When Teresa Gould agreed to become the commissioner of the Pac-12 Conference on February 19, 2024, it appeared that she was taking on a preposterous proposition. Ten schools had already announced their intentions to jump ship, bequeathing a lonely and uncertain future for the two schools left behind, Oregon State and Washington State. The Pac-12, it seemed, was a dead league walking. The only thing left for Gould to do was preside over the funeral.
As it turned out, the Pac-12 was only mostly dead. Instead of delivering a eulogy, Gould has engineered a remarkable resurrection. She has been on the job just 20 months, but during that time she has stabilized the league’s finances, streamlined its infrastructure, replenished its ranks and negotiated a pair of big-league TV contracts. It’s unclear just how bright the future is for this new-old league, but at least it has one. “If you had told me at the time the whole thing fell apart that we would be in this position, I wouldn’t have entirely believed you,” Oregon State president Jayathi Murthy told Hoops HQ. “It was such a dark time. I still feel quite incredulous that we were able to get to this place.”
There are many reasons why the Pac-12 is still breathing, but the steady, tenacious leadership of Gould ranks near the top. The groundbreaking nature of her ascension —she is the first female commissioner of an Autonomy Five conference — is of secondary significance to the deft way in which she has helped the league navigate the storms that besieged it. “Nothing rattles her,” said Gonzaga athletic director Chris Standiford, whose school decided last fall to join the new-old league. “She’s one of the most ethical people I know. Her approach was perfect. There was no hyperbole, no oversell on any component. She was very authentic and that really resonated with everybody.”
The newfangled Pac-12 will officially launch operations next July 1, and while Gould is not looking to plant a flag on anyone’s 50-yard line just yet, she has reason to feel optimistic about what lies ahead. “There hasn’t been a new league launched in over 25 years. I actually think the timing is perfect,” Gould, 59, told Hoops HQ. “The fact that we’re doing it at a point in time when everything around us is changing in the industry affords us an opportunity. It’s easier when you’re starting over and building a new league versus being a historic league that has done things the same way for a long time.”
It helped greatly that Gould brought a quarter century of history with the conference into the job. She earned her Masters in Education at Cal and worked in athletic administration at that school for 13 years, including one year as the interim athletic director. Gould served for six years as the Pac-12’s deputy commissioner before being elevated to the top job following the forced resignation of her predecessor, George Kliavkoff. “It helped that we knew her, and knew her to be a competent person,” Murthy said. “The people who worked in the Pac-12 had a high level of regard and confidence in her. We needed somebody with that level of credibility and commitment.”
Gould acknowledged that when she agreed to take on the job, “People who didn’t know me thought I might be crazy. But the people closest to me — my mentors, my family, my team — knew exactly why I took it.” At the top of her to-do list was off-loading the ten departing schools and nearly 200 staffers in the conference office. Mostly, she was ultra focused on the athletes at the two schools who were being left behind. “I felt very strongly about the position those student-athletes were put in,” she said. “They deserved to have somebody jump in the foxhole and fight for them and work on their behalf to create whatever the best possible future was going to be.”
The tide started to turn three weeks into Gould’s tenure when Oregon State and Washington State finalized the settlement of their lawsuit against the ten departing schools, which netted $65 million in exit fees. The settlement also gave them control of the league’s assets and access to future revenue opportunities, although it was far from clear that there would be any.
Under an agreement that was reached in late 2003, Oregon State and Washington State competed in the Mountain West Conference (for football) and the West Coast Conference (for all the other sports) while they worked with Gould to decide whether they should join other leagues or try to refashion a new conference. That was the more preferable option, and Gould realized early on that it was a viable one as well. “It became obvious pretty quickly that the Pac-12 brand and legacy meant something in our business,” she said. “It really felt reassuring given the amount of inbound interest we had. We realized we can control our own destiny here.”
The new league needed at least eight schools to retain its autonomy status, which comes with access to the College Football Playoff Management Committee, among other benefits. Armed with cash from the settlement and a foothold in the marketplace, Gould hit the hustings to recruit potential candidates. Her work culminated last September when the Pac-12 announced that it was adding Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and Utah State.
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In the days that followed, Gould reached out to Standiford and asked to meet for breakfast in Spokane on Sept. 20, 2024. Gould had spent eight years as the Associate Commissioner of the West Coast Conference, so the two knew each other well. Standiford thought it was a friendly get-together, but he realized early on that Gould was serious about the possibility of Gonzaga joining the new-old league. Standiford had spent much of the previous two years engaged in torturous discussions with the Big 12, so he was wary about getting too excited. Once it became apparent that their agendas were aligned, the deal came together rapidly. It was announced to the public on October 1.
Since Gonzaga does not have a football program, that still left the Pac-12 one shy of the requisite octet. On the promise that it would soon acquire another school, Gould successfully negotiated a landmark five-year media rights deal with CBS. That agreement was especially noteworthy because it was Kliavkoff’s failure to negotiate an acceptable deal with ESPN or Apple TV that led to the collapse of the league two summers ago. “For CBS to be the first partner to raise their hand and get on board was extremely validating,” Gould said. “Our media rights partnerships are never going to be transactional partnerships. It’s not about writing a check and airing a bunch of football and basketball games. This is about having partners who are coming on board to build a new Pac-12 brand.”
A week after the CBS deal was announced, the Pac-12 agreed to make Texas State its eighth football school. Gould isn’t closing the door on adding more teams, but that is no longer her primary focus. “We’ll never say never, but we’re very, very comfortable with the nine that we have,” she said. “We’ll stay open-minded to any institutions that make sense for us, but right now we are very much focused on the launch.”
On Aug. 27, the Pac-12 announced that it was extending its media rights partnership with The CW Network, which is pushing deeper into sports in general and college sports in particular. While the Pac-12 Network is now defunct, the league has created Pac-12 Enterprises to serve as its broadcast arm. The venture will make use of a state-of-the-art production facility located in the Bay Area as well as an extensive remote operation. Gould must also manage an ongoing legal entanglement over the Mountain West’s desire to extract a $43 million poaching penalty from each school that left for the Pac-12. That case is making its way through the courts.
College sports is experiencing a period of unprecedented uncertainty, so it’s impossible to predict what other disruptions the Pac-12 will face between now and its launch next summer. But given how far this league has come, there is plenty of reason to believe it can weather whatever storms blow its way. If nothing else, everyone now knows that the Pac-12 has a pair of strong and steady hands at the wheel. “We know we have a strong product,” Gould said. “The metrics show that we’re a top-five league. The marketplace has supported that. The question now is how to build it in a way that is current with the modern ecosystem of college sports. And that’s the really fun part.”
