Love the optimism but we are getting ready to be relegated to a much lesser league with a lot less revenue. We won't stop UW from leaving but maybe WSU sympathetic legislators can blackmail the state into helping us balance our athletic finances while we get things straightened out.
At the end of the day, everything is going to be all right. We'll rarely be relevant nationally, but that isn't really all that different than our current lot in life. One Top 10 finish in 19 years does not a powerhouse make. If we end up in the MWC, we'll have some entertaining new opponents to face and who knows, maybe we'll do well enough in that league to win 9 games on a regular basis. Hell, as long as I can watch us on TV or the internet.....I don't really care all that much anymore. Winning 9 games would be more fun than finishing 6-7 half the time (or more).
It's a rough financial future ahead, but MWC teams have been doing it for a while and seem to be getting by.
A insider Notre Dame Source according to Sports Illustrated says that Notre Dame doesn't want to go to Big 10 and wants to stay independent.
COMBINED with how a WA legislator named Drew Stokesbary, said that he and Michael Baumgartner, are pushing, expediting FAST, QUICK, ETC, LEGISLATION, that ties UW/WA state together, forbids UW from leaving WSU behind, that UW/WSU has to be a PACKAGED deal either in Pac 12, Big 10, Big 12, Merger between Pac 12/Big 12, Merger between Pac 12/ACC, MWC, etc.
Drew Stokesbary has TOLD UW/WSU presidents, Chancellor's, AD's, Board of Regents, Coaches, etc, and probably has threatened the President's/AD's/Board of Regents, that they had better comply, not try to do things, circumvent things, before the legislation passed, and that if they do that, they will lose all public tax dollars, funding, will be FIRED, etc.
That and what Big 10 has said that they not interested and only interested in Oregon/UW, IF IF ND joins Big 10, and since ND said they won't join Big 10, and since UW/Oregon said they are staying put, and since the Big 12 said they won't raid Big 12, at least for now, and since the rest of the remaining Pac 12 teams said they staying put, and since the Pac 12 said they extremely aggressively will expand, an or merge, and said that a new media deal worth about 300 million, about 30 million a Pac 12 team per year, is being finalized.
Because of all that combined together.
Pac 12 will probably get Iowa St, TCU, Texas Tech, from Big 12, and BSU, UNLV, SDSU, Fresno State, Airforce, to go with Oregon, UW, Stanford, Utah, Cal, Arizona, ASU, Colorado, WSU, Ore St, to become the Pac 18, and then get Rosebowl to renew with Pac 18, and then finalize 300 Mill media deal, then later merge with either Big 12 or ACC.