Four schools are set to announce as early as Thursday that they plan to depart the Mountain West to join the Pac-12, according to multiple reports on Wednesday night.
San Diego State, Boise State, Colorado State and Fresno State have reportedly applied for Pac-12 membership to begin in the 2026-27 academic year.
They would join Oregon State and Washington State, the conference’s two remaining school following its collapse last summer. Commissioner Teresa Gould and officials from the Pac-12 have spent the past year examining possible options for their future after 10 schools, including USC and UCLA, left the league for the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC.
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, ESPN reported. (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 those exit fees, in part, due to withheld media rights distributions fees to departed members and other conference assets. The conference would also be subjected to an additional $43 million in poaching fees, as outlined in the scheduling agreement between the conferences this year that resulted in both OSU and WSU playing six Mountain West opponents.
Once these four additions are confirmed, the conference would still need to add two more to reach the NCAA minimum requirement. The conference is in the first of a two-year grace period afforded by NCAA bylaws to exist below the minimum in the case of departures. It must reach the minimum by July of 2026.
The Pac-12’s move could have also affect the College Football Playoff. Given the departures in the Pac-12, CFP leaders last year voted to change the 12-team expanded playoff format. They removed one automatic qualifying spot and added an at-large berth for a format that features five automatic spots for the highest-ranked conference champions and seven at-large bids.
In the next two years, the Pac-12 champion is not eligible for an automatic qualifying spot as it does not meet the CFP’s conference-minimum requirement. However, starting in 2026, the champion of a rebuilt Pac-12 would presumably be eligible to receive an automatic bid.
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The Pac-12’s board must approve any membership applications and is expected to soon do so, but the deal could reportedly be finalized by the end of the week.
The Pac-12’s first expansion phase makes geographic sense but deals a blow to the Mountain West. The MWC, a 12-team football league, which includes Hawaii (a Big West member in other sports), would lose some of its top brands despite a scheduling alliance with the Pac-12 that many expected would end with a reverse merger or merger with Oregon State and Washington State.
However, earlier this month, negotiations broke down between the Pac-12 and Mountain West over adding a second year to the 2024 football scheduling alliance, a fight that most notably involved financial differences, according to those with knowledge of the talks.
This move by the Pac-12 could ignite another round of realignment, at least for those schools at the Group of Five or even FCS level. Needing to fill departures, the Mountain West is likely to evaluate possible members to elevate to FBS.
News of the four schools set to join the Pac-12 was first reported by Yahoo Sports.