The last piece of the “where can I watch the Cougs?” puzzle appears to be in place.
With football stashed in the Mountain West Conference for at least a year and most other sports in the West Coast Conference, there actually remained one question for Washington State and Oregon State: where could you watch their home football games? Away games would be covered by the MWC’s deal with Fox and CBS while all other events were covered by the WCC’s deal with ESPN and CBS.
WSU president Kirk Schulz has hinted for a number of weeks that they were close on announcing a partner and it would appear they’ve now found one. John Canzano is reporting the schools are close to a deal with The CW to carry their football games for at least the 2024 season. It would require the schools to produce the games themselves, an even more important reason to have held on to the Pac-12 Network, which can now serve to do just that.
The CW also has the rights to 13 ACC football games and 28 ACC basketball games on a yearly basis. No word yet on how much The CW will be paying the schools to broadcast the games.
At first blush, this seems about as ideal a spot as Wazzu and OSU could’ve hoped for. The CW is an over-the-air network and the teams are now guaranteed to be in every home with a television in the United States. On top of that, the ACC game should serve as a nice lead in for whoever it on the network that Saturday. Although we don’t know the specifics just yet, I’d also imagine this all but assures the home games will be on Saturdays as The CW didn’t broadcast any ACC games on Friday nights last year.
What happens on weekends both teams have a home game? That’s yet to be seen but there will be a conflict on at least four Saturdays, including the first two weeks of the year.
That’s to sort out later though. For now at least, it appears the last big piece of the puzzle for the next year is in place.