It has been 209 days since Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State announced they were leaving the Mountain West Conference to reform the Pac-12 Conference alongside current members Oregon State and Washington State.
It has been 198 days since Utah State accepted an invitation to join the reconfigured Pac-12.
It has been 190 days since Gonzaga did the same, only not as a football-sponsoring member.
More than half a year has gone by since the Pac-12 last expanded. Normally that wouldn’t be that significant, except for the fact that the conference needs one more football-sponsoring member in order to be recognized by the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and College Football Playoff (CFP).
It doesn’t need that school yet, but by the 2026 football season, the Pac-12 must have eight football-sponsoring members. The clock is ticking.
Is it time to worry? After all, not only does the Pac-12 not have a full complement of schools — without a great deal of overly appealing options either — it doesn’t have a media rights deal. In a lot of ways it is a conference in concept and theory only.
Per John Canzano, it isn’t time to panic just yet, though that time isn’t far off.
“The Pac-12’s expansion plan is still directly (or indirectly) tied to the lawsuit and settlement negotiations with the Mountain West,” Canzano wrote in his Monday mailbag. “If it’s UNLV the Pac-12 ultimately covets, this could take several weeks or a month to figure out.
“I’ll start asking more pointed questions about the media rights deal around April 15. If there’s no news by May 1, I’ll begin to wonder if there’s trouble. Fans of the conference shouldn’t panic until late June, though. The new-look Pac-12 officially launches on July 1, 2026. That’s the NCAA’s deadline to get to eight all-sports members. It would be less than ideal for the Pac-12 to get inside that one-year mark without clarity.”
According to The Mercury News’ Jon Wilner, Pac-12 expansion is as much tied to its prospective media rights deal as it is to ongoing negotiations with the MWC — meaning that expansion isn’t likely to come before a media rights deal is finalized or after. But rather those two things will happen almost simultaneously.
“In terms of the Pac-12’s broad strategy, it’s critical to recognize that the media rights negotiations and membership question are, to a large extent, unfolding together,” Wilner wrote in his March 31 mailbag. “The conference has a list of schools under consideration. It’s a matter of wrapping up expansion once the media rights deal is secure, not starting from scratch.”
Wilner noted that none of the programs perceived as available to be added by the Pac-12, be it Memphis, Tulane, South Florida (USF), Texas State or New Mexico State, would provide substantially different value to the league. Some are more valuable to be sure, but not significantly.
Furthermore, adding more schools that don’t sponsor football but excel at basketball — think Saint Mary’s, Grand Canyon, etc. — sounds good in theory but won’t add substantial value to a media rights deal either.
Writes Wilner: “Prioritizing the media deal over membership makes sense. Why? Because the most important piece to the survive-and-thrive equation isn’t the TV dollars; it’s the TV exposure. The rebuilt Pac-12 must partner with a linear TV network for its football product. Whether that’s The CW or ESPN or Fox or Turner, exposure is everything over the second half of the decade as conferences compete for College Football Playoff access and schools audition for the sport’s Great Restructuring in the 2030s.
“Also, the media valuation could impact which schools are pursued. Some targets would demand full-share status; others would not. If the media deal lands on the low end of projections, the conference might opt to offer partial shares, thereby creating more dollars for the core eight.”
All of which is to say, there isn’t an obvious path for the Pac-12 to take for expansion. There isn’t an obvious school to add. There isn’t a clear and laid out media deal to accept right now, which is why further expansion hasn’t already happened.
Throw in the ongoing legal disputes between the Pac-12 and Mountain West and the Pac-12 does not appear close to settling in as one of the five best conferences in college football or even college sports in general.
Will that happen? There is still time. But the longer it takes the more questions will arise and the more reason to worry. Just not yet it seems.
