Oregon legislator blasts Oregon Ducks’ expected move to Big Ten, asks, ‘What the hell are we doing?’

Published Aug. 04, 2023, 2:36 p.m.
By Bill Oram

A state legislator criticized the University of Oregon for reportedly planning to leave the Pac-12 Conference for the Big Ten, calling the school a “sports merchandise operation that’s side job is educating students.”
“Do major institutions exist to provide an education and have collegiate athletics as a part of it?” Rep. Paul Evans said Friday in an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive. “Or have we now just accepted that the cart’s in front of the horse and the sports wing of the college wags its tail and the rest of the institution has to follow along?”
Evans, D-Monmouth, proposed a bill during this year’s legislative session that would have required state universities to receive legislative approval if they wanted to change conference affiliation. The bill died in committee after receiving a hearing.
Oregon’s anticipated move to the Big Ten alongside the University of Washington is part of a hurricane of upheaval among West Coast institutions after USC and UCLA jumped to the Big Ten last summer, leaving the now 108-year-old Pac-12 in peril.
The move, driven by television revenue, also dramatically alters the relationship between UO and Oregon State, which remains in the Pac-12 and does not have an apparent lifeline to another Power Five conference, such as the Big 12. The Ducks and Beavers have played their football rivalry game 126 times dating back to 1894.
“I saw this coming,” Evans said. “The University of Oregon makes big moves, but they don’t always do so with terribly good elegance. So people were talking about it for the last year.”
Evans said he is concerned with the influence corporations have over state universities. UO’s biggest benefactor is Nike founder Phil Knight, and NCAA realignment has been driven by television networks such as Fox and ESPN as they position themselves for football broadcasting rights.
He proposed House Bill 3427, he said, for more transparency as UO and OSU positioned themselves in an evolving college sports landscape.
“If it’s a state institution I think the state government should have a say, but that was not a winning argument among the state legislators in 2023,” Evans said. He added that he thought there would be interest among some legislators in a bill requiring Oregon and Oregon State to maintain their annual football rivalry.
“I think there are so few things that unite us these days that, for the love of God in heaven, we need the opportunity for that sense of interfamily rivalry that that game gives us once a year,” he said. “Sports really can bring people together and I’m a big believer in sports.”
Evans, who graduated from Western Oregon University, is a career educator who has been an adjunct professor at the university level and is currently a speech communication professor at Chemeketa Community College.
“Somebody somewhere has to say, ‘Is this really the values we want to be presenting to the rest of the country?’” Evans said. “When you go shopping for a new conference for money that doesn’t flow to the whole university, just the athletics side. What the hell are we doing?”
The Pac-12 has been on a rollercoaster as it has fought for its survival since USC and UCLA’s departure, but especially in the week since Colorado’s surprise announcement that it was leaving for the Big 12.
Commissioner George Kliavkoff, who had spent the last year trying to find a new media rights deal for a conference suddenly without a Southern California toehold, presented a proposal to the conference’s leaders that reportedly relied primarily on streaming through a partnership with Apple TV and would have had an annual payout well below what schools in the Big 12 and Big Ten are receiving from ESPN and Fox.
Pat Kilkenny, an Oregon booster and the former athletic director, told The Oregonian/OregonLive this week that a “streaming-only subscription model doesn’t work for non-risk-taking institutions.”
Evans was not the only legislator to speak out on Friday. In a statement, Rep. Shelly Boshart Davis, R-Albany, called for a legislative panel to investigate the unintended consequences of UO’s exit from the Pac-12, including costs to taxpayers and how increased travel times would impact athletes’ academic performance.
She also questioned how a depleted Pac-12 would affect revenue at OSU.
“There are many unanswered questions about what these moves mean for Oregonians beyond just the ending of one of the nation’s longest-running rivalry football games,” Boshart Davis wrote. “If one of our major universities is going to make a unilateral decision that could impact Oregon’s budget, we should at least understand the full impacts.”
Evans acknowledged that there was likely little legislative recourse regarding Oregon’s move to the Big Ten.
“There’s fights you can win and fights you fight because the other team needs to own it,” Evans said. “They need to own this. They can say they’re doing it for the right reasons, but no amount of jibber jabber gets in the way of the bottom line, and that is it’s about money.
“They’re doing it for money and they need to own that.”