Oh hell yeah WSU is awash in debt. Short history lesson:
Right after Mike Leach was hired, WSU spent somewhere around $140M on our stadium, mostly on replacing our single-wide trailer press box with a much-needed and very nice structure, luxury boxes, loge seating, etc., and on a "Football-only" building overlooking one end zone. $140M total that is. Bad news we lost 2-3,000 seats by doing so. All to be paid for by the massive revenue influx from the Pac-12 network. Guess what? The Pac-12 network flopped badly. IMHO, both were needed improvements, but we went too far on a wing and a prayer. Thank then AD and Cougar legend Bill Moos (who then bolted for Nebraska), and Pres. Elson Floyd (RIP).
Since then we have also had deficits in our Athletics budgets more often than not. Right now we (and OSU) are living off of our war chest while also throwing it away on poaching fees. But why the F would we want to do that essentially free reverse merger and use some of that saved money to pay down debt? Because we were and still are arrogant and incompetent. WSU and Pac-2 that is.
Not directed at you, you've been on reverse merger wagon from the start.
You said something early on (paraphrasing here) the enemy was on the inside. And I 99.99% ( I hate speaking in absolutes) think Boise and SDSU were the catalysts.
They overvalued their own worth. They overvalued the PAC brand.
I think the PAC might have been Mick Cronined (Former Cincy BB coach who leveraged UNLV for better contract with Cincy) by the AAC schools. Memphis 'Oh yeah we're definitely in.' let's do this! All the while negotiating a better deal out of the AAC when next media rightss get negotiated.
WSU and OSU could have jumped into MWC. They have all they old PAC12 broadcasting stuff. New MWC could have gone to potential new media partners saying look how much money this will save you.
Probably bumped current MWC package up to 8 million. WSU and OSU would have had all that money to absolve debt and still had plenty left over for infrastructure, courting NIL partners etc.
Either they have some amazing plan they've yet to unveil or this was and absolute comedy of errors, arrogance and ineptitude.
Best G5 conference in the country with plenty of upside. Instead we're in this cluster.
