Are college football fans in the Northwest ready for a 6-Pac?
That is the question as Washington State University and Oregon State University work to stabilize their athletic futures. The region’s two land-grant universities are planning to add Boise State, San Diego State, Fresno State and Colorado State to the remnants of the Pac-12 Conference, beginning with the 2026-27 school year.
The origins of the Pac-12 date back more than a century, and the coalition’s history gave credence to its self-proclaimed status as the “Conference of Champions.” But Washington, Oregon, Southern California and UCLA bolted for the Big Ten Conference, and other schools joined the Big 12 Conference or the Atlantic Coast Conference (a name that becomes an oxymoron with the additions of Stanford and California).
That has left Washington State and Oregon State as a de facto Pac-2 while casting doubt on their competitive futures. It also has led to a football oddity this weekend: WSU playing Washington and OSU facing Oregon in mid-September rather than at the end of the season.
“For over a century, the Pac-12 Conference has been recognized as a leading brand in intercollegiate athletics,” Commissioner Teresa Gould said. “We will continue to pursue bold cutting-edge opportunities for growth and progress, to best serve our member institutions and student-athletes … An exciting new era for the Pac-12 Conference begins today.”
It is, indeed, exciting. Yet at the same time it highlights the absurdity of big-time college athletics. Washington, Oregon and the other schools left the Pac-12 in search of increased revenue for their programs. After years of mismanagement from the conference office, the Pac-12 could not produce enough television revenue to match that of the Big Ten.
Longtime rivalries and connections forged by geography were ignored in favor of increased dollars. The argument can be made that this is sensible, and that any other business would do the same. But athletic departments at state universities are not just any business; they are arms of publicly funded institutions. Having athletic departments that financially stand apart from those institutions violates the very purpose of higher education.
As Oregon State University President Jayathi Murthy said last year: “The decision to pull out of the Pac-12 by two state institutions was made very quickly and with little regard for the fallout to sister institutions, and to the taxpayers.”
And as Michael Baumgartner, a former Washington state senator said: “These are public institutions, and this is going to have major ramifications on the higher-ed budget. The issues should have been decided in public, not by university presidents and TV executives in back rooms.”
Such calls for sensibility are lost in the cacophony of public passion for college athletics, particularly football. According to USA Today, the athletic departments at Washington and Oregon both generated approximately $150 million in revenue last year. They also generated immeasurable publicity for their universities as highly visible departments.
Washington State and Oregon State each produced approximately $85 million in athletic revenue, demonstrating the difficulty those schools have in competing at the highest level. The hope is that, despite those challenges, the Cougars and Beavers can maintain visible, competitive programs that serve the interests of their longtime fans.
The addition of four Western schools and the apparent survival of what was the Pac-12 is a step in that direction.
