Pac-12 needs one more school to be recognized as a conference

In college sports, conference realignment continues to be a major topic for schools. The Pac-12 is in the middle of a lawsuit as it continues to restructure its conference.

OPB’s Paul Marshall talked with KOIN 6 sports reporter Brenna Greene about the future of the Pac-12.

Paul Marshall: The Pac-12 was down to just Oregon State and Washington State. Last month, it added Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and San Diego State. How does that lineup feel to you? Do they have enough teams to go to a college football playoffs?

Brenna Greene: They also added another school — Utah State — that has football.

So they need to add one more team with a college football program to be recognized as an official conference, which is very interesting because they don’t have a lot of options that make sense right now in terms of adding another team. All the other Mountain West schools have signed an agreement that they are going to stay. They can’t dip anymore into the Mountain West.

You look around the landscape and try to find a pure institution that would work in the Pac-12 with the other seven schools that have college football teams right now, and it’s a little bit of a head-scratcher. West coast wise, there’s no schools that make any sense to add to the Pac-12 right now, so you gotta go outside of that footprint a little bit. We’ll see what happens.

They cannot be officially recognized as a conference in the eyes of the NCAA and, therefore, be able to have a conference championship and really compete with the Mountain West and the American Athletic Conferences of the world for that group of five spots. You really need to get another school in there.

Marshall: The Pac-12 filed a lawsuit against the Mountain West. How did these two conferences get involved and what’s the Pac-12 saying in its lawsuit?

Greene: Last year when the Pac-12 signed an agreement with the Mountain West to have this scheduling alliance that they do this year, where Oregon State and Washington State University are playing teams in the Mountain West, but they aren’t a member of the Mountain West. They also had a part of that contract that said that if Oregon State and WSU tried to take any schools from the Mountain West, there would be additional fees on top of the already pre-existing exit fees from the conference. If they were to leave the Mountain West and go to the Pac-12, they would owe an additional $10 million on top of the exit fees already. I believe right now we are at $53.5 million that the Pac-12 would owe the Mountain West, and that doesn’t include exit fees.

Now, the Pac-12 is saying that the additional fees are basically unlawful and unenforceable and that they should not have to pay that money. The exit fees right now, without the poaching penalty, are upward of $17 million for departing schools.

Marshall: What’s next in the lawsuit?

Greene: This has not had its day in court yet. We will see if that happens. It’s rare that these things actually do find themselves in a court of law, because a lot of times these conferences don’t want their business out there publicly.

Marshall: Gonzaga announced they’ll be joining the Pac-12. They don’t have a football team, but they have a top-level men’s basketball team. Why would they join this conference?

Greene: When you look at this conference, there are more consistently good college basketball programs that are making the NCAA tournament in the Pac-12 than the WCC.

In the West Coast Conference, it is Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s. Every once in a while, you get a University of San Francisco that makes it.

This is a long saga for Gonzaga in the WCC. They have always flirted, they have never jumped. Another thing about going to the Pac-12 that was really important to Gonzaga was making sure that they got a good revenue share from the conference. Money-wise, things pencil out for them, they give up a little bit of control, but that’s just the price you pay when you have to do business.

Correction: In the original version of this article, Brenna Greene’s name was misspelled. OPB regrets the error.