The other three schools are Colorado State, Fresno State, and San Diego State. Reports of the Pac-12’s demise were greatly exaggerated.
- Washington State
- Oregon State
- Boise State
- San Diego State
- Colorado State
- Fresno State
Sensing a trend here. San Jose State and New Mexico State, come on down! City-State and State-State divisions!
This comment is only slightly stupider than the real way things get decided now.
So, it’s 6-Pac now?
I wonder if they’ll eventually absorb all of MWC.
Reports are that they need at least 2 more members to stay as a conference. My guess is they want to find 2 more schools that can tide them over. Then, when the MWC is up for tv rights, and there isn’t a huge buyout to leave, then the Pac8 can grab what they want. Which ones would they want? I have no idea, I would be guessing at random.
I think it is clear that the 4 teams that left were wanted by the Pac2, even if it took a chunk of cash to break contracts and get them there.
Who could the other 2 teams be to get the conference to 8? I have no idea. Ignoring any Mountain West schools, I don’t know who you would go after. There is probably a discussion with North Dakota State and South Dakota State, but I think they would rather stay in the dominate role of FCS. Then you start looking at all the other names that get thrown around. UTEP, Memphis, Tulane, USF, Uconn. I’m sure there are others, I can’t think of any as I quickly type this. Regardless, these are all huge travel distances, and I don’t think any give a significant boost to the conference.
It is really a shame, because it feels like if Stanford/Cal were still in with these other 6, it would be a solid 5th place conference. A step behind the BigXII, but a step above the best G5. It probably wouldn’t, but if you could get to an auto-qualifying bid into the conference, that would be worth it to everyone involved.
It is still a shame. The Pac 12 dissolving was bad for everyone. The one bright spot was that I felt the MWC and Pac 12 merging would be beneficial to everyone. It just made too much sense. The problem is, these big decisions aren’t made on a conference or national level. They are made by the individual schools each trying to look out for themselves.
I don’t think the MWC would take too kindly, they seemed to want to strong arm the PAC during the last round. And honestly the PAC is in no position to make demands. The real question is does the MWC have the strength and brand identity to hold it’s ground, or does the gravity of the PAC pull a large swath of the MWC in?
Pac isn’t out of the hospital yet but maybe they won’t need to be on life support either.
Mountain West bylaws require departing schools to pay an exit fee of roughly $18 million with two years’ notice, which is what the four schools expect to pay, a source said. (That number would jump to $36 million with one year’s notice.)
The Pac-12 is expected to be in position to help the schools with the exit fees, in part, due to withheld media-rights distribution fees to departed members and other conference assets. The conference would also be subjected to $43 million in poaching fees, as outlined in the scheduling agreement between the conferences this year that resulted in Oregon State and Washington State playing six Mountain West opponents.
Jesus, they just decided to blow ALL the money when they could have done this way cheaper a year ago. I guess this also means that reports of a “hard no” from the Big XII may have had some truth to them, more’s the pity.
All good choices!
