The Pac-12, currently consisting of two teams, is on the brink of expansion that will provide a more stable future for Washington State and Oregon State and devastate its conference neighbor at the same time.
Four schools from the Mountain West — Boise State, Fresno State, San Diego State and Colorado State — are expected to announce as early as Thursday morning their plans to join the Pac-12 on July 1, 2026, sources told the Hotline.
Those four, along with Washington State and Oregon State, would then decide on additional expansion, according to a source.
The Pac-12 must have at least eight members by the summer of 2026 in order to comply with NCAA rules.
The six schools could add two more from the Mountain West or seek members from other conferences in order to expand the footprint and increase the number of TV windows for football games.
The move will be devastating for the MW schools left behind — a group that could include San Jose State, Hawaii, Utah State, Nevada and others.
What would remain of the conference would have “zero TV value,” as a source indicated.
The thunderous development comes after the Mountain West and Pac-12 failed to agree to extend their football scheduling partnership for the 2025 season.
The move will be costly for the Pac-12 and the MW schools involved.
According to the terms of the scheduling agreement, there is a so-called poaching penalty of approximately $10 million for every school that leaves the MW for the Pac-12.
But the Pac-12 has cash available.
As part of their settlement with the 10 departed schools, Washington State and Oregon State are withholding a total of $65 million in campus distributions. That cash could be used to pay all, or a portion of, the poaching penalty.
Additionally, the Cougars and Beavers have more than $150 million in assets at their disposal (over the course of several years) from the Pac-12’s postseason football and basketball contracts.
“There will be some of those funds set aside that, as different scenarios emerge, we do have some resources available to us for our strategic priorities moving forward and whatever we might need to do to support our conference affiliation strategy,” Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould said recently on ‘Canzano and Wilner: The Podcast.’
In addition, schools that leave the MW are likely to owe a departure penalty of approximately $20 million.
However, several of the top football schools in the MW have been anxious to generate more media rights revenue. Breaking away from the lower-echelon schools was viewed as a means to that end.
Any TV deal for a conference consisting of WSU, OSU and the top football brands in the MW would have more value than a deal for the current MW.
“It’s no secret that Boise State and San Diego State want out (of the Mountain West),” a source said.
Yahoo was the first to report the news.
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Jon Wilner has been covering college sports for decades and is an AP top-25 football and basketball voter as well as a Heisman Trophy voter. He was named Beat Writer of the Year in 2013 by the Football Writers Association of America for his coverage of the Pac-12, won first place for feature writing in 2016 in the Associated Press Sports Editors writing contest and is a five-time APSE honoree.