In today's newsletter ...

• Pac-12 expansion: A two-week whirlwind

• Don’t buy the negative national narrative

• Why the Pac-12 is going to all this trouble

• Who next?

Pac-12 expansion: A two-week whirlwind

Hopefully you’re reading this shortly after I sent it, because I cannot promise that what follows will still be relevant at any later point today. That’s how fast things are moving with the Pac-12’s expansion.

For those of us who have been riding the realignment roller coaster — following every rumor and potential development, to the detriment of our own mental health — it’s hardly believable that it’s only been 14 days since WSU and Oregon State started rocking the conference realignment boat once again by adding the top four schools from the Mountain West: Boise State, San Diego State, Fresno State, and Colorado State.

A whole heck of a lot has gone on this week, but in the end, the conference has only added Utah State. The latest development is that the Pac-12’s most recent target, UNLV, has signed a new agreement with the Mountain West that comes with a $21 million bribe retention bonus for sticking around that will be paid for by the exit fees from the five MWC schools who have joined the reformed Pac-12.

I don’t want to assume that all of you are as terminally online as me (and those of us hanging around the Slack), so I actually published a quick recap of how we got here on the newsletter website. If you need to catch up on the timeline of events, go check that out.

Left with the original six plus Utah State, and having been turned down by five other targets, where do WSU and the Pac-12 go from here?

Don’t buy the negative national narrative

In a supremely weird turn of events, there seem to be a lot of national media folks out there rooting for the demise of Washington State, Oregon State, and the Pac-12. These people expressed mild sympathy toward us when the Pac-12 imploded, but that also came with an assumption that we’d just accept our relegation and join the MWC — you know, like you’re supposed to do when unchecked corporate greed “inevitably” marches on without you.

WSU and OSU made it clear from the outset that they were not about to do that, which surprised everyone. And they have continued not doing that, whether it’s suing the defecting 10 for the Pac-12’s assets, setting up a scheduling agreement with the MWC for football but an affiliate membership in the WCC for everyone else, leveraging our position as a former P5 conference to get some concessions from the CFP, and — in the last two weeks — beginning a rebuilding of the Pac-12 by adding five teams that wanted to leave the MWC for something better.

It sure seems like a lot of people out there don’t like this very much. Rather than pointing the finger at the gluttonous appetite for money on the part of folks who already have truckloads of it — which is what actually led us to this point — suddenly we’re the assholes for having the audacity to try and stay alive?

[Big Ten and Big 12 try to kill our conference and leave us for dead]

“Boy that sure is a bummer. You really feel for Washington State and Oregon State. Anyway, let’s get back to Alabama-Georgia …”

[WSU and OSU position themselves as best they can by choosing the best option from a bunch of bad ones by rebuilding the Pac-12]

“These jerks are just as bad as the Big Ten and Big 12, which they claim to hate! Hypocrites! Why are they trying to pick on the MWC??”

Take, for example, this article in The Athletic this morning by Chris Vannni, titled, “The Pac-12 and Mountain West should get over hurt feelings and just merge,” which includes this incredible passage (emphasis mine):

Wait.

This is the “dumbest stage”? After everything that’s happened … you think it’s THIS??

There are other articles like this one where, somehow, trying to survive is worse than being unrepentantly greedy. Take it away, Chris!

Well, Chris, I know what the Pac-12 is doing here: It’s building a conference that gives its members a chance to survive in this current hellscape that is specifically designed to make sure they don’t.

I can also see what you are doing here, Chris: You’re engaging in victim blaming, just like all of your colleagues. It’s amazing just how much everyone now suddenly cares about the plight of the little guy.

Harvey Dent put it best:

Even the CFP felt compelled to put word out on the street this week — through their many mouthpieces — that we probably should knock it off and stay in our lane, lest we get a little too uppity:

Where I come from — as a journalist, as a union organizer — if you’re pissing off people in power, you’re probably doing something right.

This has caused these media folks — whose main job is to curry favor with P4 coaches and administrators so they can get their scoops — to delight in the “failure” of the conference to land five of its top targets this week in its effort to expand. An example of one of the tamer takes:

They’re all disingenuous. And they’re all wrong.

When you take a big swing, you don’t have to have the perfect outcome or get everything you wanted to get in order to call it a success. What the Pac-12 has done — even with the rejections — is already a success.

Why the Pac-12 is going to all this trouble