When I arrived there a decade ago, Eugene, Oregon, had a thriving college football program and a vibrant local newspaper to cover it.
The Oregon Ducks were on the cusp of one of the greatest seasons in their history. With Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota at quarterback, Oregon won the Pac-12, demolished Florida State in the Rose Bowl and faced Ohio State in the championship game of the inaugural College Football Playoff.
Chronicling that 2014 college football season as a columnist for The Register-Guard was one of the highlights of my career. But within a few years, both the football program and the newspaper had fallen on hard times.
The Ducks plummeted to 4-8 in 2016, resulting in the firing of Mark Helfrich and his staff of loyal assistants. The next two coaches, Willie Taggart and Mario Cristobal, were Florida transplants who left Eugene when their hometown schools came calling. After decades of local ownership, The Register-Guard was purchased by a national chain in 2018. Within five years, a newsroom staff that once numbered more than 80 dwindled to six.
The Big Ten is expected to approve Oregon and Washington as new members, barely 14 months after it welcomed UCLA and USC beginning in 2024.
The nation's oldest athletics conference will have 18 members and span from coast to coast. pic.twitter.com/r5KkUi0DNx
— The Athletic (@TheAthletic) August 4, 2023
Despite the efforts of many committed journalists, something was lost when a local institution changed hands in the name of financial expediency. With Oregon joining Washington in leaving for the Big Ten, it feels like the same thing is happening all over again.
Running a Power 5 athletic department is far more lucrative than running a local newspaper, so this is not an apples-to-apples comparison. But it’s all part of the same media ecosystem, driven by many of the same forces: changing consumer habits, rapid consolidation, competition for eyeballs and a massive concentration of resources at the top.
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“I think the charm of college athletics is unfortunately leaving the building as we speak,” said Pat Kilkenny, a prominent Oregon booster who, alongside Nike co-founder Phil Knight, helped the school become a national power. “It’s not about conference realignment. It’s just about the prioritization of money over everything.”
From a financial perspective, leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten is a no-brainer. Oregon and Washington were stuck on a sinking ship and just got a lifeline from a league that’s flush with cash. Even coming in at reduced shares, the Ducks and Huskies will get revenue and exposure in the Big Ten that the disintegrating Pac-12 simply couldn’t deliver.
That doesn’t mean it’s good for fans or consumers. Regional identity is what makes college football a uniquely American sport. The SEC, Big Ten, Pac-12 and ACC each have their own cultures, histories and traditions that span decades. Conference footprints have expanded and contracted over time, but until the past few years of realignment, the leagues retained at least a semblance of geographic continuity.
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Oregon and Washington joining the Big Ten feels like the tipping point in the nationalization of college football. Maybe that ship already sailed when USC and UCLA left the Pac-12, but something about this feels different.
Los Angeles is a global city. Eugene is a college town in the Pacific Northwest. People come from all over the world for track meets and university events, but there’s a strong sense of local pride running through the community.
For Oregon fans, that regional identity animates long-standing rivalries against Oregon State, Washington State and the Bay Area schools. Even if the Ducks and Beavers find a way to continue their football series, they will lose rivalries in other sports and the camaraderie of competing in the same conference.
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Imagine two schools separated by a 60-mile stretch of Highway 99 playing in different leagues while Oregon flies its teams across the country to play Rutgers, Maryland and Minnesota. That tells you just how far the schools and their TV partners are willing to go in remaking college football as a national enterprise.
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If you’re a traditionalist, there’s a good chance you’re numb to all of this by now. Remember when Oregon paid for a 10-story billboard in Times Square as part of Joey Harrington’s Heisman Trophy campaign? That was one of the first signs that Oregon’s ambitions had outgrown the Pacific Northwest. Everything that came after that — the flashy uniforms, the fancy facilities, the quest to be known as a national power — paved Oregon’s eventual path out of the Pac-12.
One of the defining moments came when Oregon fired Helfrich and his staff of long-tenured assistant coaches, some of whom helped build the program up from almost nothing. It made sense, in the same way leaving the Pac-12 for the Big Ten makes sense. It was a sign that Oregon was all-in with the game of big-time college football. Once you start down that path, there’s no going back.
For a long time, Oregon had a webbed foot in both worlds, feeding its relentless ambition while preserving its humble roots. After USC and UCLA left the Pac-12, it became clear that Oregon would have to make a choice: Stick with its West Coast brethren or claim a seat at college football’s main table.
“If you want to compete at that level, you do have to be part of that surviving group,” Kilkenny said. “When USC and UCLA exited, the Pac-12 was irreparably damaged. It didn’t mean they couldn’t survive, but it was going to be difficult.”
In the long run, Oregon and Washington are likely to be better off in the Big Ten, at least in football. It guarantees the Ducks and Huskies a stable cash flow and a place in whatever structure emerges from the chaos of the current system. Fans who pay for streaming services or cable packages won’t complain about seeing Oregon play Ohio State or Michigan.
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If you’re a fan of college sports, it doesn’t pay to be too sentimental. Old things die, new things emerge, life goes on. But you don’t have to be a hardcore traditionalist to feel unmoored by the pace of change and the demise of familiar institutions. The Pac-12 was one of those institutions. Even when fans were griping about the leadership, the officiating or the TV package, they still had a regional affinity and a shared sense of history.
That’s gone now. Change comes with a cost, and we’re all footing the bill.
(Photo: Tom Hauck / Getty Images)
