By Aidan Joly
The Pac-12 has a new life and a new look.
On Thursday it was announced that the Pac-12 would officially make a return, announcing the addition of Mountain West schools San Diego State, Colorado State, Fresno State and Boise State in 2026. They will join the two schools left out of the shuffle during the last conference realignment, Oregon State and Washington State.
The moves create a large shift in the makeup of college sports on the west coast.
Six months ago the Mountain West was on a high note as it sent six of its teams to the NCAA tournament, more than the ACC, Big East and the on-its-deathbed Pac-12.
Sure, the Mountain West is a flawed conference. It doesn’t have the type of media rights contract that the new Pac-12 will likely end up having, and didn’t quite get to the point where it could be considered the west coast’s version of the Big East.
Still, it was a highly competitive conference that boasted some great atmospheres: The Pit at New Mexico, Viejas Arena at San Diego State and The Spectrum at Utah State. San Diego State and Boise State have always been in the top half of the standings and have been hunting for a power conference home for years. San Jose State and Air Force have been at the bottom of the league for the most part over the years, but just about every other team in the league has had success in recent years, save for Fresno State – mostly due to a lack of resources.
It is also worth noting that the new Pac-12 isn’t done. It must add two more teams by ’26 to be considered an FBS conference. UNLV, Utah State, Nevada and New Mexico are all good programs with resources. UNLV seems like it would be a likely target to pick up the Las Vegas market. It would be wise for Cal and Stanford to bite the bullet of ACC exit fees to re-join the league to limit travel.
The thing that gets tricky is deciding where the Mountain West goes from here. It has lost four of its 11 programs and could very well lose more. It could go after some in Conference USA, a league at this point that is filled with nomads stretching from Florida to New Mexico. New Mexico State, Sam Houston State and UTEP are the most obvious fits there. Perhaps Hawaii, already in the league for football, will become a full member.
It could also dip into smaller conferences and try to add the likes of North Dakota State, South Dakota State, Montana, Montana State, North Dakota, South Dakota, Idaho and the like, but the wrinkle there is that these are all schools that dominate at the FCS level of football. All seven of those schools I mentioned are all currently ranked in the top 10 in the country at the FCS level. North Dakota State has won nine FCS national championships since 2011 and South Dakota State is the current back-to-back defending champs. Five of those seven made the quarterfinals of the FCS playoff last season. It would have to convince schools that dominate FCS to make the move up to FBS, where success isn’t guaranteed. Football is king when it comes to college athletics, but would those schools be willing to give that up? That’s a question only they can answer.
FBS football is already bloated, too. There are currently 134 FBS teams, a few dozen of which have little to no business being there.
It’s disappointing to see what is happening to the Mountain West. That league has had the juice in basketball in recent years and showed that it could compete with some of the best leagues in the country. Some of these schools will surely be worse off in a decade.
It’s all the complications of football-driven money grabs.
AJ Hoops 