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Oregon State and Washington State held all the cards regarding the PAC 12 after a court gave them control of the conference earlier this month. That ruling could have had big ramifications for the other ten PAC 12 teams that are set to leave the conference after this season.
But, the two sides have came to a settlement on how the revenue for this year will be split and some of the remaining issues in terms of intellectual property rights and other items going forward.
Here’s The Athletic with more details.
The outgoing schools have “agreed to forfeit a portion of distributions over the rest of the 2023-2024 year and provide specific guarantees against potential future liabilities,” Oregon State president Jayathi Murthy and Washington State president Kirk Schulz said in a joint statement. The conference will also retain its assets and all future revenues, they said.
The 10 departing schools said in a statement that the agreement “allows OSU and WSU to maintain control of the hundreds of millions of dollars coming into the conference in future years, as we have always maintained they would, while calling for the vast majority of funds earned in 2023-24 to be distributed equally among the 12 members.” The schools added that final details would be worked out “in the coming days.”
Washington State and Oregon State were rightfully worried that if the schools who were leaving were allowed to stay on as voting members on PAC 12 affairs, they would intentionally harm the Cougars and the Beavers because they would have the votes to do so.
It stands to reason that since they were the majority of the members, the departing members could have voted to strip the PAC 12 of all of its intellectual property and give it to their new conferences, whether that is the ACC, Big 12 or Big Ten.
The ten schools leaving the league also put out a statement.
The 10 departing schools said in a statement that the agreement “allows OSU and WSU to maintain control of the hundreds of millions of dollars coming into the conference in future years, as we have always maintained they would, while calling for the vast majority of funds earned in 2023-24 to be distributed equally among the 12 members.” The schools added that final details would be worked out “in the coming days.”
The two remaining PAC 12 schools have signed scheduling agreements in football with the Mountain West next year and are going to play most of their others sports in the WCC.
Oregon, Washington, USC and UCLA are off to the Big Ten. Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah are off to the Big !2. Cal and Stanford are joining the ACC.