For the angry Cougars looking for someone to blame...

[Michael K.]

Their own freaking University President shot down a deal from ESPN for $30 million per school!

https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/wsu ... subscriber

Do-overs? Absolutely, Kirk Schulz has a list of decisions he’d like back following the collapse of the Pac-12.

The Washington State president and chair of the Pac-12 board was heavily involved in the media rights saga that spanned 13 months and ended last week in a failed effort to save the conference.

“We should have had more robust conversations about our value in the marketplace,” Schulz told the Hotline on Friday.

Wow...yet I have to read the bullshit about them being victims. Why doesn't Erik Johnson whine about that? Instead? He actually puts the blame not on the first two schools to leave, UCLA and USC. Not on the fucking Buffs for leaving next, and not even on Oregon, who according to him was leaving with our without Washington. Nope...blames the U of W. The fifth school to decide to leave the sinking ship! Unfucking believable.

https://komonews.com/sports/an-angry-co ... al-huskies

Make no mistake: the silence and the eventual abandonment of the Pac-12 were never about the well-being of student-athletes, academic considerations, or the mission statements of institutions of higher learning. This was about something far more important: money.

TV money.

Thursday, August 3, they had a deal. Ask WSU's President Kirk Schulz. Ask Dr. Michael Crow, ASU's longtime President. Or Oregon State's Athletic Director Scott Barnes. Ask any of them. They had a deal.

They'd agreed in principle to a media rights package with Apple. Pac-9 games (Colorado, by this time, had also abandoned the conference) would be carried on a subscription streaming-based model, which is where sports programming is headed anyway, right?

Seriously? He thinks that fully streaming is what we should have all had to deal with, and worries not one single bit about the fact that the Presidents, headed up by the Chairman, FROM FUCKING WSU, shot down $30 million PER SCHOOL, from ESPN!? Yeah, we wouldn't all want to be able to watch. No, just those those decided to add Apple TV or what ever the fuck streaming service Eric Johnson thinks "we were all headed for". Nope, we don't want ESPN, which is in every damn sports fans home. We want to stream...and because the Huskies decided to join the other four that left? It's all on them. Pathetic.

[D-train]

Streaming. What a joke. But it is the latest trend!

[Sibelius Hindemith]

I want to feel badly for WSU and it's fans, but their alumni are some of the most overly sensitive, insecure and obsessive bitches with regard to another school in the nation. I hope the Apple Cup goes on just so that UW can have the chance to beat down their defunded and de-balled football program for the next 100+ years.

[Lamda]

As a Coug I hope they walk away from the Apple cup. If I were the Prez i'd walk away after this year but it might continue for a few years but with the disparity in the programs depending on what happens to WSU, to continue the game much beyond that won't make a whole lot of sense for either side. At best, it lasts another 10 years.

[D-train]

I want to feel badly for WSU and it's fans, but their alumni are some of the most overly sensitive, insecure and obsessive bitches with regard to another school in the nation. I hope the Apple Cup goes on just so that UW can have the chance to beat down their defunded and de-balled football program for the next 100+ years.

That's the spirit!!!

[Michael K.]

As a Coug I hope they walk away from the Apple cup. If I were the Prez i'd walk away after this year but it might continue for a few years but with the disparity in the programs depending on what happens to WSU, to continue the game much beyond that won't make a whole lot of sense for either side. At best, it lasts another 10 years.

I think the money might be hard to pass up. Even if it continues to be as one sided as it has been. I mean, think back to the chaos from the last win. I know this doesn’t represent all Cougar fans, but I know many that acted as though winning that game and planting that flag was vindication for the seven straight losses before, or what ever the total was. I imagine the opportunity to be the Under Dog is a bit of a draw, but the money is going to be real hard for WSU to pass up, IMO.

[Captain 97]

Coug fans are just using this fake anger as an excuse for a reason to stop playing UW so they don't have to be humiliated every year.

Its not really much of a rivalry when one team has won 75 games and the other has won 33. If the Apple cup were a baseball season, the Huskies would be on pace to win 112 games.

There have been 20 graduating classes at WSU that went through all 4 years without winning an Apple Cup. The Cougs have never even won 3 in a row.

[Michael K.]

In the end, the most infuriating thing for the Cougar faithful is that when all was said and done, after 108 years of scrapping and fighting and believing, of slapping Husky hands away when they tried to pat us on the head, after all that, in the end, WSU's fate lay squarely in the hands of...the University of Washington.

But wait, that's not entirely true. Not entirely. Because the more we learn about what happened during the death throes of the Pac-12, the more we realize that it was Oregon pulling the wagon the whole time and that the University of Washington was just along for the ride.

Says Canzano, "This was 100% Oregon driven." One principal player painted for him the metaphor of a bunch of cowboys at a table in a saloon, shaking hands with some of their guns drawn under the table. The biggest gun was green, not purple.

Canzano's sources tell him that Washington was never going to go it alone. Oregon might have, and it would've taken guts. But not the Huskies. For all of their Bow Down bravado and disdain for all things green and yellow, they were going to do whatever Oregon did. Just follow along.

Strange bedfellows indeed.

That's the shit that pisses me off. Eric Johnson, a "reporter" from KOMO, blaming the U of W because they just did it because Oregon did. Don't blame the Presidents that turned down $30 million per school from ESPN. Don't blame USC and UCLA for deciding last year to leave. Don't blame Colorado for leaving earlier this yet. Don't even fucking blame Oregon for becoming the fourth school to jump. NOPE, blame Washington for not sticking around to be a part of the Pac 8 without Oregon or the LA markets, or even Coach Prime. What a crock. He expected Washington to stick around just because WSU had to. And? It's not a thought that is not shared. I read it from many Coug fans, that have shared Johnson's "article" as if it is somehow proof of wrong doing, and that the U of W is to blame for the Pac falling.

Hell, for all we know, the U of W could have said no, the Big 10 would have just taken Utah, the Arizona schools would have jumped to the Big 12, and the Huskies would be stuck on the outside looking in. Why not go back to the source and direct your ire? 30 fucking million dollars per school to be on ESPN, and we turned it down because we thought we were the Big 10. Sure would have sucked to watch all those games on ESPN, right? I doubt we would get preempted by truck races.

[D-train]

https://247sports.com/college/arizona/a ... 214257173/

[Sibelius Hindemith]

WSU alums saying UW was along for the ride? That's droll. Doesn't that describe their role in the Pac 10/12 all these years?