It doesn’t appear San Diego State will be joining the Pac-12 Conference any time soon.
Per ESPN’s Pete Thamel, the Aztecs are expected to deliver notice to the Mountain West Conference — their current conference — that they will not withdraw from the league after all and instead will stick with the conference going forward.
It was widely reported previously that San Diego State had asked earlier this month for an extension on a June 30 deadline to leave the MW in time to compete in a new league in 2024, an extension that if granted would have saved the school $16.5 million in exit fees.
This comes on the heels of reporting by Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger Friday morning that Pac-12 university presidents were presented with an update on the progress of the league’s new media deal at a recent board meeting.
(SDSU has been widely reported as a prospective addition to the Pac-12, after USC and UCLA leave the conference for the Big Ten).
Per Dellenger, only a general framework of the media deal was revealed, with the expectation that a more substantive model would be presented by football media day on July 21.
In that same board meeting, Pac-12 leadership emphasized that no conference expansion would take place prior to the new media deal being agreed upon, which, as Dellenger explains, all but forced SDSU back to the MW.
“The news from the Pac-12 board meeting — or, more like, the non-news — signals that San Diego State is likely, at some point soon, to reaffirm its position with the Mountain West: that its original letter to the conference was not, in fact, a formal withdrawal,” Dellenger writes.
As previously reported, the Mountain West did not take well to SDSU asking for an extension on the deadline for making a decision to leave the conference, detailing in a letter sent to SDSU on Friday, June 16, that the conference would not approve any of the exceptions the Aztecs asked for, including an additional month before declaring to depart, a reduced exit fee or the ability to pay out the exit fee in installments.
Additionally, the league expressed a clear belief that SDSU had given formal notice of its resignation from the MW, something the Aztecs pushed back on with limited success.
The Mountain West has let San Diego State back into the league after flirtations with other conferences previously, specifically in 2013 when the Aztecs agreed to join the Big East, before ultimately returning to the MW.
Whether the league accepts SDSU back a second time remains to be seen.
“At issue now is the Mountain West’s reaction to San Diego State’s letter today,” Dellenger writes. “The league considered the school’s original letter to be a withdrawal. Will San Diego State have a home in 2024? The MWC likely wants them to remain. I’m sure they can, er, work something out.”