On Pac-12 football TV coverage, Cole Rueck, Ed Whelan, Beaver wrestling and Damian Lillard …

Corvallis High grad Cole Rueck has an exemption to play in the PGA Tour’s Barracuda Championship this summer (courtesy Boise State athletic communications)

Updated 5/10/2025 3:05 AM

Notes, quotes and observations from the sports world …

• Josh Ishoo, PR director for the Pac-12, sent out an email to media last week about the conference’s partnership with CBS Sports, The CW Network and ESPN for the 2025 football season.

Among the details:

— All 13 home games for Oregon State will be on the networks — nine on The CW, two on CBS Sports and two on ESPN. Pac-12 Enterprises, the broadcast production arm of the conference, will produce all nine broadcasts for The CW.

— The games on CBS Sports (also streaming on Paramount+) are Washington vs. Washington State in Pullman on Sept. 20 and Washington State at Oregon State on Nov. 1 in Corvallis. Both games on ESPN will be in Corvallis — OSU vs. California in the season opener on Aug. 30 and OSU vs. Houston on Sept. 26.

— CBS and The CW will combine to broadcast 11 of the Pac-12’s 13 home games in 2025, reaching “100% of U.S. households via over-the-air broadcast networks.” This means, Ishoo explains, that all viewers will have availability to the game broadcasts, whether via cable, satellite, streaming or an antenna.

— In 2024, the most-watched football game on the CW was Oregon State’s 38-35 win over Washington State in Corvallis with 695,000 viewers. No. 2 was OSU’s 39-31 overtime win over Colorado State in Corvallis (568,000); No. 3 was Wazoo’s 54-52 double-overtime win over San Jose State (542,000). That is for all college games aired on the network last season, including ACC, though the premier games in that conference are generally carried on ESPN.

— Syracuse’s 52-35 win over Wazoo in the Holiday Bowl got 2,930,000 viewers; Boise State’s 34-18 win over OSU drew 1,680,000 viewers. Both games aired on Fox.

Switching gears, Ishoo had this available statistic:

— In men’s basketball, Pac-12 members for the 2026-27 season include OSU, WSU, Boise State, Gonzaga, Utah State, San Diego State, Colorado State and Fresno State. Collective strength from those programs over the past five seasons would have represented the fourth-best conference based on average NET rankings at 73, behind the Big 12 (53), Big Ten (55) and SEC (56) and ahead of the Big East (74) and ACC (96).

Two things are missing from Ishoo’s report that I would like to know:

— Who will the announcers be for Oregon State and Washington State games on The CW? Too early for those games to be assigned, he says.

— When can we expect announcement from the Pac-12 and its exclusive media rights advisor, Octagon, for media rights partnerships beginning in 2026?

“We are making great progress on that front,” OSU AD Scott Barnes told me three weeks ago. “I am encouraged by our progress and feel like we will be at the finish line soon.”

Alas, nobody has broken the tape yet. And Ishoo can offer no updates.

NEW: The Dean of Portland Sports is now on BlueSky.

• Cole Rueck’s remarkable golf journey carries on.

In February the Boise State junior from Corvallis High claimed his second straight title at The Genesis Collegiate Showcase, beating top competitors from such schools as Southern Cal, Washington and Wake Forest to become the first two-time winner in the event’s 11-year history. The tournament was staged at Torrey Pines Golf Course in La Jolla, Calif., moved from Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, Calif., due to wildfire activity. Riviera is a storied course that has been the site of the U.S. Open and PGA Championships and will play host to the 2028 Olympic Games.

The previous year, Rueck had won the Genesis at Riviera, which qualified him for a spot in the Scottish Open in July 2024. That turned into a memorable experience for Rueck at the Renaissance Club in North Berwick, with his father — Oregon State women’s basketball coach Scott Rueck — as caddy. This year’s win earns Cole an exemption into the PGA Tour’s Barracuda Championship July 17-20 at Truckee, Calif.

“It was really cool to be there to watch Cole back up his performance a year ago with another title,” says Scott Rueck, who galleried the event with wife Kerry. “He loved playing at Riviera, but Torrey Pines is pretty special as well. Cole shot 3-under par on that course from PGA distance.”

Cole Rueck has had a productive spring for Boise State, winning two tournament titles with five top-10 finishes. After claiming the individual title at the Mountain West Championships in 2024, he finished seventh in the same event April 25-27 at Emerald Valley in Creswell. The 5-8, 135-pound Rueck shot 10-under-par 206 for 54 holes and finished eight strokes behind champion Justin Hastings of San Diego State.

“Cole had a great tournament, but there were some really low scores,” says Scott, who of course was there to watch. “It has been fun to watch him improve incrementally. Every time I see him play, it is different. When I caddied for him last summer, I watched every swing for a week and lived that experience with him. As his game has evolved, has become stronger and more consistent.”

Cole, who spends the summers at his parents’ home in Corvallis, will be busy this summer. He will play in qualifiers for the U.S. Amateur and U.S. Open, will participate in the OGA Men’s Stroke Play Championship at Trysting Tree in Corvallis from Aug. 1-3 along with some other invitationals. And he has the Barracuda at Tahoe Mountain Club’s Old Greenwood course. Will Scott be on his bag?

“I don’t know,” his father says with a smile. “I might be retired.”

The GoFundMe campaign to help former Portland TV sportscaster Ed Whelan has hit $12,000, and organizers are hoping for more

• In March, I wrote about the GoFundMe campaign launched by former KOIN sportscaster Pat Hellberg to help his friend and ex-co-worker Ed Whelan, 77, who was in need of a walker and motorized scooter to get around. Hellberg had been helping Whelan with his move from a house in Multnomah to an assisted living facility in Vancouver. On the second day after the move, the scooter was stolen.

Hellberg started the GoFundMe account. Donations began pouring in. Then Matt Dierdorf, who had enjoyed watching Whelan deliver sports news during his long career at Channel 6, contacted Hellberg. There was a nearly brand-new scooter that his father had used briefly before passing away. Would Hellberg like it to give to Whelan? Indeed.

So all of the funds raised in the GoFundMe campaign will go to “rebuilding, repairing and refreshing” Whelan’s house, which will eventually go on the market. Proceeds from the sale will help provide some financial cushion as Ed heads into what he calls “The Fourth Quarter” of life.

The total raised so far is $12,000. “Every dime will go into either the house renovation or Ed’s bank account,” Hellberg says.

Here is the link if you are interested in contributing.

• Over the past two years, Oregon State has been hit hard by defections through the transfer portal in football and men’s and women’s basketball. Now wrestling has joined the party.

Ethan Stiles, OSU’s best wrestler the past season who finished sixth at 149 pounds at the NCAA Championships, will transfer to Ohio State. I wrote about the redshirt freshman in March here.

Sources say the Buckeyes paid $75,000 in NIL money to steal Stiles from Oregon State’s midst. The Beavers also lost Murphy Menke, a part-time starter at 165 and 174. A Colorado native, he is moving closer to home and will likely compete for Northern Colorado next season.

OSU already has one gain through the portal: Daschle Lamer, a former two-time state 5A champion from Crescent Valley High who will transfer from Cal Poly. Lamer, who has three seasons of eligibility remaining, was 13-9 for the Mustangs this past season and lost to OSU’s TJ McDonnell in the 184-pound finals of the Pac-12 Championships. Lamer is likely to cut to 174 when he wrestles for OSU next season.

There will be other new faces in the Beavers’ lineup in 2025-26 from this past season. Among them:

Oregon State’s Justin Rademacher recently won the U20 U.S. Open championship at 97 kilograms in Las Vegas (courtesy Oregon State athletic communications)

— Justin Rademacher is likely to be the team’s star next season. The former state 6A champion from West Linn High was 12-7 and a Pac-12 runner-up at 197 as a freshman in 2023-24, then redshirted last season. Competing unattached, Rademacher was named Most Outstanding Wrestler at the Reno Tournament of Champions last December. He recently won the title at the U20 division of the U.S. Open in Las Vegas and is in “sit-out’ position to wrestle in the World U20 Championships in Sofia, Bulgaria, in August. The winner of the U.S. World Team trials will wrestle Rademacher for a spot in the Worlds.

Rademacher, who will be a sophomore in eligibility next season, is also the U.S. representative at the Senior Pan-American Championships from May 8-11 at Mexico City and at the U20 Pan-American Championships in July in Lima, Peru.

— Aden Attao, one of the top Greco-Roman heavyweights in the nation, lost to eventual champion Colton Schultz in the semifinals of the U20 U.S. Open. Attao, who redshirted last season, is likely to be the Beavers’ starting heavyweight as a redshirt freshman in 2025-26.

— Joel Adams, an incoming freshman from Omaha, reached the Round of 16 at 163 in the U20 U.S. Open. A member of the 2024 U.S. U20 World Championships team last year along with Attao, Adams is a former age-group world champion. He will likely be in the starting lineup somewhere for the Beavers next season.

• What a shame that Damian Lillard’s season came to an end due to a torn Achilles’ tendon, which will likely keep him out of action for much if not all of the 2025-26 season for the Milwaukee Bucks.

But Lillard will be well-compensated while he goes through his rehab. The former Trail Blazer will make a guaranteed $58.5 million next season. That works out to more than $713,000 per game. Not a bad gig — or non-gig — if you can get it.

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