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Conference expansion has been the thing in college sports the past couple years that never sleeps. It seems like every week there is news that a new team is joining a different conference. Well, the Pac-12 is taking a break from things. The conference looked dead in the water when everyone besides Washington State and Oregon State left to join other conferences. However, the Pac-12 has had a recent resurgence, but there is still work to do. They will pause negotiations, though.
“The Pac-12 is not in active negotiations with any schools at this time, sources tell @CBSSports/@247Sports,” Brandon Marcello said in a post. “Pac-12 is entering a media rights evaluation with the programs it has in tow. After the evaluation, the Pac-12 will evaluate options and target additional member(s).”
This is the first season of the new-look Pac-12 that doesn't have the majority of its traditional members. The conference lost Cal and Stanford to the ACC, USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington to the Big Ten, and Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah to the Big 12. Oregon State and Washington State were left to fend for themselves, and they now have a scheduling alliance with the Mountain West, but they are still Pac-12 teams.
Now, the Pac-12 is starting to come back into form. The conference is obviously going to look a lot different, and based on the teams they have added, they aren't going to be able to call themselves a power-five conference. The conference has recently added Boise State, Colorado State, California State, Fresno State, San Diego State, Utah State and Gonzaga. None of those teams are coming from a power five conference, but Gonzaga is certainly good enough to be a power five team in basketball.
One thing that is important to consider for the conference is that Gonzaga does not have a football team, and the conference has to have a certain number of football schools, and Gonzaga does not help reach said requirement. The Pac-12 still needs to add one more football team to the conference, but they clearly want to take their time when it comes to making this decision.
It will be interesting to see who that final school is that the Pac-12 does decide to add once they resume their negations. They have been targeting a lot of schools in the Mountain West and also the AAC. It will also be interesting to continue to monitor the other conferences as conference realignment is happening outside of the Pac-12 as well.
