Feb. 29—On the day when the official schedule for Washington State’s football team was announced, about the only thing WSU President Kirk Schulz could guarantee about the future for Cougar fans: They get some “terrific” new college towns to visit on Saturdays.
Schulz joined newly appointed Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould for a news conference Thursday where they vowed to keep fighting to ensure that the conference’s only remaining members, Oregon State and WSU, continue to get a chance to play for championships and a share of revenues amid a college landscape that is changing seemingly by the hour.
Gould sat for her first meeting last week as part of the College Football Playoff selection committee when it decided on a new 12-team playoff system for the upcoming and 2025 seasons. Of those 12 teams, five slots will be reserved for the five-highest ranked conference champions and seven at-large selections.
Gould noted that college presidents and conference commissioners have agreed on nothing for 2026 and beyond.
“I think none of us would have ever anticipated the amount of change that is going on right now,” said Gould, responding to a question. “Yesterday looks different than today. And, who knows what the headline is going to be tomorrow.”
Gould officially takes over Friday for former Commissioner George Kliavkoff, who was ousted by a vote of Schulz and Oregon State president Jayathi Murthy, who are the only two remaining Pac-12 governing board members after the conference’s other 10 schools departed for the Big Ten, Big 12 and Atlantic Coast conferences.
Schulz and Murthy hired Gould, who had been serving as the senior associate commissioner under Kliavkoff.
“Just to be clear, we are very much in the infancy stages of talking about what happens beyond 2026,” Gould said, referring to the College Football Playoff…
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