Opinion: At UO, football is king, but its best interests don’t always align with the wider community.
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As someone who pays little attention to what is happening in athletics at UO, I didn’t know what to think when I heard about the university leaving the Pac 12. The Pac 12, according to their website “is a leader in collegiate athletics that is made up of 12 of the most prestigious universities in the world.” Essentially, it’s a longstanding athletic conference on the West Coast made up of universities that are Division I, meaning they are institutions with athletic programs that have the highest budgets and most scholarship opportunities.
Division I universities always draw in talented athletes, and they are able to form formidable teams across many sports. The biggest draw, however, is football. College football viewer ratings soared back after the hiatus of football during the pandemic and have continued to stay high, with the UO vs CU Boulder game bringing in 10.4 million viewers. This made it ESPN’s most watched college football game of 2023.
“You could already tell the Pac 12 was a sinking ship,” Ryan Oppenheimer, a producer for KWVA, said. “I was still shocked, even though I saw it coming.”
College football is a big business. It generates hundreds of millions of dollars for the highest-rated colleges and the TV networks that broadcast the games. Having favorable broadcast deals is what makes, or breaks, its profitability, since the expenses are just as massive. For instance, the salary of the coaches is rising constantly.
“It shows how the football program will get its way. It’s the biggest moneymaker and the athletic program acted in the best interest of football,” Oppenheimer said.
For UO, joining the Big Ten will largely be to their advantage, as they will be part of television deals that are more lucrative and have more exposure. Universities like Oregon State and Washington State are struggling to find a solution after they didn’t receive the same offers.
They have jointly filed a lawsuit against the Pac 12 members that are leaving them behind. Through the lawsuit, they hope to keep the Pac 12 together longer, or come to a monetary settlement. They are both going to lose out the money they rely on by playing other universities on the West Coast. UO and Oregon State joined the Pac 12 conference together in 1964; now they stand divided.
“I feel for the fans in Pullman and Corvallis. It’s a friendly rivalry, and I’m gonna miss that,” Oppenheimer said.
Though other West Coast universities like UCLA, USC, and University of Washington also joined the Big Ten, it mostly contains Midwestern and East Coast schools. This will affect how and where games are played.
“It will cost a lot more money for fans to travel [to away games],” Oppenheimer said. “Even from the football side, that’s not great.”
Student athletes will have longer travel times and more time away from their academics, something that is already a concern. Even though they are supposed to be students first and athletes second, the many hours of travel will take even more away from valuable study time.
“For a student athlete who doesn’t have pro aspirations, who plays for fun and to have a community, it will be taxing to fly across the country,” said Oppenheimer. “They won’t get as much out of it — they can’t afford to not graduate.”
Whether or not someone is an avid fan of sports here at the UO, It’s important to be aware of these changes, because it will affect multiple aspects of student life. It’s clear that any illusions of sports being for pride are gone. It shows that, for colleges like UO, broadcasting rights and revenue are more important than decades-old traditions or agreements with other colleges. Minor sports teams, like softball, will also be strained because of the change to longer distance travel and the budget concerns it creates. UO will continue to be an athletics powerhouse, but at the expense of its student athletes, fans and longtime friendly rivalries like OSU and WSU.