On the Pac-6, Beaver baseball and the deaths of Traci Rose, Barry Adams and Bob Robinson …

(courtesy of the Pac-12 Conference)

This, that and other things in our sports world …

• Boy did the Pac-12 keep things quiet before adding Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State to the conference next July.

Next time I want somebody to keep a secret of mine, I’ll go to them.

“I was surprised we were able to keep it under wraps,” OSU athletic director Scott Barnes said Saturday before the Civil War football contest at Reser Stadium. “To keep a lid on it was a testament to everybody involved.”

Oregon State athletic director Scott Barnes, pictured here with former OSU gymnast Mandi Rodriguez at the 2023 OSU Sports Hall of Fame banquet, prefers a nine-team Pac-12 but says the conference will add between two and four teams (courtesy OSU sports communications)

Oregon State and Washington State did well to add those four schools to what will for now be colloquially referred to as the “Pac-6.” Barnes said the official league title will remain the Pac-12, pointing to the other conference misnomers. The Big Ten has 18 member schools, the Big 12 has 16.

I would have gone for Nevada-Las Vegas over Colorado State. Fort Collins is only an hour from Denver and its market, which ranks No. 22 in the country. But really, Colorado State sits behind the Broncos, Nuggets, Avalanche, Rockies and Colorado Buffaloes among sports fans in the Denver area. (By the way: If Colorado State is part of the Denver market, isn’t Oregon State part of Portland’s?)

Colorado State’s basketball program has been strong of late, with four 20-win seasons in the last five, including 25-11 and an NCAA Tournament appearance last season. The Rams’ football program has been poor, however, with six straight losing seasons, no bowl games since 2017 and one bowl victory since 2008. UNLV has a storied tradition in basketball, an improving program in football and, well, it’s Vegas.

(According to Bay Area journalist Jon Wilner, Nevada state politicians want UNLV and Nevada to remain tethered in the same conference. The Pac-12 seems unlikely to add the school in Reno. We will see if Nevada legislators ease off on any restrictions when push comes to shove.)

The Pac-12 must add at least two more schools before August 2026 to retain its $250 million in conference assets. Barnes said there will be two or four more member schools but has indicated he personally prefers to have a nine-team conference, which would allow for a round-robin league football schedule to go with four non-conference contest each season. That makes sense to me. It is easily the fairest way to determine a conference champion.

If it becomes the Pac-9, the ideal additions would be Stanford, California and UNLV. Some would substitute UCLA for UNLV, but the Bruins aren’t leaving the Big Ten for what will surely be a Group of Five conference.

There has been no indication, either, that Stanford and Cal would have interest in a return to a regional conference with traditional opponents instead of being a member of the Atlantic Coast conference, which disperses zero media rights funding to either school. Perhaps such a switch makes too much sense.

In February, however, ESPN has a “look-in” period, which provides the option to extend its television contract with the ACC through 2036, or perhaps to get out of it. Florida State and Clemson are engaged in lawsuits with the conference over its withdrawal penalties and grant of rights. If the ACC busts up as did the Pac-12, Stanford and Cal will be looking for a landing spot.

If the Pac-12 adds three more Mountain West schools, the cost increases substantially. With $17 million per exit fees for each departing school to the conference, plus a little more than $10 million to each school, the tab jumps from its current $111 million to close to $170 million — more than two-thirds of the conference’s “war chest.”

But for Oregon State and Washington State, at least it charts a future with a regional base and puts the conference in position to gain one of the five automatic spots in the CFP playoffs.

I would add this: The Pac-12 could easily make it 10 schools by adding Gonzaga for everything but football. The Zags fit nicely competitively and geographically. If they could be persuaded, that would be a no-brainer to me. But Barnes said having a football program is a requirement to joining the Pac-12. In the case of Gonzaga, a national basketball brand and a regional university, I think that’s a mistake.

Athletic directors of the six Pac-12 schools had their first meeting Friday to discuss expansion.

“Academic and athletic success is critical in this process,” Barnes said. “We look at culture and geography to a degree.”

But when I asked Barnes if regional location were a priority, he said, “There are no limitations. We’ll go after the best.”

There is no time line set for completing the conference lineup.

“I would love for us to have this wrapped up as soon as possible,” Barnes said. “But we’ll take enough time to make sure we have the right new numbers.”

Barnes said he “won’t share terms on the dollars” the Pac-12 is seeking in revenue from a television partner.

“We are looking to advance the brand, for an opportunity to create distributions to our conference members and a platform to continue to grow on,” he said. “We feel great about going into the marketplace and commanding a really good deal.”

And, Barnes said, “We will not be losing any sports.”

As far as scheduling Oregon, Barnes seems committed to playing the Ducks in football every year.

“I gave (coaches of) all the other sports to do what they want to do with that,” Barnes said. “Moving forward, we would like to try to play Oregon in as many sports as we can, because it makes sense.”

Oregon State and Oregon will compete against each other in men’s basketball, baseball and volleyball in 2024-25. OSU men’s golf will participate in the Duck Invitational but Oregon will not reciprocate in the Beaver Invitational. The schools played an exhibition match in women’s soccer. The Beavers and Ducks will not play each other in women’s basketball. I think OSU coach Scott Rueck has earned the autonomy to make that decision on his own.

• It is worth pointing out that the Mountain West has been stronger than the Pac-12 in men’s basketball in recent years. Last season, San Diego State, Boise State, Colorado State, Utah State, Nevada, UNLV and New Mexico all had 20-win seasons. Six of those teams advanced to the NCAA Tournament; the Pac-12 had four.

That’s not the case for the women. Seven Pac-12 teams made the 2024 NCAA Tournament; only one advanced from the Mountain West.

• As for baseball, the Mountain West schools won’t help the strength of the new Pac-12. Boise State and Colorado State don’t even have programs. UNLV and San Diego State finished next-to-last and last went among seven schools in conference games last season. Fresno State was the only program that won as many as 30 games.

I asked Barnes about baseball’s status at Oregon State moving forward. I didn’t quite understand his response, which included this: “We have an opportunity to move … from an independent situation to where we can add national high-caliber games to a core conference schedule. I think there is great opportunity there.”

Not for Beaver baseball in the Mountain West. The Beavers are simply in a much higher class. And a full conference schedule would bring down their RPI. Barnes did say, “One size doesn’t fit all.” I think the Beavers would fit well in the Big West, which had two programs (Cal Santa Barbara and Cal Irvine) in last year’s NCAA Tournament, but also a pair of 35-win teams (Cal Poly and Hawaii) as well as traditional power Cal State Fullerton.

Maybe the independent route is the way to go in the short term. We’ll see how the Beavers fare with it this season, and how it affects future recruiting.

• I have been saddened by the recent deaths of three people whose paths crossed mine during my career as a sportswriter.

Traci Rose worked in community relations for 27 years for the Trail Blazers (courtesy Trail Blazers)

Traci Rose passed away of ovarian cancer at the age of 62. Traci was a shining light in the Trail Blazers organization for 27 years, a community relations director who dealt with the players, corporate partners and media with kindness and aplomb. Much like her cohort Cheri Hanson, the team’s vice president/player programs and team relations, Traci was a true professional, the kind of representative any organization would want to have with the public.

She was a wife, a mother and a great friend to many. It’s a big loss.

Long-time high school basketball coach Barry Adams has died at age 88. Adams amassed a record of 653-315 during a career that last from 1960-99 and won state championships at Glencoe and South Salem. He ranks fifth on the Oregon big schools list for coaching victories, trailing only

Barry Adams was one of the most successful high school basketball coaches in state-of-Oregon history (courtesy Mike Cashman)

Mike Doherty (850-390), Nick Robertson (699-310), Dennis Murphy (698-213) and Tom Johnson (684-348). Barry was also the co-founder of the fabled Cascade Sports Camp, co-founded the Les Schwab Invitational and is a member of the state of Oregon’s Sports Hall of Fame.

“Barry had more influence on high school basketball in the Northwest than anybody,” said Mike Cashman, who met Adams in 1973 while playing at Willamette and serving as a counselor at Cascade.

“Barry was my mentor,” Cashman said. “I learned more from Barry than anybody else in my life, including my dad. My kids adopted him as their pseudo-granddad. We spent a lot of summers up at camp. He took us in. Barry and (wife) Vickie were a big part of my life. Until he got sick, we talked every week, and usually about basketball.”

Johnson met Adams in the ‘80s when they were both coaching in the Valley League — Johnson at Lebanon, Adams at South Salem — and worked together at Cascade.

“I really appreciated Barry,” said Johnson, now head coach at Barlow. “He did a lot for Oregon high school basketball. He was a no-nonsense guy, a straight shooter. He was one of the first coaches to run set plays. Everyone ran ‘flex’ or ‘motion. Barry ran what he called ‘mini-games.’ It was high-low, get an angle change, and he would ram it down your throat.”

Also gone is Bob Robinson, who died this summer at age 90 after a long illness. Robbie wrote sports for Oregon newspapers for 42 years, the last 37 at The Oregonian. He was the paper’s beat writer for the Blazers when they won the NBA championship in 1977 and was a renowned golf writer and the author of four books.

Robbie and I worked together at The Oregonian for 18 years. He was a delightful guy and we got along very well. We did a pair of book signing events together in recent years at his place of residence, Mary’s Woods retirement community in Lake Oswego. In 2021, he wrote the following article for kerryeggers.com:

https://www.kerryeggers.com/stories/the-day-i-got-the-best-of-barney-and-inspired-his-career-game

Robbie and I would talk on the phone every so often. I will miss those conversations.

• Speaking of golf, I had a conversation with former PGA Tour pro Peter Jacobsen, the Lincoln High and U of O graduate now living in Naples, Fla. I asked him what he thought of the destruction of the old Pac-12.

“It bothers me,” Peter told me. “It’s for the wrong reason. It’s all for money. I hate to see the Pac-12 go by the wayside. I was a Pac-8 athlete. My father played football for Oregon. The history of the conference is unparalleled. There were so many great rivalries. The level of play was still outstanding.

“It’s just wrong. I don’t know how smart it is to have Oregon women’s softball fly to New Brunswick (N.J.) to play Rutgers and then turn around and fly home. It was a poor, hasty decision based on football, money and greed.”

• In May, PGA Tour pro Grayson Murray committed suicide. He was 30. In January, he had earned his second tour victory by winning the Sony Open in Hawaii in a playoff. But he suffered from alcoholism, anxiety and depression.

As a player and promoter, Jeff Sanders has been affiliated with the PGA Tour for 44 years.

“Over those 44 years, Grayson’s death is the second time an active player has died that I know of,” says Sanders, whose entertainment company runs the Albertsons Boise Open on the Korn Ferry Tour. “Only two times. Grayson Murray and Payne Stewart.”

Stewart was 42 when the Learjet in which he was flying from his home in Orlando crashed, killing all six people aboard. On that day in 1999, Sanders was in a meeting with tournament directors of the various PGA tours.

“Commissioner Tim Finchem walked in, went to the podium and told us Payne’s plane was still flying over South Dakota and they didn’t think anyone was still alive,” Sanders recalls. “It was brutal. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room. He was so popular. Payne and I were born the same day (Jan. 30, 1957).”

Murray played Sanders’ event in Boise in 2022 and ’23. The first year, Murray was leading after the first round. He finished in a tie for 26th in ’23.

“I don’t know how much his golf game contributed to him taking his life, but I know that playing the PGA Tour is really tough,” says Sanders, who played it from 1980-85. “After winning the Sony Open, Grayson had a spot in all the majors. It gives you a lot of stability for at least a couple of years. I thought when he won at Sony he would turn the corner and be off to the races. I can’t imagine him walking off the course after the 16th hole on a Friday, having a bad round, and being that down on himself.

“The PGA Tour is a capitalistic venture. You make birdies, they let you play for another year. You gotta deliver day after day. It’s different than team sports. It’s just you. You pay your own expenses. You have to be your own best friend and you have to think you’re a better player than you are to have longevity. As soon as you start to miss a few cuts and doubt yourself, it’s over. Evidently, that’s what happened to Grayson, who had some challenges with mental health and addictions. It’s just a very sad story.”

• Old-timers will recall those great USA-Soviet Union dual track and field meets of the 1960s and ‘70s. They were epic. I got to thinking that, while Russia is out, how great it would be if the U.S. could engage in dual meet competition with another part of the world. Perhaps like the Ryder Cup — USA vs. Europe. There would be no better venue than Eugene’s Hayward Field, the best facility in the U.S., to play host to such a meet. Nike could get behind it and arrange for many of its athletes to participate.

Tom Jordan, long-time promoter and meet director of the Prefontaine Classic, brought me out of my reverie.

“It’s a thing of the past, not because people wouldn’t enjoy watching it or turn out for it,” says Jordan, who ran the Pre Classic for 37 years. “What has changed is, every athlete has an agent. The agent’s job is to look out for the athlete. For a dual meet, you would be looking at a cash outlay of millions of dollars.”

Starting next April, former sprint great Michael Johnson’s “Grand Slam Track” will stage a four-meet series    that will have a prize fund of $12.6 million. Winners of each event will earn $100,000 in prize money. I’m not sure whether the dollars comes from television, sponsors or both, but that’s a lot of moolah. And that’s not including appearance fees.

“Michael has Josh Kerr, Cole Hocker, Yared Nuguse and Jakob Ingebrigtsen lined up to run the 1,500,” Jordan says. “I know none of those guys would be signing on for less than $50,000 in appearance money.”

Oh well. Never mind. But it would have been fun.

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