Pac-12/Big 10 Scheduling Negotiations Fall Through

Since about mid spring, the Pac-12 and Big 10 Conferences have been working diligently to secure what would have been a monumental scheduling arrangement, in which up to 9 schools from each conference played each other in a “challenge”. It was going to be similar to the conference “challenges” or “classics” that you see every year in NCAA basketball, except on a larger scale. With a 4 team playoff looming, this arrangement also would have brought Washington State some big opponents for years to come at home. It seems every other school in the Pac can get big names into their stadiums, but WSU has had little to no luck of this outside of conference games.

But it was not to be, as both conferences called it quits in negotiations last week. As far as I know, the Big 10 was all for it, but the Pac-12 had 4 schools who decided they didn’t want to lock themselves in with another mandatory game every season. We weren’t given the schools directly, but Stanford and USC come to mind immediately, because of their yearly alliance with Notre Dame. Adding a second quality game is probably not the ideal way to approach a run towards the National Championship each year. If USC does play a Big 10 team, they want it to be their choice so that they can presumably give themselves a “quality league” win with a non-quality opponent.

It makes sense, and honestly, it’s how conferences like the SEC and Big 12 do their business. LSU picks on the Idaho’s, North Texas’s and Towson’s of the world. Bama hosts the Western Kentucky’s, Western Carolina’s and Florida Atlantic’s. Florida tussles with Lafayette, Jacksonville State and Bowling Green. Arkansas wrestles Jack State, Monroe and Tulsa. Georgia get Buffalo, FAU and Georgia Southern. Getting the picture yet? Even Kentucky gets W Kentucky, Kent State and Samford. All of the schools have a legit non-conference game on the schedule (they play only 8 conference games in the SEC), but none of the aforementioned schools (outside of Kentucky because of their annual rivalry game with Louisville) play their most difficult game as a true road game.

Long story short, if the Pac-12 wants to keep up, they cannot slate themselves anything but cupcakes for at least 2 of the 3 non-conference games. Already we are playing one more conference game than both the SEC and Big 10, so it just wouldn’t make sense to subject ourselves to another game in which the opponent has a legit chance at overpowering us. Unfortunately WSU is in the position of not being a powerhouse school right now, so we were one of the schools hoping this arrangement was able to be played. And so we’ll just have to hope that Bill Moos can continue to set-up home and home deals with good schools in order to get some high quality opponents into Pullman. BYU, Wisconsin, Nevada and Boise State are currently part of home and home arrangements over the next few seasons. Here is what WSU Athletic Director Bill Moos had to say about the unfortunate fall-through of the deal:

"Washington State athletic director Bill Moos had a different view.“I’m extremely disappointed it did not pan out,” Moos said. “For the Cougars, I thought it was an ideal opportunity for us to bring quality BCS opponents into Pullman early in the year on a regular basis.“I know some of my peers were worried about playing nine conference games (the Pac-12 plays nine, the Big Ten eight) and adding to it. But we’re all doing that (scheduling one rugged nonleague game) anyway, for the most part.”"