How Teresa Gould will lead Oregon State, Washington State and the Pac-12 into the unknown

Gould is dyed-in-the-wool, ride-or-die Pac-12. She has served as deputy commissioner of the Pac-12 since 2018. From 2001 to 2014, she was a senior athletics administrator at Cal. Her husband Ron Gould was a football coach in the Pac-12 for 24 years, including six years at Stanford and 16 at Cal.

The past six months have been an exercise for Gould in heartbreak and emotional recuperation. She has been coming to terms with the seismic change to the nation’s premier West Coast college conference, saying goodbyes to longtime employees and colleagues at departing schools, and finding her place in the plan for what comes next.

Gould’s place has now been determined: She became the new commissioner of the Pac-12, effective on Friday. It’s a groundbreaking role in the sense that she will be the first woman to lead a Power Five conference and she will lead a conference with just two remaining teams — Oregon State and Washington State — and an unclear future.

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“Thirty-five years ago, when I decided to pursue a career in intercollegiate athletics, the reason I did it was because I believed so passionately about the role that athletics can play in the context of higher education, and the role that intercollegiate athletics can play in the lives of young people and developing them as leaders,” Gould told reporters on Thursday.

“Since back in August, there hasn’t been a night that’s gone by that I haven’t thought about the more than 1,000 student-athletes on the campuses of Oregon State and Washington State. … All I could think about was that they need a leader prepared to fight for them.”

Gould has the fight in her. The Iowa native fought to bring softball to her hometown, and when she couldn’t, she fought to join the boys’ baseball team. She has battled for equal gym time and equal resources as a senior women’s administrator.

Now she faces the biggest challenge of her — or maybe anyone’s — career as a leader in college sports.

Gould, who signed a two-year contract, will lead the Beavers and the Cougars out of the desert while maintaining the Pac-12 brand in the two-year transition period granted by the NCAA. For the next two years, the schools’ football programs will play under a scheduling agreement with the Mountain West Conference. Twelve other sports, including women’s and men’s basketball, will join the West Coast Conference.

After the 2025-26 season lies the great unknown. A merger with another conference that could imperil Power Five status? A rebuild of the Pac-12 with a group of new schools? Even the return of some teams that left is not out of the realm of possibility if the college football landscape blows up.

But right now, it’s not accurate to say that the Pac-12 doesn’t exist, which is why the next few weeks will be filled with qualifiers such as “the Pac-12 as we’ve known it” and tributes will be kept to a minimum.

WSU and OSU want to keep the brand alive — including logos, trademarks, historical records and record books — and you can’t do that by declaring it dead. Not when the changes in college sports keep coming and you never know when you might need a West Coast power again.

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Gould said she will have three core responsibilities:

• Support OSU and WSU in terms of Power Five-level services for athletes, coaches and programs and build infrastructure to support those needs
• Represent OSU and WSU on the national stage, including the College Football Playoff management committee and within the NCAA structure
• “Forge a future” for the two programs

“It’s probably the most important piece in terms of impact and importance,” Gould said. “It’s about being bold and aggressive and intentional and attacking challenges head-on, but also being open-minded and making sure we are considering all the options.”

Options, it should be noted, that largely have yet to present themselves. The two schools will operate with a reported budget of $255 million following the departure of 10 schools, and they will need to find a TV partner for their sports that can generate additional revenue.

The Pac-12 Network production facility in the Bay Area that opened last summer will remain open for at least one more year. 

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While football has been the driver of the changes both in the Pac-12 and nationally, Gould said she will commit to ensuring that women’s sports and Olympic sports receive significant time and investment.

“One of the things I’ve loved about the Pac-12 is our commitment to the breadth and opportunities for women’s sports and Olympic sports,” she said. “I do think that women’s sports have a lot of financial upside and we need to invest in them and grow them as a product that our fans want. And we need to be thoughtful as we think forward about our options for future conference affiliations to make sure those options are going to work for those sports and support their success.” 

Gould emphasized that the conference and its two members will have to be adaptable and nimble to respond to further change and potential future opportunities.

“We need to be prepared to adjust how we move forward if the industry continues to change at the rapid rate it is,” she said.