Pac-2 mailbag: What are the scenarios for Washington State and Oregon State?

Who said they aren't?  I would guess there are conversations going on with other conferences/schools.  With our without the Bay schools does have a huge impact on which way we go.  Lots of pieces in motion we don't know about because they are behind the scenes

The closest AAC team is in Oklahoma or Kansas, and the Kansas school doesn't even play football. There are AAC teams in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee and Maryland, with more coming in from Virginia. Our travel budget would be astronomical, any increase in media rights fees over the MWC would be quickly eaten up. I have no desire to watch an OSU-UAB football game on a regular basis. Any merger with the AAC is madness.

The MWC isn't perfect. But we'd be the #5 football conference and someone would most likely get a CFP berth. You can drive to Reno, Logan, San Jose and Boise. Every MWC school is a direct flight away from PDX, with maybe a two-hour drive afterward at the most. We share land-grant values with Wyoming, CSU, Utah State and Nevada.

Stay regional. Be the conference of the West.

I'm all about this......as long as we can still have a path to the CFP, and our football program isn't completely gutted in the process.....if those two things happen, I'm pretty much gonna check out, I think.

Also, this would be a bad baseball conference......would have to schedule an insane Non conf to make up for it.....not sure thats all that enticing to potential recruits.....maybe OSU's baseball history overcomes this in the short term.....long term, I dunno.....it's just not a good baseball conference.

I think everyone is getting spun up on the AAC option but haven't read any of the analysis on it that's been going on awhile. It would be very unlikely to be just the AAC + PAC. It would be maybe that for a year and then they'd absorb MW members (bvrbred made this point above). Then you'd have ESPN, CBS Sports, and Fox who all have properties/$$$ to apply. I really don't believe after all of this that Barnes and the President would be stupid enough to merge with the AAC and then fly all over the country on a dramatically reduced media deal.

Also, if I had to put money on it, I'd guess Stanford/Cal/SMU or some combo are in the ACC. All the signs in the last week have been very positive about them getting there. Why would the ACC members fly across country to play at Stanford/Cal? Well, first of all, there was a theory floated a month ago that Stanford could just pay them to come and play. Give them $2 million in cash. That means they'd get even more money out of the deal. There's also the possibility, although remote, that it could be limited to football and basketball. There are just so many factors and to this point all we've heard is SMU & co. say "Tell us what you want us to do to get in". Imagine if the PAC had that same option with any G5 school and what you could extract to make things work. I'd have our teams fly to the East coast if I could name my price, frequency, scope, etc.

Some people - not analysts - seem very convinced the PAC-2 will have to merge into the MWC. That's BS. There's no way the PAC-2 give up that money. Yes, it is not $420 million, but it is not $43 million either - that's just the emergency fund. There is at least the additional $60 million over ten years that are from playoff credits. $90 million split by 2 over 10 years, that's at least another $4.5 million, or more if they want to gamble there is another realignment in that period.

And can we all agree that unless ESPN forces someone's hand (again) that OSU to the Big12 is dead?

I continue to say ad nauseum, go with Apple. Reduce your need to get people to watch your games. You just need to catch them once and convince them to sign up. No matter how preposterous the "selling candy bars" analogy is...

I'm not an attorney. But I suspect we and WSU could remain Pac-12 members and join the MWC as full-time affiliate members and somehow maintain our claim to monies earned by the Pac-12 until such time as those monies expire.

Again, the AAC is a total non-starter. Even taking 8, as you suggest, the closest possible candidate is in Texas or Oklahoma. Traqvel cannot be kept in the west.

Our future is in the west, with a compact, cost-efficient footprint of schools from adjacent states, with similar academic values. You know, what a conference is supposed to be. 

8+ members of the Pac-12 are leaving, because the future is nationwide conferences.

But Oregon State and Wazzu are going to buck what everyone else knows.

You have to spend money to make money, and I fear that we will all have to spend more, in order to make what we can on football.

Also, you have to have at least eight teams to constitute an FBS conference, six to constitute an FCS conference.  You could probably figure out a way to create a six-team conference in one sport to be able to claim the Pac-12 money and then be associate members of another for football.  But the Pac-12 is such a better brand than the Mountain West, that doing something like that seems like more of a desperation move.