The Pac-12 announced it is moving forward with expansion plans, with four schools—Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State—joining Washington State and Oregon State, the only two members to remain in the conference after a mass exodus.
The four new schools, all of which are Mountain West Conference members, will join the Pac-12 in 2026, and were approved by a vote of the Pac-12 Board of Directors.
“I am thankful to our board for their efforts to welcome [the four schools] to the conference,” Pac-12 commissioner Teresa Gould said in the announcement. “An exciting new era for the Pac-12 Conference begins today.”
The expansion is the first of several planned phases, according to Yahoo Sports, in which the Pac-12 will grow to at least eight members, the minimum required by the NCAA to qualify as an FBS conference.
Per Yahoo’s reporting, every Mountain West school must pay $17 million to exit, while the Pac-12 will owe $10-12 million in penalty fees for every school it acquires. Those fees were agreed to as part of a scheduling deal between the decimated Pac-12 and the Mountain West.
The Pac-12’s revival comes after the departure of 10 former conference schools to the Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC. Only OSU and WSU remained, but the two-member conference, led by Gould, was able to maintain rights to money from the NCAA basketball tournament, the College Football Playoff and the Rose Bowl, among other revenue streams.
