the Pac-12?
It was a Pac-2 for a few months last summer, after 10 scattered to the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC. Then it became a Pac-6 in mid-September, when San Diego State and three other Mountain West schools announced their intention to re-form the conference starting in 2026-27.
Then a Pac-7 a few days later when a fifth Mountain West school, Utah State, bolted.
Then a Pac-7½ when Gonzaga, which doesn’t play football, said it would in basketball and most other sports.
That was Oct. 1, and we haven’t heard much since.
A media rights deal that was supposed to be unveiled in late March still hasn’t. An eighth full, football-playing member, necessary for inclusion in the lucrative College Football Playoff, hasn’t been invited. A settlement on legal challenges to roughly $140-plus million in exit and poaching fees due the Mountain West hasn’t been negotiated.
“It’s kind of all running on parallel tracks,” San Diego State athletic director John David Wicker told boosters at an event in Escondido last week. “It will all come to a head by the end of June, I can promise you that. We’re really excited about where we’re headed.
“Everything that we were promised as we were making the decision to jump from the Mountain West is coming to fruition, and it’s just going to keep building from there.”
The first deadline is June 1, when departing schools must send formal notification plus $5,000 to the Mountain West or face doubled exit fees from an estimated $18 million to $36 million. Several sources confirmed that, as of Friday afternoon, the Mountain West had not received anything.
June 1 also is the last chance for UNLV to jump ship without incurring the higher exit fee. Multiple sources on both sides have said there have been no discussions between the UNLV istration and the Pac-12, just tangential interest from some Rebels donors that went nowhere.
The Pac-12 initially took four Mountain West schools, hoping to add three or four from the American Athletic Conference. But when Memphis, Tulane, South Florida and Texas-San Antonio ed, it grabbed Utah State and reportedly pursued UNLV.
The Mountain West responded by coaxing its remaining seven to sign a grant of rights — GOR, in conference-speak — through 2031-32 in exchange for a percentage of an expected nine-figure windfall from the five departing schools. UNLV and Air Force were offered the most, 24.5% each, that is expected to total between $17.5 million and $23 million per school.
Another plus was a clause in the GOR allowing UNLV (or anyone else) to accept an invitation to a power conference before 2031-32 without penalty, and the Rebels are quietly confident that the Big 12 is a viable option — so confident, sources said, that they’ve told incoming freshman football recruits they’ll play in the Big 12 before they graduate.
How much money UNLV will receive from the Mountain West depends on ongoing mediation from two lawsuits challenging what’s owed by the departing schools and the Pac-12.
Mountain West bylaws set exit fees at three times the annual member distribution — estimated at between $5.5 million and $6 million this year — with more than a 12-month notice of departure. Inside 12 months, that doubles. That’s an estimated $18 million per school times five, or $90 million.
There are also “poaching fees” that were part of a football scheduling agreement with Pac-12 remnants Oregon State and Washington State, giving them each six games against Mountain West teams in 2024. To guard against the Pac-12 raiding its conference for future , it set pillaging costs starting at $10 million for the first school and rising from there. Five schools cost $55 million, due 30 days after announcing their intention to leave (which was mid-September).
Instead of paying, the Pac-12 filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco.
“The MWC imposed this Poaching Penalty at a time when the Pac-12 was desperate to schedule football games for its two remaining and had little leverage to reject this naked restraint on competition,” the legal complaint says. “But that does not make the Poaching Penalty any less illegal, and the Pac-12 is asking the Court to declare this provision invalid and unenforceable.”
The Mountain West’s retort: You agreed to it, your attorneys vetted it, you signed it.
There’s a similar lawsuit over Mountain West exit fees filed in a Denver federal court by Boise State, Colorado State and Utah State. SDSU and Fresno State are not named plaintiffs, presumably because they’re not allowed to sue a fellow California State University member, and San Jose State is remaining in the Mountain West.
A global mediation on both cases was scheduled for last Monday. The judge has given strict orders to refrain from public comments about its progress, and little information has leaked out beyond that they met.
The Pac-12 also has remained mum on additional conference , wanting to finalize a media rights deal first so prospective candidates know exactly what they’d make. The TV deal is believed to be completed, and details are expected to be announced this week or next.
That leaves the question of who and how many schools will be added. The deadline to have eight full committed for 2026-27 conference certification is July 1.
The AAC schools still are considered a target, but comments by new Washington State president Elizabeth Cantwell last month indicate they might not be looking so far east.
“I really would like to see a successful, at least high mid-tier conference, that doesn’t send student-athletes all over the country,” Cantwell told student newspaper The Daily Evergreen. “Let’s say west of the Mississippi … or let’s say on the Mississippi.”
It was an interesting choice of words. Memphis is on the Mississippi and not in the Eastern time zone.
But sources suggest that Memphis also doesn’t want to send student-athletes all over the country and instead prefers ing the Big East in basketball and most other sports. The Big East doesn’t play football, which would orphan Memphis’ football program and make an inviting one-sport option for the Pac-12.
Memphis, though, would not solve the CFP requirement of eight full in all sports, football included. The most likely solution is Texas State, which has 36,000 undergraduates and is located in the booming corridor between Austin and San Antonio in a football-crazed state.
The Bobcats currently belong to the Sun Belt Conference, and even a half-share of the Pac-12’s new TV deal would amount to a major financial upgrade.
Betting lines have Texas State as the overwhelming favorite among Pac-12 expansion candidates, which could give them negotiating leverage. Texas State president Kelly Damphousse posted a cryptic tweet last month to that effect, saying:
“People sometimes think that I’d be happy with half a bowl of soup. After all, a cup of soup is better than no soup at all. But for me, it’s a full bowl or nothing.”
It was beneath a picture of a bowl of lobster bisque filled to the brim.
The picture of a refilled Pac-12, meanwhile, remains out of focus.
