Mountain West explores adding Pac-12 schools

The Mountain West conference’s Board of Directors, comprised of the university presidents of the 12 football-playing members of the league, met on Monday night to discuss conference realignment that has reshaped the face of college athletics over the past couple weeks.

While nothing that would change the conference’s makeup was determined at Monday’s Board of Director’s meeting, which is chaired by UNM President Garnett Stokes, the league for the first time Wednesday morning publicly confirmed it is actively considering the “addition of new member schools” as part of its process of figuring out the league’s best course of action moving forward.

In a statement released via social media, the league stated:

“Monday night, the Mountain West Board of Directors, comprised of our 12 Presidents, met to reaffirm our collective commitment to the Conference and its future. With the recent changes in membership composition in several conferences, the Mountain West is exploring all opportunities to strengthen the league, including through the addition of new member schools. Board of Directors Chair President Garnett Stokes of the University of New Mexico and Commissioner Gloria Nevarez will be the voice of the Conference and will lead the ongoing explorations of possibilities before presenting any to the Board. We are strong in who we are and proud of the exceptional experience we provide the student-athletes of the Mountain West Conference.”

Merging with or accepting as members some combination of the remaining four members of a depleted Pac-12 Conference (Stanford does not seem to be on the table at this point) seems to be the primary option at the moment with Mountain West as opposed to Mountain West schools defecting to join the Pac-12, the Journal has learned through both the public statement of the league and sources from around the conference.

Adding any school in the immediate future outside of the remaining Pac-12 members doesn’t appear to be a top priority at the moment.

Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez, who has been at the helm now just 8 months, told the San Diego Union Tribune on Tuesday, “Everything is still on the table. From sitting where we are today, we’re not going to foreclose any options. I mean, every option, including a merger, still has a lot of due diligence that needs to be done.”

USC and UCLA decided a year ago to leave the Pac-12 to join the Big Ten after this coming 2023-24 season. Over the past several months, San Diego State University had been trying to leave the Mountain West for the Pac-12, but never actually received a formal invitation while the league was still waiting to secure a new media rights deal.

In the past month, while uncertainty and speculation about that media rights deal grew in the Pac-12, Colorado left the league to rejoin the Big 12 followed a week later by Arizona, Arizona State and Utah doing the same. The same day that those three left, Oregon and Washington left to join the Big Ten, leaving California, Stanford, Oregon State and Washington State as the four remaining members of the Pac 12 after this coming school/athletics year.

Both Stanford and Cal are being viewed by the ACC as potential expansion options while the American Athletic Conference’s SMU seems to be a popular expansion target as well, getting into the Dallas/Fort Worth media market.

In the realm of college football, five leagues currently hold what is called “Autonomous 5” status, known more commonly among media and fans as the Power 5 conferences, which hold some preferential College Football Playoff status and have traditionally landed media rights contracts with tens of millions of dollars per school (the current Mountain West deal gets full members north of $5 million a year).

Keeping the Pac-12 together in some form would be the only way to keep that “A5” status, though it’s not guaranteed that it would remain anyway. Also, the remaining schools would hope to keep operating under the Pac-12 flag because it could then keep its millions of NCAA Tournament distribution money from the past six years (NCAA Tournament money is distributed to a conference over a six-year span).

But it would all have to happen soon in order to be in place by the 2024-25 season.

Rumors have swirled amid all the transitions of SDSU still trying to bolt the league to join the Pac-12 with some contingent of Mountain West schools to follow. But Tuesday night, Aztecs Athletic Director J.D. Wicker offered a harsh rebuttal of a CBSSports.com article suggesting his school was leading the breakaway effort, first tweeting about the article that it was “FAKE NEWS!” and later issued this statement:

“SDSU has been actively involved in conference realignment discussions before and after the latest round of Pac-12 defections. However, SDSU has not sought to create a new conference or seek A5 status for a new conference. SDSU has had no communication with the American Athletic Conference, nor any of its member institutions. SDSU continues to be an active participant with the Mountain Conference (sic) as the conference assesses the best path forward during this turbulent time in our industry.”

Whether the CBS Sports article or Wicker’s protest are true, the focus as of now seems to be on the Mountain West remaining intact.

The Mountain West, meanwhile, has in its bylaws that a team leaving the league with two year’s notice has to pay an exit fee of roughly three times its annual media rights payout, which is about $17 million, or with one year’s notice, as would need to be the case in this situation to salvage the Pac-12 in time for the 2024-25 season, a six-times exit of roughly $34 million.

All that can be nullified if nine of the 12 football playing members of the league (Hawaii is a football-only member) vote to waive the fee, but such a move would be unlikely unless all nine would be a part of the new Pac-12.