WSU, OSU anticipate fuller Pac-12 image soon
Sep 21, 2023, 08:14 PM ET
The leadership at Washington State and Oregon State believe they will have information within the next month to examine whether it makes sense to restore under the Pac-12 brand while also proceeding with a legal case to take control of the future direction of the conference.
“I don’t believe it’s going to take us months to get the full picture,” Washington State president Kirk Schulz stated Thursday. “I’m optimistic that in the next thirty days or so we’re going to have a quite good concept of a lot of this and that’ll assist our decision-making and our legal strategy.”
The presidents and athletic directors of both schools held a joint press conference two days prior to No. 14 Oregon State and No. 21 Washington State fulfill on the football field in a top-25 showdown. While they’ll be competitors Saturday, the two schools are merged in how they’re moving forward after being overlooked in the most recent round of conference realignment.Editor’s Picks 2 Related Washington State athletic director Pat Chun stated the Cougars’band will perform the Oregon State battle song before kickoff Saturday.Except for a couple of hours this weekend, they are partners in solving the puzzle of what comes next.”Simply to be clear that the collaboration has actually been incredibly strong, however it’s on pause
come kickoff,”Oregon State athletic director Scott Barnes said.Neither school feels safe and secure about its future. Crucial is the pending lawsuits the schools have actually brought seeking
to make them the only decision-makers concerning the conference with the other 10 schools leaving for new leagues next year.The 2 schools desire control of the staying Pac-12 possessions and copyright while preserving its brand name. They say they fear the outgoing schools will attempt to liquify the conference and divvy up its properties on the way out the door.Washington State and Oregon State won a short-lived restraining order early last week to prevent departing Pac-12 members from conference up until it can be determined who
can chart the future of the disintegrating conference. They are waiting on a hearing to be arranged on a request for an initial injunction.In the meantime, the leaders of the 2 schools state it’s important to get a clear photo of where the conference stands right now– with its revenues, assets and perhaps essential its liabilities– to figure out whether it’s practical for the schools to progress as a Pac-2 and begin the process of restoring under the conference umbrella.”The truth is the legal action that was simply talked about truly affects our capability to make informed decisions,”Chun said.”And we owe it to ourselves, to our student-athletes, we owe it to all of our constituents to make as notified decisions as we can and getting to this possession liability piece has always been vital in regards to making those choices. “While the schools wait on that details, they are pressing forward. “The truth that we are waiting on some extra details does not suggest that we haven’t been focused every day on what that scheduling situation [for next year] might appear like and engaged in the correct conversations to make certain that when we do have that information we’re pressing go,”Barnes stated.”We do know based on our modeling and our discussions with the material experts, that we can put schedules together as late as late fall. We do not wish to wait that long. … However I would state that as it associates with scheduling, we are confident we can put a schedule together for all sports in a timely fashion that meets our requirements for 2024-25.”The Associated Press and ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura contributed to this report.