Autumn Schmidlin

Football Head Coach Jon Eagle has been coaching the football team for two years.

Pac-12 is a 108-year-old collegiate athletic conference made up of 12 different schools that operate in the western United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. The Pac-12 Conference has been home to Oregon college football for over a decade. In early August, eight schools in the conference announced they were leaving. 

A few colleges remain in the Pac-12 Conference. This includes Oregon State University, Stanford University, University of California Los Angeles, and Washington State University. So what does the upcoming switch from Pac-12 in Oregon mean for college football? University of Oregon will be joining the Big Ten Conference, and this change will go into effect at the start of the 2024-2025 season.

According to Oregon Live writer James Crepea, “the University of Oregon’s time spent traveling will be doubled, and at times close to tripled. A complicated contracting deal caused teams to leave the Pac-12 and head to competing conferences. Schools reportedly left the Pac-12 for better media rights deals.” 

In addition to this, CBS News college football writer Barrett Sallee corroborates Crepea’s claim.

“The absence of a new media rights deal played the biggest role in the demise of the once-proud league,” Sallee said.

Football Head Coach Jon Eagle grew up rooting for the Pac-12 teams and was disappointed to hear that most West Coast teams would be leaving. 

“I grew up always rooting for the Pac-12 in bowl games and that kind of thing,”  Eagle said. “The whole thing is kind of sad to me because I always rooted for the West Coast teams.”

When it comes to recruiting, Eagle says Oregon schools are getting lots of players from Florida.

“Oregon’s national recruiting is getting players out of Florida,” Eagle said. “You know, if you look at the University of Oregon, they weren’t recruiting Oregon kids that much to begin with. Where I came from we used to say, ‘If you want to get recruited by Washington state, you should move to Texas.’” 

Last year, the West Linn football won the state championship. Every year, they get players’ commitments to Division One schools which includes Baron Naone, junior, who recently committed to Oregon State University.

“West Linn is a high-profile school, so recruiters know where it is and have a habit of stopping by, ” Eagle said. “You know, I don’t think our players understand and they want to go to all these showcases. I think you don’t need to. They’re  coming here anyway.”