The Pac-12 may have saved itself by adding Mountain West teams, but does it matter?
USA TODAY Sports’ Dan Wolken breaks down the news that a handful of Mountain West teams will join the Pac-12 and explains why not much is going to change.
In the annals of absurdity, financial mismanagement and ego-driven decision making that have long been the hallmarks of conference realignment, Thursday’s announcement of a rebuilt Pac-12 sets a new standard for pointlessness in college sports.
Left for dead a year ago when the rest of their league scattered to the wind, Oregon State and Washington State have convinced Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State to leave the Mountain West and join them under the Pac-12 banner in 2026. There will be more additions for sure — you’d think UNLV, Air Force, and perhaps New Mexico would be a starting point depending on how big they want to go — but the bottom line is so inconsequential you have to ask whether it’s even worth the trouble.
In breaking away from the Mountain West, all the Disloyal Four have truly done is joined a new league with an old name that is going to … look almost exactly like the Mountain West.Â
And the cost of making that move?Â
In excess of $100 million in exit fees and penalties associated with the scheduling agreement Oregon State and Washington State signed with the Mountain West last year, written explicitly to discourage this exact scenario where the remaining Pac-12 schools would wreck the conference that gave them a temporary football home.
A significant chunk of that money will, almost certainly, come from the Pac-12 war chest assembled from a mass of conference revenue the other 10 schools had to forfeit when they left for the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC. And in turn, the Mountain West will take that money to bolster its remaining members and adding members to ensure its own survival. Given how shallow the pool gets at that end of conference expansion, the Mountain West will probably have to elevate some Football Championship Subdivision schools or dip into Conference USA, which had to do the exact same thing last year.Â
The cycle continues.Â
And for what? How can you possibly convince any rational person that this level of conference realignment — again, with more than $100 million being exchanged from one batch of mid-major schools to another — is anything more than a low-level Ponzi scheme?Â
If you squint really, really hard, you can kind of see how schools like Boise State, Colorado State and San Diego State that have a little bit of national juice could convince themselves that there’s a benefit to joining up with Oregon State and Washington State on a more formal basis while leaving behind what they consider to be the Mountain West’s dead weight. Â
After all, the new Pac-12 will now be able to go out and get its own media rights deal, and the six schools will be able to choose how many other partners — and which partners — bring the most value. For a college president, filling a spreadsheet with those hypotheticals is like catnip. They can’t resist it. Â
But in reality, all they’ve done is leave a conference that was competing with the American to be the fifth-best conference and … join a league that will be competing with the American to be the fifth-best conference.
Which means the difference is television money is likely going to be marginal. There will be no difference in College Football Playoff access because nobody with true power in this sport is going to consider the Pac-12 to be a major conference. When it’s all said and done, Boise State and the rest are going to end up largely playing the same opponents they’ve been playing for years just with a different conference logo on the field.Â
And in the end, when you cut through all the baloney, that’s what this is really all about.Â
Athletics administrators and college presidents are only fluent in one language when it comes to conference realignment: Whether they feel like they’re in the cool kids’ club or they’re out.
Look across the landscape over the last few years and there’s no real calculus driving these decisions other than ego — even more than money. Â
Why did Texas start the process of ditching the Big 12 for the SEC? Because their football program had made a series of horrible coaching hires, and they blamed their subsequent recruiting failures on being in a mediocre conference.Â
Why did Southern Cal engineer a jailbreak from the Pac-12 for the Big Ten? Because their program had been in stasis and there was a perception among USC administrators that the Pac-12 wasn’t doing enough to help them get back to national relevance.Â
Why are Florida State and Clemson taking the ACC to court in an attempt to become free agents, even though it’s going to cost a ton and there’s no guarantee of a more lucrative landing spot? It’s because of the fear that they’re going to end up on the wrong side of a dividing line between the elites and the commoners that used to include six conferences at the top and now only includes four.Â
This state of affairs has left college administrators feeling rather helpless. They are just passengers as the NCAA model gets reshaped through lawsuits and threats that schools in the Big Ten and SEC will break away and do their own thing if they don’t get the freedom they need to make rules and spend money that everyone else doesn’t have.Â
So the sole focus for everyone else is getting as close to that dividing line as possible — regardless of the travel logistics, the exit fees and who gets screwed over.
A year ago, Washington State and Oregon State were sympathetic figures because nobody wanted them. Now, they’re predators, digging their fangs into the carcass-strewn Mountain West.Â
And those joining them are getting what, exactly? Oh, they’ll throw a big party this week in Boise and San Diego and Fort Collins. They finally made it!
But they made it to an impostor Pac-12 whose resurrection is less compelling than a Journey reunion tour without Steve Perry as the lead singer.Â
Sure, Oregon State and Washington State got to keep the name and the branding, but no one is fooled. What they’re putting together is more Parody Pac than Pac-12, but in college sports these days it’s sadly just business as usual.