Sources: WSU, OSU near affiliate deal with WCC

• Kyle Bonagura, ESPN

  • Staff WriterDec 20, 2023, 04:29 PM ET Close Covers the Pac-12.
  • Signed up with ESPN in 2014.
  • Gone To Washington State University.Oregon State and Washington State are

  nearing an agreement to sign up with the West Coast Conference as affiliate members next year in multiple sports, most especially males’s and ladies’s basketball, sources told ESPN, validating multiple reports.It is an agreement comparable to the one the schools reached with the Mountain West to play six football games versus MW teams next year but with a major distinction. While the Beavers’and Cougars ‘games against MW schools in football will not count toward the conference standings, there is an expectation their games will count toward the standings for other sports in the WCC. They are likewise anticipated to be qualified to take part in conference tournaments and eligible to represent the WCC in NCAA championship events.Editor’s Picks The deal has not been settled, but university presidents from the WCC schools are expected to satisfy by Thursday to

consider it, according to several reports. The arrangement would begin the heels of the Washington state Supreme Court’s decision last week not to evaluate a lower’s court ruling that gave control of the Pac-12 board of directors to OSU and WSU.OSU and WSU intend to reconstruct the Pac-12 and will keep the conference’s branding on their football fields next season despite operating as a two-team conference.For a conference to exist, the NCAA requires”a minimum of seven active Department I members, “all of which must sponsor guys’s and females’s basketball, and for the conference to

sponsor at least 12 Division I sports, among other requirements. In the case of departures, the bylaws enable a conference a two-year grace period in which it can exist without the minimum number of schools.The WCC contract, like the one in football, is viewed as a short-term service that will purchase the schools time to reconstruct the Pac-12. There had actually been similar conversations with the MW for an affiliate agreement beyond football, but those talks fell through, sources said.