By: Joe Koch
November 25, 2024
Photo Credit: Pac-12 Conference
2024 has been a rough year for the Pac-12 Conference.
In 2023, the Pac-12 had twelve teams. In 2024, just two remain: Oregon State and Washington State. The conference's top programs relocated to three conferences - USC, UCLA, Washington, and Oregon to the Big 10, while Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State, Utah left for the Big 12, and California and Stanford jumped ship for the ironically named Atlantic Coast Conference. The Pac-12 faced a difficult decision, and even considered the possibility of folding altogether, after the climactic end of a once historic conference. Ultimately, they decided to adapt to the age of conference realignment and set out to find schools to join the Pac-12.
In October, they announced the imminent arrival of six schools to the conference: Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Gonzaga, San Diego State, and Utah State. Five of these six schools are moving from the Mountain West Conference (MWC), with Gonzaga being the lone exception. However, despite adding these six new teams, the Pac-12 still needs to add one more member to the conference, as Gonzaga does not have a football program. The NCAA dictates there must be at least 8 members of a conference in every sport to affiliate themselves with the NCAA and be eligible to compete for any NCAA Championship. If there are not 8 teams competing in the Pac-12 by the end of the 2026 season, NCAA rules state that the conference would no longer exist under their umbrella of member organizations.
This moving and shaking begs the question; what does all of this mean in the landscape of college sports?
The Pac-12's initial issues with finding a new media contract after their previous one expired at the end of the 2023-24 academic calendar was a main reason why so many programs left the conference all at once. The previous contract was worth $3 billion across 12 years with each team receiving roughly $20 million per year. In 2022, the Pac-12 proposed a new contract where each team would receive roughly $50 million. This deal would rival SEC and Big Ten contracts, but no media corporation agreed. Eventually, the downfall with almost all the programs leaving ensued.
For the Mountain West Conference, there are currently just 7 teams remaining. Similar to the Pac-12, they will need to find at least one more team before 2026 in order to compete in the NCAA. This number could increase if the Pac-12 poaches another one of their teams to fulfill that 8 school minimum requirement. UNLV, Air Force, and Wyoming have been the MWC schools which have been rumored to be interested in joining the Pac-12, which leaves the MWC in a state of limbo waiting for any potential dominoes to fall before they can make a proper plan to recruit new programs to their conference.
While the Pac-12 is still in the process of adding teams, the 2025 college football regular season will see their remaining members from the old guard, Oregon State and Washington State, play each other twice (once at each home location). This is only the 2nd time since 2018 that any FBS college football team has played another team multiple times in the regular season. Furthermore, both Oregon State and Washington State will each play multiple games against teams from the Mountain West. Those MWC teams will count those matchups as out-of-conference games next year.
The new Pac-12 - once fully established - won’t receive an automatic bid for the 12-team College Football Playoff under the competition's current rules. However, the re-establishment of the Pac-12 does serve one competitive advantage: geographical location. The new realigned conferences have already struggled with issues arising from long road trips, especially for sports other than football. The Pac-12, meanwhile, is remaining to stay regionally based, which will make the lives of the conference's athletes easier thanks to easier and shorter inter-conference travel. With rapid expansion occurring, it’s exciting to see a historical conference that was recently left in the dust reinvent itself in this fashion.
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