I wouldn't call it a 'deal".​

WSU, Oregon State land TV deal for home football games in 2024 | Analysis​

Jon WilnerMay 14, 2024 at 11:47 am
A process that began last summer concluded Tuesday morning when Washington State and Oregon State announced a media rights agreement for their home games in 2024, when they will compete as a two-team football conference in the aftermath of the Pac-12’s demise.

Eleven of their 13 home games will be shown on The CW, with the other two on either Fox or FS1.

“It’s the best-case scenario,” said a source familiar with the negotiations. “It allows them to stay relevant.”

(No information about the teams’ road games in 2024 was made available; those matchups are controlled by the opponents’ media partners.)

WSU football home game schedule​

WSU football games will air nationally on The CW Network and Fox Sports in 2024
Although the Pac-12 Networks will cease to exist as a media distribution company at the end of June, the conference has retained the Bay Area production facility and will use the infrastructure to produce The CW broadcasts.

Our four-part reaction to the news:

• 1. The financial terms were not disclosed, but the deal is expected to generate approximately $1 million per game for the Cougars and Beavers.

That’s a paltry amount compared to what the 10 departing universities will receive under the terms of their agreements with the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC. But cash was a secondary consideration to exposure for the ‘Pac-2’ schools.

In that regard, the agreement with The CW and Fox represents a massive upgrade.

Most OSU and WSU games over the past decade were shown on the Pac-12 Networks, which reached roughly 15% of the TV homes nationally.

The CW and Fox are broadcast networks available in 99% of TV homes.

“Given the number of times in recent years they’ve been exiled to the (Pac-12 Networks),” a second industry source said, “it will be good for everyone in the country to have access to all their games.”

• 2. The CW, which owns the rights to LIV Golf and NASCAR’s Xfinity Series, is steadily adding to its college football inventory after years of standing on the sidelines.

Last summer, the network announced it would broadcast 13 ACC football games annually through the 2026 season via a sub-licensing agreement with ESPN, which owns the ACC’s media rights.

The CW is expected to promote its Pac-12 package during ACC broadcasts and use ACC games as a lead-in to WSU and OSU matchups.

Each school will have one game on Fox or FS1: Texas Tech at Washington State, and Oregon at Oregon State.

• 3. Another key piece for two schools that have played so many night games over the years: The CW kickoff times are favorable.

Two of WSU’s six home games are locked into afternoon windows, while three more could start in daylight. Only one, against San Jose State, is guaranteed to kick off after dinner.

Meanwhile, four Oregon State’s seven home games have been scheduled for afternoon or early evening starts; the others could kick in afternoon windows.

“Most of the windows are conducive to ticket sales,” a source said.

• 4. The windows are also conducive to network studio shows.

During all the uproar over the Pac-12 night games — and the extent to which they were inconvenient for fans — an important element was often overlooked: #Pac12AfterDark had no shelf life.

Because the night games typically ended at 11 p.m. on the West Coast, there were few chances for highlights to appear on the influential ESPN, Fox and CBS studio shows that are produced during peak viewing hours on the East Coast.

By the time football fans in the eastern half of the country rolled out of bed on Sunday morning, the networks had transitioned to NFL coverage.

But The CW has afternoon and prime time (East Coast) windows available for the ‘Pac-2’ games, giving studio shows numerous opportunities to show highlights of WSU and OSU and discuss whatever narratives develop in Pullman and Corvallis.

For the schools left behind in the realignment game, relevance is far more important than revenue.

The Cougars and Beavers have enough cash to navigate the next few years thanks to a settlement with the departing universities worth in excess of $200 million.

What they need now — what they cannot survive without — is exposure.

The deal with CW and Fox offers exactly that.

Jon Wilner: jwilner@bayareanewsgroup.com

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Hopefully our admin is doing so. Oregon State is fielding its women's gymnastics team in the Big 12, coming on the heels of scheduling OOC games against Big 12 opponents. Barnes, the Oregon State AD, is on record saying this represents an intentional strategy. He has access to more information than we do, and this both says something about Oregon State's prospects of trying to get into the Big 12, as well as the feasibility and desirability of rebuilding the Pac-12.

I don't mean to overstate this; maintaining relationships like this makes sense in various ways other than just greasing the skids for Oregon State to join the Big 12 (with or without WSU). Just something to keep an eye on. WSU also scheduled multiple OOC games against Big 12 schools (and an ACC and SEC school, for that matter), as we know.

With the spring practice done and a lot of uncertainty ahead, I decided to look at what Massey's computer ratings had to say about our upcoming season. Bear in mind that it's likely to be completely wrong because it looks at the past for its calculations and has no idea of how offseason roster changes will impact things. That said...here are the results that his model is predicting for the 2024 Cougs:

Portland St: 45-14
Texas Tech: 27-28
Washington: 24-33
San Jose St: 35-21
@ Boise St: 28-26
@ Fresno St: 31-26
Hawaii: 38-14
@ SDSU: 31-21
Utah St: 38-20
@ New Mexico: 38-17
@ Oregon St: 24-31
Wyoming: 34-20

He is predicting a 9-3 finish with a couple close road wins after a rough start. Texas Tech is a hard one to figure out. They beat a pretty decent KU team that was 7-2 and ranked in the Top 25 at the time. They thumped Cal in their bowl game....who beat us. They also struggled against the rest of the 5 and 6 win teams on their schedule and those games ended up being the last one with the ball wins. The Husky prediction is clearly based on last year's team but given our last ten years against the mutts...it's hard to argue against the result.

A little surprised by the prediction for us to beat both Boise State and Fresno State on the road. Frankly, I don't see us getting both of those wins. 9-3 would be a nice bridge season for us.

BTW, the computer is saying that Oregon State goes 11-1 with their only loss to Oregon.

What ever happened to him after he left the team. I liked the kid and his story.

On Brand X. All focused on Deputy AD Mitch Straub's presentation. Takeaways:

Has anyone here ever met this guy? He's from Ohio State so he came with Chun or shortly after. Why didn't he go to uw with Chun? Hmmm. He didn't get the WSU interim AD gig. Anyway, I don't think I like him all that much. Nor do I believe some of his numbers. To wit:

• This $62 million number keeps coming up. "This last year" is FY 2023, correct? I still don't believe it and unless I see some detail I will never believe it.
• And the $27+ million/year for the last 4 years? Does not fly with the numbers from the Regent's meeting. I'll have to dig into this more when time permits. FY 19 was our biggest year in operating gifts - but the smallest year accoring to Straub (I know, endowments are the wildcard, but we had 12.4M per below in operating and Straub sez our total was 15.1. But every year since has been over 27M? Noooooo....

Regents Doc. FY 19 to FY 25
Attachment B*There may be minor differences in subtotals shown above due to rounding to dollars million.REVENUES: Contributions/Endowments 12.4 10.7 8.5 10.7 12.7 10.4 8.8

I don't see Jaylon Wells name on the list.. anyone else see or hear differently?

Congrats UW…this is your guy 🤦🏼

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Home of racists.

Until I confirm that what I saw is recent I'll rescind my previous statement.

Ok guys. This non-autonomy relegation is a bummer but not surprising or undeserved. Why should the Pac-2 get voting power equivalent to the 12-14-18 (I can't keep track) team P4?

So. Let's quit F-ing around hoping for a Big-12 invite (they don't want us and it would suck anyway), or some far-flung ACC restructure (won't happen, it would REALLY suck and they don't want us anyway).

Do the reverse merger with the Mtn West ASAP before one or more of them gets plucked out from under us. Save a few bucks on our 2025 affiliation option and - wow - maybe actually share in some media money and NCAA allocations to be earned in '25 and later. Won't cost us a dime and will save money as we jettison most of all of the Pac-2 Administration in favor of Gloria and gang.

Salvage what we can from the current bowl affiliations before contracts expire in 2026. Which makes it imperative that we move SOON. Alamo, Holiday, Sun and Vegas in order of preference/payout. With San Diego and Las Vegas as new Pac-12/14 hometowns, we may stand a chance of keeping the Holiday and Vegas. Sun Bowl can go away IMHO.

Stretch the cash windfall out as far as we can as we readjust. Don't forget the NCAA BB payouts in years 3-6, which we get only if the Pac remains in existence.

I am aware that the above concept has never been thrown out by the All-Knowing and Superior-Intellect Loyal One, so I favor you all by spelling it out here. Feel free to chime in with roaring approval.

Anyone go to the Coug event last night (Friday)? Any recap would be appreciated. Or we will have to wait for the Brand X recap.

Speaking of Brand X and the mutts, they have an article on our game, and the expected $4 million WSU will get. Wow - didn't expect that. Good news!

Rihard Vavers is a 6'7" wing. He seems mostly a shooter. Wonder if this means Cedrick Coward is leaning somewhere else along with Wells obviously sticking in the draft?

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I'm going to link a couple of Senate Appropriations Committee clips. One is Alaska Sen. Murkowski (I think she is a fantastic American BTW, and IMHO pretty cute for her age too) railing on Secretary Haaland on the BS her agency is pulling on Alaska, and has for many years. Note that she accuses the Dept of the Interior for not following a law that BIDEN SIGNED! The second is Montana Sen. Daines just reaming this Haaland bitch out over Grizzly restoration, and justifiably so. He says that grizzlies reached the "target threatened threshold" (my words, something like that) in 2002. In a good way, to be clear. Yet Interior has not lifted restrictions. Note - Bush #2 was President in 2002. So it is the agency, not the President at fault.

On the D side, WV Sen. Manchin reamed her out too. Didn't link that one. So - what's the point? Biden gets blamed for Interior Dept. BS going back through multiple administrations. What should he do? First he should (have) had someone glued to the tube for this hearing. Second, he should fire that bitch immediately and go after anyone else in the Dept that is complicit. And make hay out of it, with appropriate outrage. That would score him points. Second, these agencies, regardless of who happens to be President, are doing whatever the F they want.

There is a good argument for it. I stumbled across this ~10 minute video on Pistol Pete Maravich today. The guy was absolutely phenomenal, a wizard with the ball, a magician before there was Magic. I had the great pleasure of seeing him play the Sonics in Seattle way back when, maybe his rookie year. Still have two plays from that game burned into my brain!

Averaged ~44 PPG in his three years of college, and it was before the 3 point line. With the 3 point line he would have averaged 50-55. The video said that in his last year, playing with 2 bad knees on the Celtics during Larry Bird's rookie season, the Pistol shot 67% from behind the 3 point line. With all of his scoring exploits, they reminded us that this was all done back when palming and traveling violations were actually enforced.

RIP, Pete- you WERE the greatest!

I think you will enjoy the video.

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Where the hell did this come from? Yet another administrative position? And a whole 'nother office of support staff, etc. And a less-than-impressive resume I must add. We now have an Anthropologist as a Pullman Chancellor, and an Education professor as a Provost. And a remote-working lame duck President. And 9 Vice Presidents, not to mention all the other campus Chancellors....

My kid made it!
Btw... family coming in to town checked out hotels in the area. As a for instance.. motel 6 in Lewiston 600 bucks a night. I can see making your money while you can but good Lord.
They're all staying in Spokane and driving the hour and a half.

I'm bored this AM, and I know nobody gives a shit about Cougar Baseball (sorry Bobo), but the Cougs did hold off #6 OSU last night 10-9 after allowing 7 runs in the 9th inning.

So roster question - and I never looked at this before. We have 39 players on the team (OSU has 41 and UO 40 so WSU is not abnormal). With 11.7 schollies to give out, that means, well you get it. Very few if any full rides, lots of non-scholly players.

But why so many players? we have 4.5 catchers. And 20(!) pitchers. And we usually play 4 games/week. MLB rosters are limited to 26. Typically 2 catchers, 13 pitchers, etc. And they play 5-7 games/week. Yeah MLB also has an expanded roster of 14 contract players that can be called up. That's still a total of 40, and only 26 can suit up for a game.

But WTF? How do you even hold practice with 39 players? Seems to me you need to cut it down to less than 30 and spend your time developing those players.

Per a new article on Brand X, Fox will televise the TT game, the Civil War game, and maybe the WSU/OSU game. CW gets the rest of the home games (including the mutt game I assume, as it is the same day as the Civil War).

This seems like good news. So what will the payouts be? WSU budgeted -0- for media revenue, which now seems clearly wrong. Appears that WSU and OSU will pocket the money from their respective home games - or will the Pac-2 split them? And the mutt game - what will we get out of it since it is at a "neutral" site? Not millions to be sure if it is on CW. I like Canzano's comment that "there will be daylight football".

Lost to Gonzaga again last night, now 18-21 and 2-12 in the last 14 games. Thank Gawd we got the "Back to Omaha" facility project completed.

Signs with UCLA