Official statement from Teresa Kuehn Gould:

"It's a new day in collegiate athletics. This historic moment allows us to maintain what makes college sports special, the development of young individuals through sport, while also evolving to meet today's students where they are with new opportunities in a manner that provides long-term stability for collegiate athletics. I am proud to work alongside my colleagues as we implement and introduce the future of college sports."

Some actual numbers are out from Athletics (Brand X article below). Couple of items of note:

• 2024 Apple Cup revenue was $1.7M, not the $4M that had been thrown around last Fall. Big surprise!
• Pac-2 distributions - $37M+ for both years. A bit more than the $30M that I thought was FY 25's budget amount. So double that to include OSU, and that is $150M for the pair. Count the $10-oddM each for FY24, and there goes $170M of our windfall. Throw in the poaching fees and we are up to $225M. Bye war chest!
• Other than Apple Cup, I don't see Media/TV revenue in either year. I thought we had figured about $6M for FY 26?
• No apparent amount for athlete revenue sharing which starts the Fall?

Be interested in seeing how this all stacks up against OSU and the 5 Traitors....

Hah. That title could describe WSU and the Pac-2.

But that's not it. Cool to see WSU's perhaps most famous grad live from Broadway. Tonight on CNN.
Never saw the movie, but interesting that Clooney played Fred Friendly in the movie, but has the lead role in the play. Cougs are everywhere. Can't escape us.

Looks like we have restocked for the next year. Not sure that we will know much about the quality for several months. Look forward to Seattle U being in the WCC this year.

Former WSU coach Mike Leach eligible for Hall of Fame under new criteria​

CREG STEPHENSON
May 29, 2025
Tribune News Service

The College Football Hall of Fame has adjusted its eligibility requirements for coaches to be inducted, which is good news for supporters of former Washington State coaches Mike Leach and Jackie Sherrill.

The winning percentage requirement has dropped from 60% to 59.5%, meaning Leach and Sherrill, among others, are now eligible. Sherrill had a career winning percentage of 59.89, while Leach’s was 59.62.

“The NFF is committed to preserving the integrity and prestige of the NFF College Football Hall of Fame,” NFF President & CEO Steve Hatchell said. “This adjustment reflects thoughtful dialogue with leaders across the sport and allows us to better recognize coaches whose contributions to the game extend beyond a narrow statistical threshold.”

Other eligibility requirements remain unchanged. In order to be considered, candidates must have coached for at least 10 years and in at least 100 games, and be retired for at least three years (the latter requirement is waived for retired coaches who are at least 70 and active coaches who are at least 75).

But the winning percentage requirement was especially a sticking point when it came to Leach, who died suddenly at age 61 in 2022 while coaching at Mississippi State. Known as an innovator whose “Air Raid” attack influenced a generation of coaches, he won 158 games in 23 seasons at Texas Tech, WSU and Mississippi State.

Sherrill — an Alabama graduate who played fullback and guard for the Crimson Tide under Paul “Bear” Bryant in the mid-1960s — also fell just short of the 60% threshold in 26 seasons at Washington State, Pittsburgh, Texas A&M and Mississippi State. Still living at age 81, he had a career record of 180-120-4.

Still active, but also now eligible or near eligible for induction under the new criteria are Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz (59.83) and West Virginia’s Rich Rodriguez (59.01). Rodriguez spent three seasons (2022-24) at Jacksonville State.

CREG STEPHENSON.

John Canzano is on the Jason Puckett show

Sorry to start a new thread on this, but it didn't fit in just one of the existing threads here.

5:40 - Texas State as a school for the PAC-12

9:23 - Discussion of 5 formally notifying MWC they're leaving

12:11 - Oregon State baseball

21:53 - Mike Leach

25:05 - Inside the NBA

Click for free article

Edit: If the San Diego Union-Tribune won't let you read the article for free, then here's MSN with the same article for really free:
MSN: San Diego State, 4 others formally leave Mountain West

Flat and I’m sure others are sick of threads getting overrun with nonsense. I’m taking it upon myself to make a special thread where gibbons can continue his tantrum and Uber can…well do what Uber does.

Copy and paste away fellas!

Canzano, put some Leach quotes from historical text exchanges they had. Some things that caught my eye...

“ESPN owns the product with the other conferences. They can borrow from the Pac-12 if they want to pick up our games,” he wrote. “Which are they going to push hardest?! The games that they own? Or the ones that they borrow?”

After Mario Cristobal left Eugene for Miami, Leach confessed that he would have loved to coach someplace like the University of Oregon.

“I beat the Ducks with my guys,” he quipped. “Imagine what I could do with theirs.”

Wrote Leach: “Some of my favorites are San Luis Obispo, Encinitas, and Carlsbad. Unbelievable places. I like places where I don’t have to drive much. Hawaii. The Oregon Coast is off-the-charts beautiful, but breezy.”

Leach on Seattle…

“Seattle people all have the illusion that it is the greatest place on earth, and amazingly, they think everyone else does too. Ohio people are sort of like that. They think everyone wishes that they could live in Ohio.”

I would vote Yes if I had a vote. He was amazing at WSU.

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Just read Utah is planning to revenue share the full 20.5M (under the proposed NCAA rules) with it's athletes.

I also read, WSU was going to share 4.5M with football. Unclear what they are planning to do with hoops.

Just sharing this as it illustrates how far we are off and how much better WSU needs to do in this new era. Clearly the media/TV deal - and what conference we are in - is the difference between being "in the game" and "watching the game." Currently we are "watching the game."

Interesting call here.

Your thoughts? If you can find other angles, please post them.

Malicious contact or Obstruction?



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With exceptional growth ( Ellensburg stadium, GameDay productions, NIL agency and Corp tie-ins ) CEO Biggs plate is more than full ! Help him with your input on candidates for additional corporate staffing. Provide feedback on this list of finalists :



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SEC Coaches apparently supportive of the 5+11 format, figuring they'll earn the at larges on the field. Quite a difference from the 4-4-2-2-1-3 plan. That one sucks, but I could maybe go for a 3+3+2+2+1+5 format.

I suspect Baumgartner to be involved as well.

Politics aside, any Cougar fan or college sports fan should welcome the reform. WSU can't compete in this NIL pay to play era, so any guardrails from the Feds would be welcome news.

I sense this rhetoric is to gain leverage of their desire for more automatic bids, but this is getting ridiculous. Let them break away. Let them lose access to the NCAA basketball tournament. Their greed is what is wrong with college athletics.

Ha ha, not yet, but a pretty good article on Brand X. I don't actually hate them, they are just too far away (read McCoy's comment in the bullets). For the non-FB sports. My son does live in Austin, so there is that.


Also, I had missed this article about Anne McCoy in Palm Springs at that event. A few kindly-meant comments from the Polite, Benevolent yet Mighty Loyal One.
This is dated Feb 25:

• As our fearless commissioner Teresa Gould pointed out, the Big 12 and the Big Ten didn't change their names (as their numbers changed), so why should we? So, Pac-12 forever." Oh. Well girls, you know the Pac has changed its name twice to reflect current membership numbers. I still have a Pac-10 shirt
• Paraphrasing here - our media deal for 2026 may be done as soon as 6 weeks, then "the conference will focus" on the required 8th member. OK, 6+ weeks puts us in April. Then we secure our new member? That's pushing it. "...conference expansion decisions would need to come together quickly, perhaps wrapped in a June-ish timeframe..." Although I guess the July 1, 2025 "deadline" to add isn't a show stopper, but invokes additional major penalties for most teams. Note that the Traitorous 8 gave less than a year. But there were no penalties for them because of our Bylaws.
• Asked about the grumbling out of Washington, Oregon, Cal and Stanford about shipping all their sports teams to the East Coast for so many games, McCoy opined that the burden is untenable for the non-football sports. OK now this is interesting. So if it is untenable, why would the Pac even consider Texas State or Tulane, Memphis, etc? Granted these schools aren't quite as far as ACC schools. Farther than most B1G schools though.

All that said, a pretty informative article.

Hadn't really been following it, but here we are. 18-36, 11-19 (last place) in the MW. Missed their tournament. So much for "Back to Omaha".

I see that BSU, CSU and USU don't play Baseball. So our glorious new league will have 5 Baseball-playing schools? That will be fun.

I’m in Colorado for my future son-in-law’s graduation from the Colorado School of Mines. They’ve recently restarted a tradition where the graduates wear cowboy hats instead of mortarboards. The students can get custom branding for the hats based on their degree or whatever they want. Personally, I think it’s pretty cool.


https://www.minesnewsroom.com/sites...raduatecomm1-20250509-tm-08.jpg?itok=Q0DBNf8C

Seatgeek is having a Memorial Day sale right now. 20% off ticket purchases so essentially wipes out their fees and then some.

I got two tix for Ol Miss 30 yard line like 15 rows up for under $100. I figured that game would be a lot more so pleasantly surprised.

Not a bad weekend to do some shopping if you want to get road game tix.

That’s what can happen when you play in Pullman for Washington State.

This is about as clear of an argument as to why you need to invest in athletics. For WSU is means, University subsidies in a meaningful way to be competitive.

"Large flagship universities—blessed with strong academic reputations and high-profile sports programs—continue to boost local economies. In such cities as Ann Arbor, Mich., University of Michigan, Madison, Wis., University of Wisconsin, and Gainesville, Fla., University of Florida, students fill dorms, restaurants and bars.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of 748 public four-year colleges and universities in all 50 states shows that full- and part-time enrollment at the most prominent state universities increased 9% in 2023 compared with 2015. At lesser-known regional state universities, enrollment fell 2%. The shift represents tens of thousands of students who have abandoned struggling college towns.

At the University of Tennessee Knoxville, the state’s flagship school, enrollment jumped 30% in 2023 compared with 2015. Enrollment at Tennessee’s 10 regional state colleges fell a combined 3% over the same period. In Wisconsin, enrollment at the University of Wisconsin in Madison jumped 16% and fell 9% at regional public campuses over the same period. Between 2011 and 2023, the economies of the metropolitan areas that include Madison and Knoxville grew faster than the U.S. as a whole."

Norm!!!

A classic character on one of the very best sitcoms ever. R.I.P. to George Wendt.

Here is a link to every one of his entries into the Cheers bar. Great writing.

Dumb that it took this long but glad he will finally get his day. Sad he won’t be there to celebrate it.

Baseball is I think by far the weirdest of all sports when it comes to history and tradition. Like these voters who won’t vote for an obvious hall of famer on a first ballot.