Oregon State's second and final schedule as a Pac-2 member had plenty of surprises. The schedule has several quirks, with an in-season home-and-home series with Washington State and plenty of random intersectional games.
Oregon State 2025 Football Schedule 🔒 📲: osubeavers.com/news/2024/10/2…
Aside from the two games with Washington State, the most intriguing was an October home game with the Lafayette Leopards of the Patriot League. Many may overlook this game, but this is a nearly unprecedented opportunity for exposure for Lafayette and the Patriot League.
Not only will Lafayette play their first game ever west of Colorado and third west of the Mississippi, but The CW will also televise the game. This contest marks the first national appearance on an over-the-air network since the Leopards appeared on PBS' Ivy League Game of the Week in 1986 against Columbia. Yes, you read that right. Still, only 29 of PBS' 200 stations picked up the game. The Oregon State game will shatter the viewership numbers of that PBS appearance.
The Oregon State-Lafayette game is a rare opportunity for the Patriot League to market itself on the West Coast. Colgate traveled to the Bay Area to play Stanford in 2022, but the Pac-12 Network, notorious for its limited carriage aired the game. This time, television sets and more importantly re across the West Coast receives an introduction to the Patriot League and its rich history.
Furthermore, linear and over-the-air opportunities are rare for the conference. Regarding regular season games, only the Patriot League's week Zero games in 2017 (Colgate-Cal Poly) and 2019 Villanova @ Colgate, and the Spring 2021 Football Championship rival the exposure The CW appearance will give the Patriot League.
The 2017 Colgate-Cal Poly game drew 190,000 viewers, while CBS Sports Network televised the 2019 Villanova-Colgate and 2021 Spring Football Championship games, unrated by Nielsen. While the viewership may not rival Holy Cross' 2022 FCS Quarterfinal appearance, which had 1.53 million viewers, Oregon State-Lafayette is still a monumental opportunity for the Patriot League.
The CW routinely draws hundreds of thousands of viewers for FCS broadcasts. Below are the viewership numbers for every FCS game The CW has aired, sourced from Sportsmediawatch.com:
- September 16, 2023: VMI @ NC State, 205,000
- November 18, 2023: North Alabama @ Florida State
- August 31, 2024: Portland State @ Washington State, 223,000
- August 31, 2024: Idaho State-Oregon State, 381,000
The CW appearance is not the Patriot League's first foray into over-the-air television broadcasts. The league partnered with syndicator American Sports Network from 2014-2016. Nonetheless, this Oregon State-Lafayette broadcast has a broader scope and does more for the Patriot League than those syndicated broadcasts did.
The disassembling of the PAC-12 was a tragic show of the insatiable greed haunting college football. However, next year's Lafayette-Oregon State game shows some good came out of it. Lafayette and the Patriot League look to make the most of this rare, newfound exposure.
