Westneat: Pac-12 exit hits taxpayers

Taxpayers? We haven’t heard much about this up here in Washington. It’s been mostly hoopla about football. There was no study of the economic effects of the moves, either on higher education budgets or on the surrounding towns where these sister institutions live, Murthy said.

Testimony at the Oregon hearing, held in its House Higher Education Committee, estimated that Oregon State alone would lose $42 million in 2024 due to the collapse of the conference and it being left behind. There has been no hearing held in our state, but one can guess that losses at Washington State University in even smaller Pullman may be similar.

These are government-owned teams playing at public schools — they’re not private pro franchises (not yet anyway). So who’s going to cover these losses?

Why are they confronting this in Oregon, but here it’s been crickets?

“These are public institutions, and this is going to have major ramifications on the higher-ed budget,” said Michael Baumgartner, a former Washington state senator from the Spokane area. “The issues should have been decided in public, not by university presidents and TV executives in back rooms.”

Murthy, the Oregon State president, characterized what UW and Oregon did as choosing “money over mission” and then “letting somebody else pick up the losses — which is really what happened here.”

The counterargument is that other universities had already bolted the Pac-12, so the rush was on. You either joined it or got left crying. The UW also has ballooning debt payments on its stadium. Still there is another party here: the collective “we” that owns these schools.

“The net negative impact on students, families and small businesses will be real,” Murthy predicted.

That’ll hit in the rural areas — in Pullman and in Corvallis. Both states have already invested billions in those universities, so it’s likely that taxpayers will simply be asked to do a bailout.

No one knows how big it’ll be. And nobody up here is even talking about it.

At the Oregon hearing, they also went all Oregon about it and asked about the increased carbon footprint of flying the Ducks teams back and forth to the Midwest and East Coast for conference games. One legislator pointed out that Oregon ranchers get subjected to a climate analysis of their cows. But the flagship university didn’t do one for this?

Uh, no, came the answer. Murthy suggested that’s what you get when decisions are made in a rush, in secret, with no broader analysis or public input.

Up here, it’s all about the football. There’s been scarcely a word about taxpayers picking up any sort of tab.

That the UW acted in its self-interest is probably what can be expected from any entity. That the larger picture was ignored is maybe not so much the UW’s failure then, but that of state leadership. We couldn’t hold a single hearing on how we’re going to handle it?

“If the Huskies bolt for the Big Ten à la UCLA, WSU will be left marooned on an island of debt. … I know, too bad for the Cougs. Except we the public own that 132-year-old enterprise too, remember?”

That was me, writing back in July of 2022. And here we are.

One long-term solution might be to push for a single national college football league, with regional divisions, kind of like pro sports. That the UW felt compelled by a money rush to join a league headquartered in Illinois is enough to know that something’s gone wildly off kilter.

For now, Murthy, the Oregon State president, is left pleading with other higher-ed officials and lawmakers in the Northwest to stop being such weak reeds. “We have agency, we have free will,” she implored.

The story suggests that when it comes to the money behind big-time sports, though, we really don’t.