Pac-12 Athletic Directors Meeting About the Future

Conference expansion and media rights should be on the agenda

The Pac-12 has until July of 2026 to find all of it’s members and be considered a major conference by the conditions set down by the NCAA. Pac-12 officials have done their best to fill the conference with teams and to get to the designated eight full time teams.

There has been a quiet period of time where teams have not been added and media rights have yet to be determined. This quiet time publicly has some fans, media, and other school officials to wonder what is happening. We know that the Pac-12 hired Octagon as the agency to seek a media rights deal. Octagon is working with Pac-12 Commissioner, Teresa Gould, to secure a deal that will optimize the best possible opportunities and strategic media rights partnerships for all the current member schools.

Pac-12 insider, John Canzano, has said that the conferences athletic directors have been meeting in San Ramon, California to discuss what the future of the league will be since Monday. One of things on the agenda according to Canzano are discussions about expansion. The league only has seven full time members right now and getting to the required eight teams is a high priority. However, according to sources I have talked to getting to nine teams is actually the goal. Getting to nine teams would allow the Pac-12 to have eight league games.

Oregon State and Washington State are the Pac-12 holdovers, plus the five Mountain West teams, and Gonzaga who is a basketball only school. One more school has to be in the league by July 2026. It may seem like there is plenty of time to get that last team, but it’s actually a short amount of time. Time is of the essence for Commissioner Teresa Gould and the rest of the school presidents to get this expansion complete.

The schools that get brought up the most are UNLV, Nevada, Tulane, and Memphis. Getting these four schools would be ideal for the Pac-12, but getting just two would get them to that nine team league that is desired by school officials. One thing that getting to nine teams does is that it makes scheduling easier for football and the other schools do not have to go find and buy more out of conference games.

The lawsuit with the Mountain West Conference is something that will go a long way in determining what the move forward is for the Pac-12.

Part of the lawsuit revolves around the fact that the remaining Mountain West schools signed over a grant of media rights to the Mountain West through June 20, 2032. In essence, this means that the broadcast rights to their teams home games would be owned by the Mountain West. That basically locks in those remaining seven Mountain West teams with the conference as long as the Mountain West can meet their end of the media rights deal. Keep in mind, that also includes $61 million dollars in exit fees which is redistributed to the remaining schools which UNLV and Air Force get a 24.5 percent cut and Nevada, San Jose State, New Mexico, and Wyoming get a 11.5 percent cut each.

Now, if the Mountain West can not get the roughly $55 million in poaching penalties and the roughly $18 million in exit fees from the Pac-12 then a school such as UNLV could go to the Mountain West arguing that the conference did not live up to its end of the media deal. If that happens, then schools like UNLV and Nevada who have come up as potential Pac-12 additions in recent weeks could bolt to join the Pac-12.

The other two schools that get mentioned as potential additions to the Pac-12 are Memphis and Tulane. Both have good media markets and recruiting areas for the conference to take advantage of. To get those two schools would have to mean that the media rights deal is at a minimum of $10 million per school in the conference. Right now it is thought that the media deal would be around $9-10 million per school.

Getting this expansion finished and media rights deal done is of the upmost importance for the Pac-12. I want the conference back and functioning as a regular conference. It will be different for sure, but college athletics is better when the Pac-12 is part of college sports.

We live in a different college sports landscape where teams on the West Coast play teams in the Midwest or the East Coast every week. We also live in a time where travel between universities is even more complicated, expensive, and taxing on the college athlete.

Wouldn’t it be great if we took into consideration what is best for the student-athlete? Unfortunately, those thoughts seem few and far between for school presidents, NCAA officials, and the television entities that run college sports.

Michael J. Wilson-The Daily Waiver

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