The Pac-12 is back in business. Well, kind of.
It’s not the same as it was, when it had USC as its flagship football power, Phil Knight as a key benefactor and Stanford’s Olympic prowess all under one roof. The rebuilt Pac-12 is not going to be considered a power conference just because it has the name brand, its status already technically diminished by both the NCAA and the College Football Playoff in the past year.
But, after 13 months spent as the poster child for a new college sports ecosystem that casts aside its smaller brands, history be damned, what the Pac-12 accomplished on Thursday morning is something of a triumph. For once, Oregon State and Washington State got to be the aggressors. They were not the last schools on a sinking ship this time. They had suitors who wanted to join them.
Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State and Fresno State will join the Pac-12 conference on July 1, 2026. The quartet of schools celebrated the news and what they view as their own ascension.
There will be plenty of handwringing about whether this is actually worth the exorbitant cost to make it happen. The total price tag for the Pac-12 to poach these four members and for them to exit the Mountain West is around $111 million. Here’s how the math breaks down:
- Each Mountain West school is required to pay a $17 million exit fee when leaving the conference at least one calendar year past the notice of withdrawal. So, that’s $68 million total.
- The Pac-12 additionally owes the Mountain West approximately $43 million for adding four schools from its conference. When the two leagues signed a one-year football scheduling agreement (for fall 2024), there were special provisions included that spelled out fees were the Pac-12 to poach Mountain West members. There would have been no fee if the Pac-12 absorbed the entire league in a reverse-merger, but everything else had a price tag.
Now, the Pac-12 has well-stocked coffers. The league has accumulated wealth from its settlement with the 10 outgoing Pac-12 members, its CFP and NCAA tournament revenue distributions, its bowl contract and the Pac-12 Network’s infrastructure. The conference will be helping the four new schools pay for this move, sources said.
The four schools will forfeit their shares of the Mountain West revenue distributions for this year and next as part of the league’s bylaws, sources said, which is not insignificant. That adds to the expense of such a move — one that looks pretty much like a rebuilt Mountain West without its cellar-dwellers. Is this worth more than $100 million to do it this way? Just to destabilize a peer conference?
The simple answer is that college football is a cutthroat business, and what the two Pac-12 schools are doing to kneecap the Mountain West is what was done to them when Oregon and Washington left for the Big Ten and the Four Corner schools (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah) left for the Big 12. It’s better to grow than to shrink, and it’s best to be in position to chart your own future most of all. And it must feel nice to announce this news two days before Oregon State and Washington State play their in-state rivals, the schools that broke open the Pac-12 last August.
But the more comprehensive answer is that this is how the college sports food chain works, as much as it hurts to see this happening to the proud Mountain West. The key to survival is not just to grab a chair before the music is up. It’s to present yourself as more deserving of the chair than any of your competitors while the music is still playing. Those involved in the new Pac-12 believe that there is great upside to a smaller league made up of athletic programs that bring value. No, they aren’t bringing the kind of value that Notre Dame or Michigan would. But those involved in the process understand where they sit in the pecking order — and they believe that they can create a league that can regularly contend for a College Football Playoff berth. With the new 12-team format, the champion of the new Pac-12 simply needs to be the fifth highest-ranked conference champion. The path to landing that spot is simple: Beat out the Group of 5 league champions.
One source involved in the process of adding members said all six schools are treating their future as “a blank canvas.” They’re like-minded schools who all believe they can create more value together (in part because they won’t be slicing up their future revenue that many ways) and bring in more money in a new media rights deal than the American Athletic Conference currently does. (Its original members currently bring in $8-10 million annually, which is top in the Group of 5.)
The conference does still need to add at least two members by July 2026 to get to a minimum of eight, which would allow the NCAA to recognize it as a Division I conference. Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould and the two Pac-12 presidents said that they evaluated academics and athletics performance, media and brand evaluation, commitment to athletics success, geography and logistics and culture and student-athlete welfare as they weighed which four schools to add in this wave. Geography could be less of a consideration moving forward, sources said, which could create an opportunity to both strengthen the Pac-12 and weaken one of its top competitors (the AAC).
But Thursday wasn’t solely about what or who comes next. It was a day of celebration and relief, all because the Pac-12 got back up off the mat. It is not nearly as powerful as its namesake was just three years ago, but Oregon State and Washington State know just how hard it’s been to even dream of a future like this. They made it happen.
And now the league left for dead little over a year ago is alive – and kicking.