The challenges — and opportunities — that Oregon State and Washington State face in building winners

ON THE NIGHT of Nov. 18, the national spotlight shined on Corvallis, Oregon.

Oregon State proudly showcased its 11th-ranked team and its $162 million renovated stadium, packed with fans clad in black and orange and undeterred, as Pacific Northwesterners are, by the steady rain that fell. The Beavers pushed then-No. 5 Washington to the brink, shutting out the Huskies’ powerful offense in the second half, before falling 22-20.

Two weeks later, Oregon State found itself under a different set of clouds. Jonathan Smith, who had helped the Beavers rise to national prominence as a quarterback and then a coach, had left for Michigan State, a move officially consummated hours after the Beavers’ 31-7 loss to rival Oregon, but in the works long before then. Key players had entered the transfer portal, including starting quarterback DJ Uiagalelei, gifted backup Aidan Chiles and leading tackler Easton Mascarenas-Arnold. Oregon State didn’t have a coach or a 2024 schedule, and its future as one of two left-behinds in the dissolving Pac-12 seemed hazy at best.

“Once Jonathan left, there’s an anxiety that ensued about, ‘Oh my goodness, what’s next? What’s going to happen?'” athletic director Scott Barnes said.

There was a similar panic on the Palouse. Although Washington State didn’t go through a coaching change, it also had lost its starting quarterback, Cameron Ward, and other notable players to the portal. Questions loomed about WSU’s schedule, roster and resources as it teamed with OSU in a legal battle for control of the Pac-12.

Shoulder to shoulder, Oregon State and Washington State are entering uncharted territory for major college football programs. They do so with young, defensive-minded coaches — Oregon State promoted popular defensive coordinator Trent Bray, a former Beavers linebacker, to replace Smith — as well as revamped schedules and an optimism that they cannot only survive the Pac-12 purge, but thrive in their new realities. They do so with control of the Pac-12 and its assets, after the Washington state supreme court decided Friday not to review a lower court’s ruling that determined the conference board would consist of only OSU and WSU.

Earlier this month, both teams reached a scheduling agreement with the Mountain West Conference that will see them add six games against MWC schools to their schedules next season. It’s a move that provides OSU and WSU a stopgap until their long-term future can be determined.

But significant challenges await, especially around building rosters through the portal and high school recruits and convincing current players to stay, which makes the offseason even more important.

“We’ve tried to attack every point of, ‘Hey, this is our conference, this is our situation, this is what the lawsuit means, this is what we’re trying to do,'” WSU coach Jake Dickert said. “This is the bridge here, as we’re calling it.”

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BARNES SENSED THE mood around Oregon State shift as soon as he promoted Bray, who had crafted a solid defense in his second coaching stint at his alma mater. Bray knew the players, the school, the fan base and the recruiting realities. After the hire, Barnes immediately excused Bray from Sun Bowl preparations so he could dive into the personnel puzzle. (Interim coach Kefense Hynson will prepare the team for the bowl game.)

Bray has spent the past few weeks re-recruiting the roster, adding transfers and shaping the 2024 recruiting class. Although he has had to combat some negative recruiting — “Oh, you’re a Mountain West team now,” is the primary potshot — the transfers and high school players interested in joining Oregon State are, in some cases, easier to sway than the existing Beavers players. The Beavers have added transfers such as Colorado offensive lineman Van Wells, a multiyear starter, and productive Middle Tennessee defensive back Jakobe Thomas. High school recruiting has been slower, but over the weekend the Beavers’ class expanded to nine recruits with the commitments of Adam Hawkes, Will Haverland and Cornell Hatcher II, though they did lose Terrell Kim.

“Because they didn’t live that carpet being pulled out from under ’em, like our players on our roster, with the conference realignment and all that stuff, they can look at it as, ‘OK, you’re still in this Power 5 space,'” Bray said. “We get to build a schedule, so the opportunity to make it to the expanded playoff is probably better now than it was if we were in the Pac-12, or, really, if we joined the Big Ten.”

Both Oregon State and Washington State see a viable CFP path in their future and have been outlining that possibility to current and potential players. The teams on Thursday released their 2024 opponents, which include each other, a batch of Mountain West matchups and other power-conference opponents, including rivalry games with both Oregon and Washington. Oregon State will face Purdue and Cal, while WSU will host Texas Tech.

A two-team Pac-12 isn’t expected to meet the criteria for its champion — if one is even crowned — to qualify for playoff purposes, but both programs feel they will be uniquely placed to contend for playoff appearances as at-large teams.

“We showed our team Washington’s schedule and Oregon’s schedule and USC’s schedule and the theme is they probably have to be 11-1 to make the playoffs,” Dickert said. “Well, we’ve got an opportunity to go out here and play a couple Power 4 teams and these nonconference deals, and you rip off a bunch of wins, you got an opportunity to make the top 12.”

Dickert brought up Liberty, which didn’t play any Power 5 opponents this year but received the Group of 5’s berth in a New Year’s Six bowl, where it will take on Oregon in the Fiesta Bowl.

“They ripped off an undefeated season and they’re No. 18 [in the AP poll],” he said. “So our schedule is gonna give us an opportunity to make the playoff and everything’s got to be designed around that.”

Bray’s general pitch to play for Oregon State hasn’t changed, despite the circumstances. Oregon State is “a place of substance,” he said, rooted in player development and seeking those “interested in the long game, not just the quick fix, the quick buck.” At the core is an opportunity to reach the NFL, which drew Uiagalelei from Clemson last winter. Oregon State has had eight players selected in the past four drafts.

The NFL ties helped Oregon State retain running back Damien Martinez, a first-team All-Pac-12 selection who has 2,167 yards in his first two seasons with the Beavers. Martinez, a 232-pound battering ram from Lewisville, Texas, likely would have his pick of transfer destinations.

“It’s the best place for him to get to where he wants to be in the end, which is the National Football League,” Bray said. “He hasn’t bought into all the hype of, ‘You gotta be here, you gotta be there.’ He’s like, ‘No, I can do everything I want to do right [at Oregon State].'”

WSU will live in that same space, hoping to lean into a player development model, while plugging in transfers where it makes sense. The main difference is they can no longer recruit to the strength of the conference.

“I think perceptually, you feel like you lose that power chip of, ‘Hey, a Group of 5 transfer knows that you’re going to play against elite competition or a high school kid knows we’re different than some of those other schools that we’re playing,” Dickert said. “I think we understand the challenge of what that means and we’re just selling ourselves a little bit more than selling the league.”

Although Oregon State endured significant portal losses this month, the program has dealt with them before. Mascarenas-Arnold, who committed to transfer to USC late Saturday, is a first-team All-Pac-12 performer, just like linebacker Omar Speights, who started 39 games for Oregon State before transferring to LSU in January. But Oregon State has produced first-team All-Pac-12 linebackers in each of the past four seasons, and Bray is confident he will “get someone to play that role.”

The Beavers have added several transfers with starting experience and also saw several 2024 recruits decommit after Smith’s departure. But Bray is encouraged by who is showing interest in the program, both “the overall number and where they’re from.”

“It looks like a dark time, [but] I think we can actually improve our roster with some of the guys we lose, and some of the guys that are interested, that we can take,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to get better, to be honest.”

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WHEN WSU CAME up just short in a 24-21 Apple Cup loss to Washington, it represented the end of a disappointing season that had started with four straight wins. The Cougars had climbed to No. 13 in the AP poll — two spots behind Alabama — but a stretch of six straight losses followed as momentum faded and they finished with a 5-7 record.

By the time the Apple Cup arrived, Dickert already knew Ward would be moving on. WSU was able to land Ward as a transfer from FCS program Incarnate Word, in part because there was a modest NIL package involved. But that type of process is expected to be rare.

“[WSU’s NIL offering is] definitely nothing in the recruiting realm like other people and what you’re hearing, where they can go out and pay for a bunch of guys to come in,” Dickert said. “So, that’s just the realistic state of where we’re at.”

After two strong seasons in Pullman, Ward’s services would be worth millions of dollars in NIL money. Even though he had a positive experience at WSU, the life-changing money that was available elsewhere made his departure a straightforward business decision.

“We planned for that, we prepared for it, we communicated greatly with him and his family,” Dickert said. Such is the financial reality at both schools.

When Ward officially entered the portal on Dec. 1, Uiagalelei was already there and Chiles joined them on Dec. 6. All three were among the most heavily sought-after quarterbacks in the transfer market (Chiles has since committed to play for Smith at Michigan State).

It’s impossible to say, definitively, how things might have played out had the Pac-12 not fallen apart, but competitiveness within the NIL marketplace is only set to play a bigger role in college football in the coming years.

“I think we’re more competitive than we were last year,” Dickert said. “Everything I do now, I kind of compare it to Oregon State, because they are our peer competitor. I think they’ve been more invested in it. We have enough to make sure when our guys are on the field and make plays, I believe they’re going to be compensated for that.”

Dickert said the Cougars intend to add a quarterback through the transfer portal (OSU likely will, too). But other than some specific needs — like wide receiver and defensive back — he has spent the bulk of his time on the recruiting trail focused on high school players.

It’s not the glamorous lifestyle that some colleges often try to portray it to be.

“As it’s always been, we’re flying commercial, that stuff has never changed,” Dickert said. “I’m not on the [private jet]. Sometimes that means I’m in 36F in the back. Our program has a little blue-collar approach to it.”

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SINCE SEPTEMBER, WHEN OSU and WSU filed for a temporary restraining order against the Pac-12 and commissioner George Kliavkoff to prevent the conference from holding board meetings including the 10 departing schools, OSU and WSU have been operating more like partners than rivals at the university and athletic department levels.

Friday’s ruling from the Washington state supreme court represents their biggest collective win. With control of the conference board comes control of the conference’s finances, turning the tables on the departing schools in a way most of them probably were not anticipating when they sought out safe harbor during the Pac-12’s summer collapse.

As the legal battle played out, the coaches mostly kept their distance — even while fielding questions about what it all meant on the recruiting trail.

“Obviously, it’s a big part of our future is securing that lawsuit and what comes with it,” Dickert said. “And I don’t know all the particulars about it. I just know it’s a big part of our future that we’re fighting for. It’s very important for not just the football program, but Washington State University at large.”

What happens next is shrouded in mystery. The schools have made clear their intent to rebuild the Pac-12, but their plan for the existing revenue is unknown. They already blocked a customary midyear conference-wide distribution before the Supreme Court ruling was issued and now that they have full control, there is widespread speculation that full shares won’t be distributed around the conference. At minimum, a portion of the conference revenue is expected to be set aside to account for pending liabilities, and there also looms the possibility further revenue could be withheld as a punitive measure.

The prevailing sentiment seems to be: Who can blame them?

In all instances of conference realignment, each school has made decisions based on what is in its own best interest. If OSU and WSU play hardball with revenue from the Pac-12 — a conference that the other schools willingly withdrew from — it would represent more of the same.

It’s a state of affairs that UCLA coach Chip Kelly couldn’t help but express his embarrassment over while discussing what has transpired ahead of the Bruins’ game against Boise State in the LA Bowl on Friday.

“A bunch of people couldn’t keep this conference together, and that’s sad,” said Kelly, whose athletic director, Martin Jarmond, was instrumental in UCLA’s move to the Big Ten, which helped set everything in motion. “This conference has been together since 1915, and we’re supposed to be the smart ones. I heard [Iowa coach] Kirk Ferentz talking in front of Congress when they were talking about realignment and NIL and he said, ‘We ought to be the dumbest people in the world.’

“This is an amazing game. We keep trying to screw it up. I’m talking the administrators and coaches, it’s on us. The fact that there is not going to be a Pac-12 next year, the fact that Washington State is not going to be in a conference next year, the fact that Oregon State is not going to be in a conference, we failed.”

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OREGON STATE AND Washington State are separated by the Cascade mountain range and several hundred miles, but the schools are linked, at least in the foreseeable future, through shared circumstances. University presidents Jayathi Murthy and Kirk Schultz issued joint statements throughout the late summer and fall. Barnes and WSU athletic director Pat Chun talk “multiple times a week and sometimes multiple times a day,” Barnes said.

Bray’s path is intertwined with both schools. His father, Craig, was a longtime college coach who logged two stints as a Washington State assistant. Trent Bray graduated from Pullman High School, less than two miles from WSU’s Martin Stadium, and verbally committed to play for the Cougars before switching to Oregon State when Craig left to become the Beavers’ defensive coordinator.

Oregon State and Washington State are still bullish on their futures, despite the Pac-12 dissolving and a long-term outlook that Barnes admits has “yet to be determined.” The Beavers have won 25 games since the start of the 2021 season, their best stretch since 2006 to 2009, when the team averaged nine wins per year. Despite the disappointing end to this season, Washington State reached bowls in each of the previous seven full seasons.

Donors and fans remain engaged for both. Barnes expects to sell out all seven home games in 2024.

“The momentum we’ve had is palpable,” he said. “Although there’s been some ebbs and flows, as people’s emotions take hold in reading the latest on the ticker. … Fans, although they’ve been concerned, every piece of information we provide them creates more enthusiasm toward that momentum.”