UNLV won’t be rebels, after all.
The Mountain West confirmed reports that UNLV and its seven other remaining have pledged their allegiance through 2032, meaning the Rebels won’t be ing San Diego State in the reformed Pac-12.
That leaves the Pac-12 stuck on seven prospective for the 2026-27 academic year, one shy of the minimum required for inclusion in the lucrative College Football Playoff. The roster: incumbents Oregon State and Washington State plus Mountain West defectors SDSU, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and Utah State.
The Pac-12 courted UNLV for the past few days, which would have done two things. It would have given the Pac-12 the magic number of eight . And it would have destabilized the Mountain West and possibly destroyed it, with Air Force eyeing a move to the American Athletic Conference to fellow service academies Army and Navy.
Instead, Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez punched back, using a projected windfall as high as $150 million from poaching and exit fees to offer financial incentives for UNLV, Air Force and everyone else to stay.
The conference outlined who gets what in a statement Thursday afternoon: 24.5 percent each for UNLV and Air Force; 11.5 percent each for Wyoming, New Mexico, Nevada and San Jose State; and 5 percent for Hawaii, which is a football-only member with the rest of its sports in the Big West.
The $55 million in poaching fees are part of the 2024 football scheduling agreement between the two conferences. The Pac-12 filed a legal complaint in federal court this week asking that they be voided because they are “draconian and unlawful.”
Nevarez responded with a strongly-worded statement noting that the Pac-12 was “advised by sophisticated legal counsel” before g the agreement last year and “now that they have carried out their plan to recruit certain Mountain West schools, they want to walk back what they legally agreed to.”
Another $90 million or more could come from exit fees that are part of Mountain West bylaws. The formula, for a departure with more than 12 months’ notice, is three times the annual average distribution per school, or an estimated $18 million.
If the Mountain West gets the full amount, UNLV and Air Force are looking at roughly $36 million each in exchange for committing to the conference through 2031-32, which encomes the final two years of the current media rights contract and a new six-year deal.
“The agreements announced today mark a historic moment for the Mountain West and provide much-needed stability and clarity as the world of intercollegiate athletics continues to evolve rapidly,” Nevarez said in a statement. “We are excited about our future and are executing our next steps in expanding the Mountain West.”
Both conferences now have seven , although the timeline to reach eight differs. Pac-12 remnants Oregon State and Washington State received a two-year grace period to operate at less than eight that expires after 2025-26. The 12-school Mountain West won’t drop below eight until SDSU and the four others depart in 2026-27, meaning they likely would have until 2028-29 to expand.
It isn’t expected to take that long, however. With overlapping footprints in the Pacific and Mountain time zones, both conferences could be fighting for the same list of potential expansion targets that offer little value to broadcasters.
One name that has quickly emerged is Texas State, located in San Marcos between Austin and San Antonio. It has an undergraduate enrollment of 38,873 and belongs to the Sun Belt Conference.
One report Thursday has the Mountain West interested in expanding east with Northern Illinois and Toledo from the Mid-American Conference.
There’s also Sacramento State, which currently plays in the Football Championship Series a rung below the top Division I programs in FBS. On Thursday, the university announced plans to build a new 25,000-seat football stadium as part of its “SAC 12” campaign to the Pac-12.
Either way, it’s not exactly what the Pac-12 envisioned when SDSU, Boise State, Colorado State and Fresno State defected en masse on Sept. 12. The next move was to court Memphis, Tulane, South Florida and Texas-San Antonio from the American Athletic Conference, which was quickly snuffed out.
The Pac-12 also is known to have held talks with Gonzaga as a non-football member, and there was one report Monday claiming it was a done deal. School officials have insisted that is premature, presumably waiting to see what sort of media rights deal the Pac-12 can now command without its top expansion picks.
That triggered a mad scramble for more Mountain West schools. Utah State made the jump. UNLV and Air Force did not.
The Mountain West’s initial offer to keep UNLV, one source said, included $12 million in payouts from poaching and exit fees. Once Utah State left and added potentially another $30 million to the pot with one less mouth to feed, the number continued to rise as UNLV played one conference off the other.
The Rebels need the money, too. A recent fiscal report to the Nevada Board of Regents that oversees the state university system cited a $20.6 million athletics budget deficit.
Another report, by the Nevada Faculty Alliance in February, cited annual projected budget deficits at UNLV between $4.2 million and $5.8 million from 2025 through 2028, totaling an additional $27 million. A month after it posted a story with detailed graphs about “runaway” athletic deficits, the university provided the Board of Regents with revised budgets showing increased revenue projections that allowed it to break even.
UNLV, the faculty alliance wrote, did not provide “public explanations for how or why they revised their budget projections.”
Had UNLV jumped to the Pac-12, it would have faced an exit fee of roughly $18 million from the Mountain West with the hope of making more in annual conference distributions.
UNLV said in a statement Thursday that it expects between $10 million and $14 million from the Mountain West in 2025, followed by annual payments between $1.5 million and $1.8 million beyond the conference’s annual distribution. The agreement also allows UNLV to leave for a power conference before 2032 without penalty as well as keeping the conference basketball tournament at the Thomas & Mack Center on UNLV’s campus.
It amounts to a lucrative windfall for a school snubbed by the Pac-12 in its initial raid of the Mountain West.
“After a thorough evaluation of all options,” athletic director Erick Harper said, “at this time the best choice for UNLV is to remain a member of the Mountain West. The league is genuine brand and an established product. Increased revenues are a vital factor. … Any future move from our current affiliation would have to make sense financially and have significant long-term value.”
