According to Ross Dellenger, Mountain West officials are thinking about changing their entire scheduling system with Oregon State and Washington State looking to join the conference. The idea is to do a form of relegation where the Pac-2 takes six schools from the Mountain West to form a top conference of eight.
The other six schools (remember, Hawaii is a football-only member) would take two schools from the FCS and form a lower-level conference. Two teams each season would get promoted or regelated based on where they fall in the standings. The best two teams in the standings from the lower conference would get promoted to the top conference and the worst two teams would get relegated.
In theory, the best team in the conference (the team that wins the Pac-12 championship game) would go to the college football playoff. This is not something that the conference can control but with an expanded playoff, it is quite easy for the conference champ to get in.
Is creating this system a smart idea for Oregon State and Washington State?
Based on the current situation that these two schools are facing, this is probably a very good idea overall if is used for the football team. This would allow the other sports that often do not generate as much revenue not be affected. It would probably be smart for the other athletic teams to just join the Mountain West. This will keep travel times low for the rest of the student-athletes who do not partake in the money made from college football.
While the players themselves do not get paid by the school, they are able to make money through NIL deals. These deals come through from exposure which will increase with this model. This is the only situation that it would be best for a relegation system as these two schools are trying to make the best of a bad situation. If this were to happen more often, it would create even more problems in college football.
