Boise State, Colorado State, San Diego State and Fresno State are planning to leave the Mountain West conference to join Oregon State and Washington State in the Pac-12 conference. The schools will probably have to pay an $18 million exit fees and there may be poaching fees involved as well.
Do you suppose they could get Allstate as a sponsor for a group of all ‘State’ schools?
I think adding more teams to the Power 5 pot will accelerate the B1G-SEC exodus timetable.
This will only be delayed if the Small-3 make major concessions minimizing the influence of the new members which were formerly non-Power 5. This would include SMU and based on history possibly Houston, BYU, Utah, etc. along with the 4-6 additions that will be made to the Pac-2+.
Already there are too many teams at the trough and adding more will make the culling into the final 2 even more painful. If X new team goes on a 10 year run and Y historical Power 5 plays poorly for the same period do you eliminate X or Y?
Place-12 will owe MWC $43 million as a result of the scheduling agreement.
Well SMU agreed to forego TV distributions for the next 10 years and then went out and raised $150 million in little more than a week. Helps to have oil billionaire alums.
I wouldn’t expect the newly reconstituted PAC-12 to regain “Power5” status anytime soon. The P4 are not going to give them more than a G5 school gets from the playoffs and they’re certainly not going to be in any hurry to restore their NCAA rights. P4 fought too hard for the governance fights to let anyone new into the tent and the Big 2 aren’t exactly known for being magnanimous when it comes to sharing money.
Anybody see a lawsuit coming here?
But first the Pac-12 needs to find 2 more teams.