. There’s still a global page on the Pac-12 website - it hasn’t been updated in 3 years. The decision not to partner with ESPN and Fox seemed like a good play in the beginning, but as carriage deals with DirecTV and most streaming services for the Pac-12 Network failed to materialize, Again the conference failed to act. I don’t know if Larry Scott pitched it and was turned down by the presidents, or he was still unable to admit his first mistake and doubled down going it alone into the next media deal, it was a terrible decision.
George Kliavkoff came into a situation that was far from ideal, but then lost USC and UCLA. I don’t know if he was ignorant or oblivious, but I think it should’ve been clear that USC was unhappy. The continued inaction on expansion and a new media deal when it was very evident that everyone in the conference was getting a little jumpy falls at his feet as well. The conference also got very good at putting out statements about how confident they felt about the future while seemingly doing nothing to make sure that future came to be.
The presidents of the respective member universities also deserve some blame. They failed to see the oncoming meteor, or thought they were big enough to withstand it. I don’t know if they failed to press Kliavkoff for action or were too blind to demand it, but in any event they kicked the can down the road until they ran out of asphalt.
And finally, OSU’s own leadership failed it. Ed Ray was one of Larry Scott’s staunchest supporters. Since he retired in 2020, OSU has had three presidents in three years: one who resigned (Alexander) due to his involvement in the handling (or mishandling) of sexual assault charges brought against LSU athletes during his time there, an interim president (Johnson) who I doubt had any interest in making such a monumental decision when she was only going to be in the position for a few months, and another one (Murthy) who was just hired less than a year ago. Turnover always slows things down. Oregon State also got pretty good at issuing statements, the last one being a backing of the conference and our commitment to it after Colorado announced it was leaving.
No other school issued such a statement. It was like a scene from a movie where the smallest kid steps to the front of the crowd to stand up to the bully and says “Right guys?” only to turn around and see that the crowd has vanished from behind him and is cowering behind the dumpster.
We could debate if Scott Barnes should’ve been looking for and encouraging OSU to find a new conference itself, as OSU (along with WSU) stood the most to lose if the conference collapsed, but given what’s happened, it’s likely that even if he had (and who knows, maybe he did), the other conferences would’ve said “no thanks, we’ll wait and see what happens with your media deal first. We think there might be some other schools that come available first that would be a better fit for us.”
So how could we have avoided this fate? While much of it was out of control, it can be helpful to turn the magnifying glass on yourself when things go wrong. Much of our identity over the decades has been about being the little guy that can go toe to toe with some of the biggest and well funded programs in the country and not only hold our own, but oftentimes come out on top.
Maybe that contributed to our downfall. We call ourselves the Giant Killers, not an equal to the Giants. We marketed ourselves as the “Best College Town in the Pac-12,” driving home the point that we weren’t Seattle or Phoenix or Los Angeles or San Francisco. Did you know that Portland is the No. 22 TV market in the nation? Bigger than St. Louis, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, San Diego. I saw a map that someone had made of college logos on the US map that had Univ. of Oregon closer to Portland than Oregon State. We know that’s ridiculous, but to the rest of the country it probably feels that way. I remember being at the airport in Madison, Wisconsin back in 2010. I was wearing a polo with the interlocking “OS” that we used to use. Some guy asked if I was from Oklahoma State. I said “no, Oregon State. Same colors though.” The guy looked confused. “I thought y’all wore green,” he said. No idea we were even a school. We changed planes in Minneapolis. As I was sitting at the gate, someone came up to me and asked if I was on my way home from the game. I had no clue what game he was talking about. OSU was on a bye that week. “From Knoxville! You guys whipped the Volunteers pretty good last night!” He too thought I was wearing a shirt representing the Ducks, despite the orange logo on my shirt.
That’s not to say that marketing ourselves that way didn’t have its benefits. I think it certainly played well with some recruits, who craved a place with fewer distractions, a family atmosphere, etc. Where they could focus on football or basketball or golf or whatever sport they were looking to play. It certainly plays well with our fan base. For years our fan base has been loath to do anything that could be viewed as “Duck-like.” People suggested we boycott Nike, despite Phil Knight’s role in building Goss Stadium, His rumored role in keeping Pat Casey in Corvallis (and confirmed involvement in the original Raising Reser campaign), and bringing the Corvallis Knights to Corvallis from Portland. Several OSU athletes have had jobs waiting for them at Nike upon the end of their college careers. To them, marketing ourselves to the nation was putting style over substance…we would let our play on the field do the talking.
To be fair, I don’t know that taking a different approach would’ve changed this outcome. Cal and Washington State are in the same boat. Wazzu certainly went “all-in” on football, as some around here have been begging us to do for over a decade. They have done the flashy uniform thing, had some viral social media posts, paid an exorbitant amount for a football coach. Leach still bolted for the SEC, and they still ended up left out, and financially are in a much worse position than we are.
What Now?
Wish I knew. I know what I’d like to see.
Reform the conference, but rename it. Obviously I’d take a life preserver from one of the other major conferences, but given the way OSU has reacted to other schools abandoning us, it seems a little hypocritical to just bid the Bay Area schools and Wazzu adieu. The Bay Area market is the largest one out there unclaimed by one of the other major conferences. Still, any conference we create now will be less Pacific Athletic Conference than anything else. The PAC-X name has been associated with mismanagement, poor officiating, mediocre football, and low TV ratings for the better part of a decade. I don’t think it carries the weight it once did. A merger with the Mountain West seems the most likely, but the MWC is and probably will always be seen as a lesser conference, making it hard to turn public perception. Call it something new, brand it as the conference of the entire western half of the country, and go out and win some football games.
Get in business with Apple. Unlike linear TV options, market size doesn’t mean as much to a streaming service. ESPN and Fox get their money from cable and satellite providers who carry their channels on their base packages. This is why market size is so important to them. Everyone has a TV. Most have some sort of live tv provider (Cable, satellite, streaming). ESPN gets a cut of every single subscription regardless of if people are watching ESPN or not. This is why Rutgers is in the BigTen. Nobody gives a crap about Rutgers football. Rutgers Athletics on the whole ranks dead last amongst Power 5 schools in overall athletic success. But Rutgers is close enough to New York that ESPN can pressure providers to keep their channel off of secondary tiers and sports packages. If you have Comcast in Oregon, the Pac-12 network is part of your base package. If you want the BigTen network, you have to pay extra for a sports and entertainment package. The situation is reversed in the Midwest (if Pac-12 Network is even offered at all). ESPN and FOX already have the west coast properties they want, so why not go with someone who has actually shown interest? Oregon State offers little to a linear tv channel. The Ducks and Huskies give them the juice they need to stay on basic tier packages in the northwest, and nobody who doesn’t already have ESPN is going to sign up just because Beaver games are now on ESPN. However, if the west coast football you want to watch is on Apple, there’s a chance you’ll drop your $80/month cable subscription with games on several channels for a $10-15/month subscription that shows the games you really care about. It’s a win/win for Apple, attracting subscribers while also taking some away from the other guys. Streaming is the future. Over the past few years, I have probably watched more sports streaming than via linear TV: Premier League on Peacock, MLB games on Apple, some smaller college and USL soccer on ESPN+....it gets easier all the time. Heck, I even have a streaming subscription to watch high school sports now that my kids are competing so I can keep tabs on their opponents and watch any games I might have to miss for work or because they’re playing simultaneously.
Get to Reser/Gill/Goss/Lorenz. Seriously, go watch some games this year. The future is uncertain and this might be the last year of OSU athletics as we currently know it. Collectively, our athletic department is probably as strong as it has been in the past half century at least. Support these players. Give them a reason to think twice when a Power 5 school comes to try and tempt them to the Portal. Make other teams FEEL you, Beaver Nation. See Jade Carey in person. Marvel at McKenna Martinez’s goal scoring prowess. Welcome recent soccer transfer and USL2 Golden Boot winner Logan Farrington to Corvallis. Watch Damien Martinez run for 6, then watch him get 12 and lose your mind when he gets his 3rd TD of the evening. FILL GILL. If you can, take in a road game in Pullman or Stanford or Berkeley.
The 2023-24 Revenge Tour of Oregon State is going to be epic.
