This morning — less than 12 hours after the news broke on Twitter on Wednesday night — WSU and Oregon State formally announced that they are choosing to retain the brand equity and assets of the Pac-12 to rebuild the conference, and that they have started by adding four schools from the Mountain West: Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State, and Fresno State.

It’s been a wild 24 hours. The frenzy started at about 8:30 p.m. PT yesterday with a story by Yahoo!’s Ross Dellinger describing the broad strokes of the expected deal. Within 30 minutes, the major details were subsequently confirmed by a whole slew of folks, at which point the members-only Slack blew up with thoughts and speculation about what it all means for the Cougs.

Before I get to the direct implications for WSU — because that’s why you subscribe to this particular newsletter — here are the top-line takeaways from the story, in case you don’t want to read all that:

With that out of the way, let’s get to what this means for WSU.

I’ve seen a pretty wide range of emotions from Cougs since this news dropped, ranging from “it is very depressing to not be joining a Power 4 conference” to “hell yeah let’s go get it!!” Personally, I’m feeling both at the same time: I was hopeful that we’d be able to wriggle our way into a decent agreement with the Big 12 while also knowing full well that doing something primarily with Mountain West teams was always the most likely outcome. So, this neither surprises me nor depresses me.

Am I excited? Ehhhh, that’s probably too strong. But I’m warming up to it. Sometimes in life you have to choose the best of unappealing options and then make the best of it, and I think this qualifies as that. I’m pretty optimistic that this will play out better than the other options that might have actually been on the table.

We don’t exactly know what those options were. However, we can confidently say there was no standing offer to join the Big 12 as a full share member, and it’s reasonable to assume that WSU/OSU either believed such an offer was never coming or that holding out indefinitely for an invitation that was technically possible but also highly unlikely would compromise their ability to chart a path like this one with enough time to not have to throw it together as the 2026 deadline to get back up to eight teams loomed.

In short, it was time to stop being reactive and go on the offensive — an attitude that I love for WSU, which has spent so many years being dictated to in various ways. Rather than falling back into the so-called reverse merger with the Mountain West, WSU and OSU poached the conference’s best brands and shed the dead weight, positioning the new Pac-12 as the west coast’s premier conference once again. When the final schools are added — whoever they are — the Pac-12 should be the “best of the rest” outside of the Power 4.

That matters a lot! The conference will be eligible for the CFP automatic bids once again, and if they can land the right mix to get up to eight, a better-than-decent chance that the Pac-12 will have the best G6 lineup and use that each year to end up as the highest-ranked conference champ among those second-tier conferences. There currently is $117 million a year distributed in the new contract for G5 schools, and while it’s unclear how, exactly, that’s divvied up, you can be sure that WSU and OSU will be pushing for a bigger piece of the pie.

(Beyond the financial implications, it’s also worth noting that it sure looks like WSU now has an easier path to the CFP than all the teams that bolted. Just throwing that out there.)

Following the deterioration of the MWC scheduling agreement for 2025, there were plenty of rumors of WSU and OSU entering into a football scheduling agreement with the ACC or Big 12 for the short term. I also heard rumors of WSU becoming a football-only member of one of those conferences at a reduced media share for the long term (whatever that even means anymore), which would leave the Olympic sports to find a home in the WCC or Big West or whatever.

While having the “prestige” of being connected with the Big 12 in some way would have made us feel better about our situation — and would have provided more cash in the short run — I’m honestly not sure that it actually would have made our overall situation stronger in the long term. In fact, if it ever came out that a football-only offer was on the table, I would not be at all surprised to find out that WSU and OSU decided this was a better course of action, despite what would presumably be a large financial gap.

Why? Because at least in this situation, you’re the one in control, you’re the one calling the shots, and you’re not at the whims of whatever else happens in the realignment carousel. As a hanger-on to the Big 12 or ACC, you’re just one of 15 voices in the room and clearly marginalized without full voting rights because of whatever weird agreement you were offered. You won’t get a real say, and there’s a decent chance you’re left scrambling again at some point in the future when the deck inevitably shuffles.

In this spot, you’re now stable and positioned to jump if an opportunity arises, but you also don’t have to stress about being left without a chair again — and can plan accordingly.

I also think it’s really, really important to remember that football is not the only consideration for the presidents making this call. Yes, football drives the bus for revenue, and it’s the thing you and I think about the most. But it was mission critical for WSU and OSU to make sure the other programs had a stable landing spot and weren’t stuck being total vagrants for however many years it takes for all this perpetual realignment to shake out.

Both schools have other high-level programs that are very much worth trying to position as strongly as possible — in addition to basketball at both schools, WSU has high-level soccer and volleyball programs, while OSU has their famous baseball program. Playing in the WCC or whatever was never going to give those programs the home they deserved.

Is WSU a little more cash poor because of this decision than it might have otherwise been had you pushed hard for another path? Maybe in the short run. But WSU and OSU are betting on themselves to close the gap in two ways: With a creative media rights deal, and with a conference that can land in the CFP more often than not. It might backfire, but I love that kind of audacity.

We also don’t know how WSU and OSU are planning to use all that cash they absorbed from the previous iteration of the conference once it’s done being used to rebuild the new one. Perhaps some of that cash simply flows to the two schools in order to bridge the revenue gap as budgets adjust? Both WSU and OSU have capital projects that were approved with revenue projections that no longer exist, and paying those bills has always been my primary concern; the last thing WSU needs is for central campus to have to pick up a huge tab on a facilities bond payment. Hopefully this mitigates that.

And maybe this is just cope — I don’t think so, but maybe — but I think I’d rather be in our position right now than the one Cal and Stanford are in. Getting a fractional amount of revenue from the ACC ($25 million a year for the next seven years) while criss-crossing the country to play games in every sport? On the one hand … money. On the other hand: travel costs that have doubled, increased stress and time away from school for the athletes, and the knowledge that you’re a successful lawsuit/negotiated settlement by FSU and Clemson away from it all falling apart once again.

I don’t know how much we’ll get from media rights going forward. The current MWC annual media payout is something like $6 million a year, and what we’re moving toward has only been described, vaguely, as “more” than that. It’s got to be enough more to make paying the exit fee worth it for the four MWC schools, but who knows how much it is. I’m prepared to be underwhelmed.

That said, one thing the Pac-12 has going for it now is that it has done to the MWC precisely what the Big 12 did to the Pac-12: Jumped to the front of the line for media rights negotiations. The CW’s thirst for live football content appears to have only grown since partnering with WSU and OSU, and one can assume there are still streaming partners out there willing to do a deal. This fall has already shown that there is a significant appetite for west coast football as a brand in and of itself. Now it’s just a matter of putting the finishing touches on it with a couple of more teams, which you’ve got 11 months or so to do. Can they piece something together that gets up to $10 million a year in media rights? $15 million?

There also is a wild card: Pac-12 Enterprises. That’s the broadcast production arm of the conference, and one of the major assets WSU and OSU took control of last year. Initially, it was thought that the studios and such might be an attractive asset that another conference might want to acquire with our schools. That didn’t prove to move the needle, but recently, Pac-12 Enterprises not only has handled the production for the CW football broadcasts … they’ve also taken on outside clients.

I think it’s entirely possible the business there increases to a point where it becomes a legitimate revenue stream, and I think that might explain why the conference appears to be thinking small in terms of its membership. In the broadcast world, more teams = more inventory = bigger contract = more money per team. But if this side hustle is going to become a money maker, fewer teams = more money per team. Just a thought!

Later, I’ll dip into what I think the end game of all this might be for the Pac-12. In the meantime, Craig and I should have a podcast for you on Friday.