Wow.
The Pac-12 is poaching four Mountain West schools to join Oregon State and Washington State in an effort to preserve the league. Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State and Fresno State applied for Pac-12 membership and all have been accepted, the conference announced on Thursday. They will officially become Pac-12 members on July 1, 2026.
Those four schools represent arguably the top brands in the legacy Mountain West and schools that have been considered for power conference membership in the past. If the four schools move by the 2026 season, the Pac-12 will only need to add two more programs to reach the minimum eight schools to be an FBS conference.
“For over a century, the Pac-12 Conference has been recognized as a leading brand in intercollegiate athletics,” Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould said in a statement. “We will continue to pursue bold cutting-edge opportunities for growth and progress, to best serve our member institutions and student-athletes. I am thankful to our board for their efforts to welcome Boise State University, Colorado State University, California State University, Fresno, and San Diego State University to the conference. An exciting new era for the Pac-12 Conference begins today.”
Ten of the 12 legacy Pac-12 schools left the conference in 2024 as the existing grant of rights expired. Four schools went to the Big Ten (USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington), four to the Big 12 (Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah) and two to the ACC (Stanford and Cal), leaving Oregon State and Washington State without a long-term home. The pair will compete as de facto FBS Independents over the next two years and are ineligible for an auto-bid to the College Football Playoff.
However, the legal status means that the two Pac-12 schools still had a massive war chest of $250 million in resources available to them, primarily payouts like NCAA Tournament units and existing contracts. Buying out four schools from the Mountain West in a one-year period would cost approximately $187 million, according to CBS Sports’ Dennis Dodd. The Pac-12’s existing resources could be leveraged to help offset that difference.
See here and here for some background. It’s always safe to assume that there’s some conference realignment stuff percolating in the background, so that some schools are jumping from one place to another is no surprise. That the destination is the two-school husk of the PAC 12, that’s a surprise. Indeed, there was a time when it was thought that Oregon State and Washington State would join the MWC, as they clearly had a limited set of options. All that money they got from their departing colleagues sure did help.
ESPN adds on.
MW commissioner Gloria Nevarez released a statement late Wednesday to address reports the four schools were leaving the conference.
“The Mountain West Conference is aware of media reports regarding the potential departure of several of our members, and we will have more to say in the days ahead,” Nevarez said. “All members will be held to the Conference bylaws and policies should they elect to depart. The requirements of the scheduling agreement will apply to the Pac-12 should they admit Mountain West members. Our Board of Directors is meeting to determine our next steps. The Mountain West has a proud 25-year history and will continue to thrive in the years ahead.”
Mountain West bylaws require departing schools to pay an exit fee of roughly $18 million with two years’ notice, which is what the four schools expect to pay, a source said. (That number would jump to $36 million with one year’s notice.)
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The six members will collaborate to decide which schools to target for further expansion, as the conference still needs to add two more schools to reach the NCAA minimum requirement. The conference is in the first year of a two-year grace period afforded by NCAA bylaws to exist below the minimum in the case of departures.
It is unclear how many schools the new-look conference expects to have by 2026.
They will also need to negotiate some kind of new media rights package, one that will both be enough for them to compete and to make the new PAC [x] attractive to a school they’d like to entice. One also assumes that the MWC will do some shopping now. In other words, just another normal day in collegiate athletics. At least the new PAC 12 members won’t have to cross multiple time zones to play their new rivals. Slate has more.