The Pac-12 Conference, severely hobbled after 10 of its 12 member schools left the league effective this year in the latest round of college sports realignment, will add four Mountain West schools as it seeks to reinvigorate itself, officials announced Thursday.
The Pac-12′s board of directors voted unanimously to admit Boise State, San Diego State, Colorado State and Fresno State, who will join Oregon State and Washington State in all conference sports for the 2026-27 academic year. The league will need to add only two more members to reach the minimum eight required by the NCAA, which granted a two-year grace period to exist below that minimum after this year’s exodus.
“For over a century, the Pac-12 Conference has been recognized as a leading brand in intercollegiate athletics,” Commissioner Teresa Gould said in a statement. “We will continue to pursue bold, cutting-edge opportunities for growth and progress to best serve our member institutions and student-athletes. I am thankful to our board for their efforts to welcome Boise State University, Colorado State University, California State University, Fresno, and San Diego State University to the conference. An exciting new era for the Pac-12 Conference begins today.”
Conference realignment, spurred largely by schools’ efforts to maximize the television revenue generated by their football programs, gutted the Pac-12 and left its future in significant doubt. Southern California, UCLA, Washington and Oregon left to join the Big Ten; the Big 12 gobbled up Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah; and the ACC poached Stanford and California.
That left Oregon State and Washington State home alone in the Pac-12, competing as a nonautonomous Football Bowl Subdivision conference over the next two years and ineligible for an automatic bid to the expanded College Football Playoff.
Pac-12 officials have spent the past year considering how to preserve the lucrative league, and the addition of the four Mountain West schools is the first significant move in that effort.
According to an ESPN report, Mountain West bylaws require schools that leave to pay an exit fee of roughly $18 million with two years’ notice, and the Pac-12 is expected to help the departing schools pay those fees. The Pac-12 would also reportedly be subject to paying $43 million in poaching fees as outlined in the scheduling agreement between the conferences that allowed Oregon State and Washington State to play football games this year against Mountain West opponents.
The Pac-12 is in financial position to make these expensive moves thanks in large part to a settlement agreement with the 10 schools that left the league.
