The good news for Oregon State and Washington State -- spurned by power conferences -- is that teams have been left behind before. Some, like TCU, eventually survived.
TCU could be a model of surviving realignment, succeeding in multiple conferences while reaching BCS bowls and the CFP.
Oregon State head coach Jonathan Smith left for the Big Ten's Michigan State and took some assistants with him, and in addition lost three NFL draftees. The Beavers then proceeded to lose starting quarterbackWhat has happened to these programs is just impossibly cruel and demoralizing. But if there's any reassurance whatsoever to be found, it's that these schools are not alone.
In 1959, following mudslinging and accusations of slush-fund activities at a number of schools -- Washington, UCLA, USC, Cal -- the PCC fell apart. The most ambitious schools of the bunch began angling to create a national"Airplane Conference" with eastern independents such as Notre Dame, Penn State, Pitt, Syracuse and the service academies. The Airplane Conference concept eventually fell apart, and Oregon, Oregon State and Wazzu were eventually allowed back in to the party.
Eventually, the Big 12 formed from the members of the Big Eight and half the scandal-plagued SWC. With the Pac-10 choosing against expansion, that left the other half of the SWC on the outside looking in. Over the SWC's final five seasons, the abandoned half -- Houston, Rice, SMU and TCU -- had gone a combined 71-144-6 with one bowl appearance among those schools.
The Cougars joined the remnants of the Big East in the freshly named American Athletic Conference in 2013, and under Tom Herman in 2015 they went 13-1 and beat Florida State in a New Year's Six bowl. It has been an up-and-down ride since, as neither Major Applewhite nor Dana Holgorsen were able to generate any post-Herman consistency, but a combination of obvious upside and the Houston market got them into the Big 12 in 2023.At least Houston didn't get the death penalty.
The Big East had a power-conference designation when the BCS existed, but when the College Football Playoff came about in 2014, it no longer recognized the AAC as a power. That meant four Big East holdovers -- Cincinnati, UConn, USF and Temple -- all entered the left-behind zone. Under Brian Kelly and Butch Jones, Cincinnati enjoyed five seasons of double-digit wins and four ranked finishes in the Big East's final six seasons of football existence.
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