Funnel cake, speed traps and Oregon State’s alliance with Washington State to save the Pac-12
By Bill Oram, Oregonian, Sept 11, 2023
The
fate of the Pac-12 rests in the hands that handed out funnel cake on behalf of
the Rotary Club at last weekend’s Palouse Empire Fair.
Washington
voters elected Judge Gary Libey to the Whitman County Superior Court in 2016.
He has adjudicated cases ranging from child custody to murder, rape and
assault.
On
Monday, the court clerk in tiny Colfax, Washington, population 2,766, asked the
judge what kind of case was on the docket.
The
son of a Spokane police officer and a career litigator, Libey said, “Well
there’s going to be Cougars, Beavers, Huskies, Ducks, Cardinals, Golden Bears,
Bruins, Trojans, Sun Devils, Wildcats, Buffaloes and Utes.”
The
clerk replied: “Whoa, should I call for security?”
The
Pac-12 is on trial.
Well,
not in a legal sense. Not yet. But after a month of being knocked around like
wheat stalks in a Palouse windstorm, Oregon State and Washington State are
finally fighting back.
The
path to leverage in the Beavers’ realignment battle runs directly through
Libey’s courtroom, where they form an alliance of rivals with Washington State.
“There
are always two sides to every story and there’s two ways of looking at
everything,” Libey told a local
reporter a few years back.
Two
sides, maybe. But ultimately just one conclusion.
The
Beavs and Cougs are seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the 10 schools
that have announced plans to leave the conference from determining the fate of
the Pac-12. On Monday, Libey granted a temporary
restraining order preventing the board from taking any action
in the meantime that is not unanimous.
Pullman,
home of Washington’s land-grant university, might be the largest city in
Whitman County, but Colfax is its county seat and a great place to pick up a
traffic ticket — being home to one of the region’s most notorious speed traps.
Can
OSU and WSU get their in-state rivals and the rest of the greedy brood to at
least slow down on their way to the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC?
The
two remaining schools can’t reverse the disintegration of the Pac-12. They
can’t reel USC and UCLA back in or make the Utes do a U of U-turn. They can’t
restore the regional rivalries that have been cast aside or bring Fox and ESPN
back to the negotiating table for a better TV deal.
They
are playing the cards they have.
OSU
and Wazzu have been the two biggest losers in realignment. They are the
forgotten pair. It makes their ongoing dilemma only more heartbreaking that
both schools’ football teams are ranked in the top 25two
weeks into the season.
Football
has dictated realignment, but clearly not the game’s quality.
You
can’t help but love Cougars coach Jake Dickert, who, in a moment of bittersweet
celebration after his team upended Wisconsin on Saturday night, passionately declared,
“We belong in the Power Five.”
When
Oregon State travels to Pullman in two weeks for a game that has already been
given a primetime slot on Fox — irony much? — both teams are likely to be
undefeated. The biggest underlying question of the matchup will not be who gets
the win on the field but how they can avoid further losses off of it.
The
best path forward for Oregon State, short of an invitation to the Big Ten or
Big 12 that nobody expects, is still to rebuild the Pac-12.
To
team with WSU and use the financial resources of the conference, abandoned by
the rest of their brethren, to lure universities to join them in a conference
that combines the best of the Mountain West or the American.
They
can’t do that if presidents from the 10 departing schools come together and
make funeral arrangements for the Pac-12.
“They’re
now motivated by a strong financial incentive to dissolve the Pac-12 and divide
the assets,” the San Francisco-based attorney representing OSU, Eric
MacMichael, argued in front of Libey on Monday.
MacMichael
said one agenda item for a board meeting scheduled for Wednesday was amending
bylaws that include a conflict of interest clause. He also shared that schools
leaving the conference expected to have the conference cover some of their
transition costs next year.
Oregon
State and Washington State have already been left holding the bag. Now the
departing schools want to take the bag, too?
If
the Pac-12 can be saved as an entity, with valuable framework and assets, then
it shouldn’t take a country judge — who said the court had no time constraints
on Monday except for his 12:30 p.m. doctor’s appointment — to rule that only
Oregon State and Washington State should be directing its future.
But
this whole saga has, at times, taken center stage in the theater of the absurd.
Including the chairman of Oregon’s board of trustees calling for the Big Ten
vote from the sand trap at the Portland Golf Club.
OSU
has had limited recourse throughout the realignment race, that’s for sure.
There are fans who wondered loudly why the Beavers administration wasn’t taking
more action to secure its fate.
This
is that action.
Plus,
in stacking up legal wins against the Pac-12 and the 10 émigrés, the Beavers
are winning back some power in a situation in which they have largely had none.
Mark
Lambert, the attorney representing the Pac-12, argued that OSU and WSU were
operating out of speculation and fear and that meetings had to be held for
standard business and not nefarious purposes that would harm the allies.
Maybe
so.
But
Libey asked the right question.
“What’s
to stop those other schools from making those decisions?” he said.
Answer:
Absolutely nothing until the guy who handed out funnel cake on Sunday handed
down a common-sense judgment on Monday.
It’s
possible the Pac-12 and the 10 soon-to-be ex-members were frustrated by the
decision.
Someone
should have warned them to slow down before they got to Colfax.
