Pac-12 school president reads K-State message boards for conference realignment talk
Nearly seven years have passed since Kirk Schulz left Kansas State to become the school president at Washington State, but he still has one strong connection to the Wildcats.
He is an avid reader of K-State message boards.
That is not a joke. Apparently, Schulz still checks in on K-State’s online sports community when he has free time. His favorite topic: What K-State sports fans think about conference realignment, particularly the future of the Pac-12.
“I follow the Kansas State message boards,” Schulz told Pac-12 reporter Jon Wilner earlier this week, “and there were guys reporting every month that it was imminent that the ‘Corners’ schools (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah) were going to the Big 12. It was imminent in October. Then in November. And in January.”
Those comments were meant to defend the Pac-12 as the conference has publicly struggled to secure a new lucrative TV deal following the defections of UCLA and USC to the Big Ten.
Rumors have swirled since the summer that the Big 12 might look to raid the Pac-12 and poach some of its most attractive members. And those rumors have picked up lately, now that Brett Yormark has inked a new deal for the Big 12 with ESPN and FOX that will make it the nation’s third richest conference behind the Big Ten and the SEC.
Schulz, who served as the school president at K-State from 2009 to 2016, is aware of this at least partly because he still reads K-State message boards.
“At the end of the day,” Schulz said, “we have to get a deal done. That’s the only thing that will quiet everybody down.”
This story was originally published February 21, 2023 at 4:18 PM with the headline "Pac-12 school president reads K-State message boards for conference realignment talk."