Joe’s Notes: What’s Going on With the Pac-2?

It’s a busy week for Washington State and Oregon State. First, there was yesterday’s report around the 12-team College Football Playoff format, and WSU president Kirk Schulz’s role in determining how many automatic bids there will be for the next two years. After we published yesterday’s notes, ESPN reported that the vote on whether to keep six automatic bids or, as expected, pivot to five will happen on February 20^th. It’s coming up. Around the same time last night, Yahoo reported Schulz is preparing a proposal asking the CFP Board of Managers to keep the Pac-12 treated as a power conference through the next CFP contract, which begins with the 2026 season. Meanwhile, The Athletic reported that the Pac-2 are moving on from commissioner George Kliavkoff, adding a key anecdote about those plans for 2026 and beyond:

Their top priority is to join an existing Power 4 conference, school officials have said, with the next option involving a rebuild of the Pac-12, likely with Mountain West schools.

In some hopefully clearer form, with relevant context:

• Kirk Schulz is representing WSU and OSU in front of the other conferences’ representatives. This isn’t abnormal. Every conference has a representative, but since the Pac-12 only has two schools right now, one will supply the representative and one will not. Oregon State is still participating in all of this.
• Schulz is trying to receive a guarantee that the Pac-12 will still be called a power conference and treated like one in the event WSU and OSU do rebuild it, something which would involve either selecting strong mid-majors or doing that “reverse merger” with the Mountain West.
• The Big Ten and the SEC are already lukewarm on giving the ACC and Big 12 full power conference status within the CFP. Power conference status in the CFP world is mostly about revenue distribution. The Big Ten and SEC, who everyone expects to supply the most playoff teams, would like a more proportional revenue distribution. This is reportedly part of why those two leagues are working together in that loose partnership. Personally, I’m confused about Schulz’s request, in light of this. Maybe a vote on Pac-12 power conference status doesn’t need to be unanimous? If that’s the case, the Big Ten and SEC could theoretically be outvoted, but they could also then go form a new playoff. Independently, they might not have veto power, but together, they effectively should, if we understand the power dynamics correctly.
• Schulz doesn’t sound opposed to the five-automatic bid format for these next two years (it would raise WSU and OSU’s chances of making the field, since they won’t have a football conference to win, being merely two schools and not the minimum eight). He’s also said his voting decision will be independent from what the other conferences decide about whether or not the Pac-12’s a power conference. But what he would evidently be hoping for, in his ideal world, is a five-automatic bid system for these next two years and then a return to the previously planned six-automatic bid system in 2026. I would think it would be hard to roll that back.
• There hasn’t been any public movement on rebuilding the Pac-12. It would seem that the best thing WSU and OSU could do would be to find the six best football teams in the mid-major world and try to create a strong-ish eight-team league, but that’s easier said than done for a number of reasons.
• Overall, the likeliest thing remains that we will have nine FBS conferences in 2026, with WSU and OSU joining the MWC schools in a Group of Five league with a name that’s yet to be determined.

Pitchers & Catchers

Spring training is ramping up, with pitchers and catchers due to report tomorrow for the teams with the latest dates, and with February 20^th the final day for all players to report. One funny thing about this? Per Chris Landers at mlb.com back in 2020, there’s no clear and obvious reason for pitchers and catchers to report first. The theories about pitchers needing more time to get ready are only theories, not matters of current aggressive thought. At this point, with offseason training very prescribed, it’s mostly a tradition. Lots of position players are arriving now anyway.

The Rest

College basketball:

• Ken Pomeroy had a good piece last week explaining why the “top ten teams keep losing on the road” narrative is overblown. (He also calls NFL refereeing conspiracy theorist Warren Sharp by the name “Walter,” which was probably unintentional and is even funnier if it was. – Side note: I’m not 100% convinced the NFL doesn’t fiddle with refereeing assignments, but Sharp’s AFC Championship theory does seem like a huge stretch.) In light of that, let’s not make too big a deal of Syracuse downing UNC or Iowa State and Marquette surviving on the road against Cincinnati and Butler, respectively. Big wins for all three, to be sure, and missed opportunities for the Bearcats and Bulldogs, but nothing too outrageous.
• UCF almost got an outrageous win, taking BYU to the wire in Provo. LSU did something similar with Florida in Gainesville. Pitt got a road win over what some are calling a top-25 team and some are calling an NIT team in Virginia. Nevada missed a chance against New Mexico at home. A very mid-February night of college hoops. We’ll try to have more bracketing context on these sorts of results soon. Working on building out the framework for that content that isn’t just, “Team A won, moving up X% in NCAA Tournament probability. Team B won, losing X.X average seed lines in their mean projection.”
• Ohio State couldn’t upset Wisconsin, and today fired Christ Holtmann. The timing is unusual, coming this early in the season, but Ross Bjork is joining Gene Smith in an advisory role beginning March 1^st, so it’s possible Smith wanted to keep Bjork from having to wear any of the decision on the firing side of it, and to be able to focus his efforts on the coaching search right away. It wouldn’t be outrageous for the Buckeyes to get a spark from this, or to coincidentally get hot and have that be seen as a spark. They host Purdue on Sunday, which isn’t all that winnable, but then they get Minnesota on the road, and a 4–2 regular season finish (which would leave them 18–13 entering the Big Ten Tournament) is within the realm of possibility. So, too, is finishing 0–6. The Buckeyes have options.
• South Carolina’s trip to Auburn is the big one tonight, but keep an eye on Tennessee at Arkansas. It will most likely not be competitive, but Arkansas does still have most of that talent.

The NBA:

• Bradley Beal hurt his hamstring early in the Suns’ win over the Kings last night, but Frank Vogel said it isn’t expected to be serious.
• The Heat beat the Bucks with Jimmy Butler still absent due to a death in his family. With the Thunder beating the Magic, Miami retied Orlando for 7^th place in the East.
• The Wolves won the second leg of a road back-to-back, with Anthony Edwards scoring 41 for Minnesota against Portland.
• Good ones tonight: Heat/Sixers, Knicks/Magic, Kings/Nuggets, Clippers/Warriors.

Chicago, and more Iowa State:

• With that win at Cincinnati, the Cyclones are now tied for the Big 12 lead heading into the weekend. They still have to visit Houston, but they won the Ames leg of that head-to-head. Kenpom is currently projecting each team to finish the regular season 13–5. It’s a little too early to talk tiebreakers, but a regular season share of this Big 12 title would be one of the biggest accomplishments in ISU basketball history.
• The Bulls go to Cleveland tonight and play the Cavs. Two games left before the All-Star break. In Cleveland; home against the Celtics. You always hope for a split when you’re a .500-ish team (because even a 30% probability in each gets you to a 51% chance of grabbing at least one of the two), but that’s a tough pair of games.
• The Blackhawks lost 4–2 to the Canucks in what was evidently a bad showing, even for a last-place team. I have not personally had a chance to learn more than that.