Oregon State and Washington State are the only two schools left in the Pac-12 athletic conference, and the University of Oregon is heading to the Big Ten conference for the 2025 season. Is the Ducks football team set up for success in their new conference against opponents like the Buckeyes, Wolverines, Nittany Lions and others? And how will athletes in less well-funded sports fare in a conference that requires a lot more travel? Zachary Neel, managing editor for USA Today’s Ducks Wire, joins us for a preview.
This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end today with the new reality for collegiate sports in the Northwest. Oregon State and Washington State are now the only two schools left in what is still called the Pac-12 athletic conference. Meanwhile, the University of Oregon is about to start its first season in the Big Ten conference, a nationwide football TV rights-driven conference that stretches from California to New Jersey and has 16 teams now, despite its name.
Zachary Neel is the managing editor for USA Today’s Ducks Wire. He joins us now to talk about all of this. Zachary, welcome back.
Zachary Neel: Thank you very much for having me.
Miller: I want to start with football at the University of Oregon. The Ducks are heavily favored right now to have one of the best seasons in the country. A couple different preseason polls have come out and they’re, I guess, number three in a lot of places. Given how many players they lost, including quarterback and Heisman trophy finalist, Bo Nix, why do so many people who pay a lot of attention to college football think the Ducks are in such good position?
Neel: I think a lot of it, you have to give credit to the head coach, Dan Lanning. He came into Eugene, he took over three years ago and he really just started building the roster, kind of building it for the future. And we’re in an era now of college football where, with the prevalence of the transfer portal and players ability to just kind of pick up and move teams to wherever they want to go and play immediately, you’re able to rebuild your roster in a single off-season. And convince a lot of very talented players to, hey, you’re not getting the playing time you want, or you’re not getting the name, image and likeness money that you want somewhere else, come to our team, we will pay you, we will give you a spot on the roster and a chance to play a lot more. So, through that and through recruiting, Dan Lanning and his coaching staff, they’ve really built a strong roster that has them in a great position to be able to succeed this year.
Miller: Is there a connection between that recruiting – whether as freshman or via transfers – and the fact that the Ducks moved to one of the most prestigious, televised and paid attention to conferences in college football? Is there a connection between those?
Neel: Absolutely. I mean, they go hand in hand really. Part of recruiting is that you want to be popular among recruits and recruits’ families. You need eyeballs on you. The reality is that the Pac-12 failed miserably when it came to getting eyeballs, and when it came to be a national brand and a national conference. So Oregon jumped at the opportunity to move to the Big Ten, which is arguably the most powerful conference in the nation, one of the richest conference[s] in the nation.
They now are that national brand and they’re no longer playing games that start at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. on the East Coast on Saturdays. They’re playing in the new window and they’re playing in these more prime time windows. It’s a snowball effect from there [because] you get more eyeballs on you, you get kids knowing who you are and what Oregon is about, and it leads them to want to come to the University of Oregon. And that leads to recruiting success in the end.
Miller: When is the first really big test for the Ducks likely to come, given their schedule?
Neel: In week two, they’ve got a game against Boise State, which is a non-conference game. It’s a solid test. I think that’s a game that Oregon absolutely should win. They will be favored to win. The biggest game on the schedule is, I believe it’s week seven against Ohio State in Eugene, Oregon in Autzen. Ohio State is currently ranked number two in those rankings that you were saying Oregon is ranked number three in.
This is considered the game of the year, not just for Oregon or Ohio State, but in all of college football. It could be a preview of the Big Ten championship – the conference championship game. It could potentially be a preview of the national championship game because of the way the college football playoff could shake out. So this is the game where they will be able to measure themselves by.
Miller: Teams do have non-conference games, like bowl games and other ones in the course of the season that you just mentioned – Boise State. So it’s not like the Ducks only played regionally in the past, but how different will play in the Big Ten be from what they were used to, more or less week in week out, in the Pac-12?
Neel: It’s expected to be more physical. If you look at the Pac-12, historically, it’s kind of been derived from a more flashy style of play and more offensive-driven style of play. It’s the flashy West Coast conference. When you get to the Big Ten, you’re going into the Midwest. It’s more of a meat and potato style of offense, defense. They run the ball more, they pass the ball less. They’re bigger and beefier in the offensive and defensive line. So there are currently a lot of questions about how Oregon is going to adapt to the Big Ten style of play.
One thing that I love – Oregon head coach Dan Lanning, he’s been asked about that several times going into this year. And he’s just flat out said, you know what? Yeah, we’ll have to adapt a little bit. But these other Big Ten schools are gonna have to adapt to us because they don’t play the way that we play and they don’t know how to stop us either. So it’s a little bit of a give and take, but it’s certainly different from what they’re used to.
Miller: I know that this is a pedantic question, but I have to ask you. There are now 14 teams in the Big Ten; 16 in the Big 12. Are the conferences sticking with these names that now make literally no sense?
Neel: So that’s actually incorrect. There’s 18 teams in the Big Ten.
Miller: 18, not 14?
Neel: Yes, because there were 14 and then they added the four this year: Oregon, USC, UCLA and Washington. So there’s 18 now in the Big Ten. But your stance and your question still is correct. And that is a good question. I think they are still sticking with these names because of the branding and everything that’s in place. But yes, it certainly doesn’t make much sense.
Miller: The Ducks are going to have to travel a lot this year – over 12,000 miles. And I’ve read that because they’re not going to play some of their further away opponents like Rutgers in New Jersey – where they’re going to go in future years – in future years, they’ll have even more frequent flyer miles, and even more late nights and long flights. How do you think travel is going to factor into this season for players?
Neel: You’re right, this season, in particular, they have an “easy schedule” where the travel is not too strenuous. They have three long road trips. They go to Michigan, they go to Wisconsin and I believe they go to Purdue – that’s off the top of my head. I think that’s who it is. Other than that, most people travel to Oregon. They play Oregon State, up 40 minutes north in Corvallis. They play UCLA down in Los Angeles. But in the future, it’s definitely going to be more strenuous on these athletes.
That’s one of the biggest complaints from a lot of fans about conference realignment, that yes, it’s wonderful for the viewers of the sport and saying, hey, we want to see Oregon play against some of the best teams in the nation. Conference realignment and Oregon’s spot in the Big Ten gets them that. But you’re not thinking about the other sports, the other teams. You’re not thinking about the acrobatics and tumbling team now having to travel to New Jersey in the middle of a school week, and compete in a conference match, and still have to be a student athlete on top of that.
So, it’s very strenuous for these sports. I mean, look at the basketball teams that play multiple games per week. They’ll be traveling a lot more than football who plays once per week. It’s gonna be interesting to see how that plays out. This first year will be a very good test case. But I would not be surprised to see something change in the future because it kind of feels like they put the cart before the horse and said, hey, this looks great for football. Let’s do it. And they didn’t really consider the ramifications for every other sport.
Miller: Well, I want to turn to what that could be in just a second. But what have you heard from these other sports? I mean, the vast majority of collegiate athletes do not play football. They play a couple dozen other sports as part of their academic lives. And these are people who, most of them don’t have any dreams of getting multimillion dollar contracts in the future doing cross country, or volleyball, or golf, or whatever. What have you heard from them in recent months? We’re past the news of this, but we’re now about to get to the reality of it. What have you heard?
Neel: Correct. More than the athlete, it’s the athlete’s family. I mean, when you were playing in the Pac-12 and you had regional games, you had family members who were hopefully on the West Coast or in Oregon that could easily travel and make the trip down to Los Angeles or to Palo Alto to see a game, or up to Seattle. Now, you’re asking that same family to, on their own dime, travel to Wisconsin, or to Michigan, or New Jersey like we said before. That’s tough when you’re dealing with these sports where the athlete is, like you said, not making $500,000 in NIL [name, image and likeness] money that can help cover these costs.
You’re asking these families that if they want to see their kids play, they have to get their own dime, and rack up their own frequent flyer miles, and make those trips. So it’s very strenuous on the parents and the family members. I really don’t know what the answer will be going forward, but it’s definitely a problem to watch play out over the next year.
Miller: Last year, when it became clear that the Pac-12 was in the final stages of a couple-years-long collapse, we heard that this could be one more push towards a huge separation. So football, which is so different from other collegiate sports with its immense TV money, that it could continue to be this regionless free for all. But other sports could somehow go back to being regionally based. What would it take for that to happen?
Neel: I think it would take a lot of people higher up with a lot more power than I have, or you have, to say, “hey, this needs to happen and we need to be able to do this.” Because football, going into this regionless sport … and they’ve kind of been trending towards an NFL model where they have divisions and it’s a more powerful 32 teams rather than the 134 teams that are currently in the football bowl subsection. So it’ll be interesting.
I think that that’s kind of the best-case scenario. If, a few years down the road, we say, hey, this is not working for every sport to be in these new conferences that are nationwide, but it does work for football, let’s separate football from the rest of the sports. Everyone else just hit the reset button. Go back to your regional conferences. The Pac-12 would reemerge, and you get basketball, volleyball, baseball, and track and field, competing in a regional conference again. Football then becomes kind of like a minor leagues version of the NFL, and they have their own separate framework, their separate divisions, structure and everything like that.
Miller: Let’s turn briefly to Oregon State and Washington State. What are they doing this year? And what do their potential futures look like?
Neel: I think they are buying time and trying to lick their wounds a little bit. And I know that sounds very tough to say, but I feel very poorly for any Oregon State and Washington State fan because they got dealt a very raw hand. It’s been a tough year for them, I’m sure. They had this conference kind of crumble around them. If you’re looking at Oregon State and Washington State as football programs, they were in solid spots. I mean, they were competing in the Pac-12. They weren’t some of the best teams in the conference, but they were definitely holding their own. And then everything fell apart around them, and they were kind of left without a seat at the table.
So this year and next year, I think they will just be kind of patiently waiting and biting their time, and hoping that another shoe drops and one of the power conferences invites them in. There’s a lot of rumors that the Big 12 might be open to having Washington State and Oregon State join as new members there. I’m sure they would happily jump at that opportunity. But other than that, they’re kind of just waiting and kind of hoping to just tread water until something changes because, as we’ve said this, I don’t think this is done changing. I think there’s definitely another shoe to drop. What college football and college athletics looks like right now is not how it’s going to look in five years.
Miller: Zachary, thanks very much.
Neel: Absolutely. Thank you.
Miller: Zachary Neal is managing editor for USA Today’s Ducks Wire.
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