We’re a little over six months away from the 2024 college football season, and we still don’t know where Oregon State and Washington State home games will be airing.
The Pac-12’s media rights deals with ESPN and Fox expire this summer, but ten teams have already left for other conferences with media rights deals for the fall of 2024 and beyond. Two schools, Oregon State and Washington State, remain, and while they have a scheduling agreement with the Mountain West Conference to fill out half of their schedules, the schools still don’t have media partners for their home games.
Per John Canzano, both the Beavers and Cougars are on the hunt for media partners, but still haven’t agreed to any deals.
Canzano muses that the schools could sell single games, a smaller package of more desirable games, or even just try to jump on the backs of the Mountain West through its deals with CBS and Fox.
We’ve seen independent schools sell their home games as a package many times before. Notre Dame is the most famous example, but among less notable schools, UMass struck a three-year deal with ESPN before the 2022 season, UConn announced one with CBS Sports Network in 2020, and New Mexico State landed with FloSports in 2019.
Oregon State and/or Washington State could easily do the same thing. There are more than enough companies out there that could be suitors, from established sports networks to younger streamers and broadcast outlets dipping their toes into live sports. I’d be stunned if a deal of some sort doesn’t get done by the start of football season.
About Joe Lucia
I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.