Derek Schultz: Ashley Adamson is grateful for a Midwestern homecoming that she never expected

Rolling her suitcase through the Indianapolis International Airport, the tears started flowing for Ashley Adamson.

After leaving for the West Coast to help oversee the birth and eventual death of the Pac-12 Network, she was back in middle America—not by choice, necessarily, but grateful for a new opportunity in a familiar place for the former WISH-TV Channel 8 sports anchor.

“When something gets taken away, you don’t really know what it will look like,” said Adamson, whose contract expired along with the entire Pac-12 Network over the summer. “I saw that ‘Welcome to Indianapolis’ sign, and it was bizarre. It was a wave of emotion like, ‘What is going on?’ and I just started crying.”

Adamson, just hired by the Big Ten Network as a studio host in July, was returning to cover the annual Big Ten Football Media Days at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Representatives from USC and UCLA, the two schools that initiated the irreparable cracks in the foundation of the Pac-12 conference, along with future defectors in Oregon and Washington were also taking part in the festivities, and everyone was adjusting to their new reality.

End of the road

When the Pac-12 dissolved, at least as the brand we formerly knew it as, the focus was on trivial things like football games and television deals. What was ignored were the many lives, like Adamson’s, impacted by this seismic change in the college sports landscape. Left looking for work after the lights were turned off at their Bay Area studios, she and her fellow Pac-12 Network staffers were just one part of that group as nearly 200 other conference employees were reportedly set to be laid off over the course of this year.

Even those whose job or individual status remains unchanged have felt it. There are volleyball players at UCLA who are now having to plan their class schedules around a Thursday night match against Rutgers three time zones away instead of versus Stanford in Palo Alto. Remaining conference administrators and leadership at Washington State and Oregon State, the two programs left behind after being part of the league since before America entered World War I, are feverishly attempting to salvage and market the “Pac” name but without any of the century-long prestige and aura.

It was like grieving a loss—moving through the stages of grief, Adamson remembers.

“I think denial was the stage that lasted longer than it should for me, because I just couldn’t get myself to believe that this could end. Every person we talked to on every single campus was like, ‘Man, we don’t want this, and it didn’t have to be this way.’”

Adamson said, “If everybody feels this way and nobody want this, how did we get here?”

The 2023-2024 sports season was a prolonged goodbye for Adamson, but that was better than the abrupt ending that can befall most in the sports business.

And while she considered jumping the sinking ship, Adamson was determined to see the network, which she had been part of since its inception, through to its last day.

“It was an emotional roller coaster for a few years, but navigating to the end with a bunch of people who you love and care about was meaningful and special,” she said. “It was our own support group. What we did over the last 12 years wasn’t just yelling into the abyss—these stories that we told about these young people and the families and fans mattered.”

“I don’t want to say I was ready to move on, because I wasn’t, but mentally, I had to prepare myself for what was next.”

A new opportunity

Cutting through the awkwardness of that final year, which Adamson described as “a retirement lap,” was anxiety related to her career being very much in flux. Looking for guidance, she reached out to the Big Ten Network’s Dave Revsine, who had helped solidify her decision to take the Pac-12 Network job offer in 2012.

“When someone is calling them looking for help, it’s easy to keep them at arm’s length, especially when you think it may impact you,” said Adamson, “But [Dave] genuinely went out of his way to help me get a foot in the door at the Big Ten Network, and I ended up with the same job as him, you know, so that’s not lost on me.”

“When she was in Indy, we were represented by the same agent, so I’ve known Ashley and respected her for years,” said Revsine, who was the first-ever face and voice on the Big Ten Network when it launched in 2007. “She’s great on the air, totally prepared, works really hard—she’s really good at what she does.”

Just weeks after the Pac-12 door closed, the Big Ten one swung open for Adamson with a studio host offer and that plane ticket from San Francisco to Indianapolis in July.

“Ashley has incredible connections and has been following those West Coast teams for longer than we have,” Revsine continued. “She brings institutional knowledge that others in our organization couldn’t possibly have and helped us bridge that gap.”

Besides her core knowledge of the USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington programs, she is also working hard to get up to speed with the other 14 teams in the new-look conference. However, Adamson has some foundational awareness to build upon there, too, having covered Purdue, Indiana and the Big Ten, thanks to some of her professional and personal roots.

Back to the Heartland

Although she was born and raised mostly in Denver, Adamson spent some of her formative years in Ann Arbor, Michigan, before moving back to Colorado for high school. After graduating from Boston College and starting her television career in the Northeast, she spent only a few years in the sports department at WISH-TV (2010-2012), but they were busy and formative ones, with Butler’s memorable back-to-back Final Four runs, Indy hosting Super Bowl XLVI, and the Colts’ sudden release of the legendary Peyton Manning all happening during her tenure.

“Indianapolis has been a big chapter in my life. It’s a town that I really loved, and [it] helped me launch to get to where I’ve gone,” Adamson said. “Walking back into Lucas Oil Stadium, a lot of those memories came flooding back. I got to reconnect with a lot of people, and it was just the full-circle nature of everything.”

Adamson, who will continue to reside in San Francisco while flying back and forth to the BTN studios in Chicago, is leaning into that Midwestern familiarity during a time where so much in college sports feels unrecognizable. One of the first games she covered for BTN was a football matchup between USC and Michigan that was preceded by a September tailgate outside “The Big House” instead of the Rose Bowl Parade in Pasadena on New Year’s Day. It’s new, different, even downright weird, but the novelty and a fresh opportunity breed optimism and excitement.

“It’s cool when you look back and think about all the things that happened in your life that, in the moment, you don’t really realize how it’s setting you up for the next thing, and I think that happened with the Pac-12 Network,” Adamson said. “It gave me every single blessing that I have right now, including my family, where I live, and all the rest, but when something ends and things burn down, new things grow.”

“You have to be open to what’s next. There’s always more,” she added.•

__________

From Peyton Manning’s peak with the Colts to the Pacers’ most recent roster makeover, Schultz has talked about it all as a sports personality in Indianapolis for more than 15 years. Besides his written work with IBJ, he’s active in podcasting and show hosting.