UW president says Big Ten move ‘about stability’
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Paolo Uggetti, ESPN
University of Washington president Ana Mari Cauce said Saturday that the program’s departure from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten alongside Oregon was “not just about dollars and cents” but rooted in myriad factors, one being that the proposed TV rights deal between the Pac-12 and Apple did not provide the long-term stability the school was seeking.
“When you have a deal that people are saying that one of the best aspects are that you can get out of it in two years, that tells you a lot,” Cauce said in a conference call with news media. “This was about national visibility for our players, being on linear TV so they can be seen, so they could have the national exposure. It was about stability. It was about having a future that we could count on and built towards.”
Cauce went on to say that the TV deal the Pac-12 presidents had been discussing a few days before was not the same one that was on the table at the end, and that the opportunities and stabilities provided by the Big Ten were “simply unmatched.”
“I have to say this was heart-wrenching,” Cauce said. “For more than a year, all of us worked really, really hard to find a viable path forward that would keep us together.”
Arizona State President Michael Crow, who also spoke to the media Saturday in the wake of ASU’s departure to the Big 12, had a different outlook despite also leaving the conference. According to Crow, ASU was heavily interested in the Apple deal, which would have allowed for instant digitization of ASU football, men’s basketball and women’s basketball games and could also have enhanced the viewing experience as well as the athletes’ ability to use game tape for their own purposes.
“There was some risk but huge opportunity,” Crow said. “Some of the schools were committed to that but it created this another destabilizing moment of sort of tradition vs. this modern thing, so a lot of back and forth.”
Cauce and Washington athletic director Jennifer Cohen were clear in their media availability that they were not in favor of the Apple deal, which they had expected to be one of several potential TV agreements to assess, not the only one as it turned out to be.
“I have every reason to believe that offers fell apart because of factors beyond [commissioner George Kliavkoff’s] control,” Cauce said. “There was enough uncertainty [with the Apple deal]. We had been living in uncertainty for too long to continue in that level. It makes it very, very hard to build.”
The sudden departure of Oregon and Washington seemed to prompt those schools on the fence, such as ASU, to decide on their own futures as well. When Crow showed up to a pivotal meeting between Pac-12 presidents at 7 a.m. PT Friday, he noticed two schools were absent from the call. That told Crow all he needed to know.
“You might know there then that the conference is no longer viable,” Crow said. “We were interested on finding a way to connect to more people, but we have to be in a viable conference to do that.”
According to Crow, while Colorado’s decision to leave the Pac-12 for the Big 12 last week was not fully responsible for ASU’s eventual move, it did create an unstable moment that put the conference and its remaining members on notice. Once Oregon and Washington made their decision, Crow said the school was forced to act and seek a viable conference — in its case, the Big 12 alongside Arizona and Utah.
“There are a lot of forces at work, including the overlords of the media empires that were driving a lot of this,” Crow said. “[ASU] was one of the stalwarts fighting for the Pac-12 until the last moment.”
ASU athletic director Ray Anderson said the program was trying to save the conference and remained “in the trenches” for as long as possible until it became clear that staying was no longer an option.
Cauce and Cohen seemed to arrive at that point earlier, along with Oregon’s leaders, and on Saturday, they expressed a combination of melancholy for leaving the Pac-12 and excitement as they discussed the sudden move the Huskies are making.
“I’ll be the first to say this is not perfect,” Cohen said. “There will be challenges. This does require a lot of change in adaptability. Part of the decision was that we felt very confident in the agreement we had with the Big Ten to have the resources to adapt to the challenges, including travel costs and additional resources, that our student-athletes are going to need to have a successful experience in the Big Ten.”
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Adam Rittenberg
LSU defensive coordinator Blake Baker is remaining with the program, coach Lane Kiffin said Friday on X.
Baker, who has led LSU’s defense the past two seasons, interviewed for head coaching vacancies at Tulane and Memphis this week and was a strong candidate, sources said. But he instead will remain with Kiffin, who prioritized retaining Baker, one of the nation’s highest-paid assistants at $2.5 million.
Baker is expected to receive a revised contract and a raise.
Under Baker, the Tigers ranked 15th in scoring defense and 25th nationally in total defense this fall. His retention capped a strong day for LSU, which signed defensive tackle Lamar Brown, ESPN’s No. 1 overall recruit, and defensive tackle Deuce Geralds (No. 37).
Baker, 43, is in his second stint at LSU after coaching the team’s linebackers in 2021. A former Tulane linebacker, he also has held coordinator roles at Louisiana Tech, Miami and Missouri.
Mississippi State defensive coordinator Coleman Hutzler has been informed that he is not returning next season, with the Bulldogs expected to target former head coach Zach Arnett to be the next defensive coordinator, sources told ESPN’s Pete Thamel on Saturday.
The move would be the rare reunion of a former head coach returning to the staff of that team.
Arnett is a proven high-end defensive coordinator in the SEC. In three years as Mississippi State DC (2020-22), his defenses ranked in the top five in the conference in total defense, rushing defense and takeaways.
He took over as coach following the death of Mike Leach in December 2022, but Arnett was fired with two games to play in 2023 after leading the Bulldogs to a 4-6 record that season.
After leaving Mississippi State, Arnett has spent the past two seasons as an analyst at Ole Miss and Florida State.
Hutzler had been the Bulldogs’ defensive coordinator since 2024, but Mississippi State has ranked last and second to last in yards per game allowed and points per game allowed the past two seasons.
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Max Olson
Penn State named Iowa State‘s Matt Campbell as its head football coach, the school announced Friday.
The deal, which will go before the compensation committee of the school’s board of trustees for final approval Monday, is for eight years, sources told ESPN’s Pete Thamel.
“Coach Campbell is, without a doubt, the right leader at the right time for Penn State Football,” athletic director Patrick Kraft said in a statement. “He is a stellar coach with a proven track record of success and his values, character and approach to leading student-athletes to success on and off the field align perfectly with the traditions and values of Penn State.”
Campbell, the winningest coach in Iowa State history, met with Penn State officials Thursday night before negotiating a deal Friday. Iowa State quickly moved to hire Washington State coach Jimmy Rogers to replace Campbell.
In its search to replace longtime coach James Franklin, who was fired Oct. 12, Penn State shifted its focus to Campbell after BYU coach Kalani Sitake agreed to a long-term extension Tuesday to remain with the Cougars.
Campbell, a three-time Big 12 Coach of the Year, led the Cyclones for 10 seasons and achieved eight winning seasons, two Big 12 championship game appearances and a Fiesta Bowl victory over Oregon in 2020 for the school’s first top-10 finish.
Campbell, 46, went 72-55 during his decade at Iowa State, becoming its winningest coach last season, and went 35-15 as coach at Toledo from 2011 to 2015.
He will bring strong Midwest ties to the job as a Massillon, Ohio, native who began his college playing career at Pitt before winning three national championships as a player at Division III Mount Union.
This season, Iowa State started 5-0 and climbed as high as No. 14 in the AP poll before a four-game losing streak knocked the team out of the Big 12 title race. The Cyclones rallied with a three-game winning streak in November to go 8-4.
Last year, Iowa State went 11-3 and would have advanced to the College Football Playoff with a victory over Arizona State in the Big 12 title game. The program finished No. 15 in the AP poll after defeating Miami in the Pop-Tarts Bowl.
Campbell and his coaching staff have developed 15 NFL draft picks over the past seven years, including NFL stars Brock Purdy, Breece Hall and David Montgomery. Defensive end Will McDonald IV became the first Cyclones player to be selected in the first round since 1973.
Before Campbell’s arrival, Iowa State hadn’t had a winning season since 2009 and hadn’t played in a Big 12 championship game. The Cyclones won 14 games against AP Top 25 opponents during his tenure.
Campbell had been a serious candidate for high-profile coaching jobs throughout his decade at Iowa State, including the Detroit Lions and USC, but preferred to stay in Ames and continue building a program that had never achieved a 10-win season until last year.
He was earning $5 million per year in total compensation at Iowa State after agreeing to a contract extension through 2032 with the school earlier this year.
Penn State ranked No. 2 in the preseason AP Top 25 and was expected to compete for a national championship in 2025 after reaching the College Football Playoff semifinals last season. Franklin was fired during a three-game losing streak to open Big Ten play that dropped the Nittany Lions out of the Top 25 at 3-3.
Franklin agreed to a five-year deal to become the coach at Virginia Tech on Nov. 17 and took a $9 million settlement with Penn State on the $49 million buyout that he was originally owed upon his firing.
Former Penn State interim coach Terry Smith agreed to a four-year deal to stay on staff and work with Campbell, sources told Thamel, confirming a report by Inside the Lions. Smith is a Penn State graduate who has been a linchpin on the school’s staff for the past 12 seasons. The Nittany Lions won their final three Big Ten games this year to become bowl-eligible at 6-6 under Smith.
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