Canzano: Four new schools -- what's next for the Pac-12?

1-on-1 with Commissioner Teresa Gould.

The Pac-12 is now a six-member conference. (Photo: Omer Khan)

Pac-12 Commissioner Teresa Gould has a small orchard in the backyard of her home in Northern California. The property is just under an acre and has trees with oranges, lemons, persimmons, cherries, and peaches on them.

She calls it: “My happy place.”

Gould planted the seeds for another happy place on Thursday when her embattled conference punched back by adding four new schools. The six-member Pac-12 (six pack?) is now in a full-blown rebuild. The conference has until July 1, 2026 to reach the NCAA minimum of eight schools.

I spoke with Gould in a 1-on-1 conversation on Thursday. She told me that she didn’t sleep much on Wednesday night. The Pac-12 was poised to announce the additions of San Diego State, Boise State, Fresno State, and Colorado State early the following morning. There were details to be ironed out, strategy to be discussed, and a joint 6 a.m. announcement planned.

The Pac-12 learned something from the mistakes of the last regime. There was too much waiting, hoping, and passive-watching by prior regimes. Moving slowly (and arrogantly) cost the conference dearly. The presidents of the old-world Pac-12 fashioned their CEO group as a circle of trust, then smiled at each other, cocked their guns, and pointed them at each other under the tables.

Gould’s Pac-12 conference didn’t want to sit and wait. It had to move. The sides had been talking, but the deal was formally glued together in an intense 48-hour period this week. The news was leaking. A plan was set for the new members to make their announcements at 6:01 a.m. Thursday and the Pac-12 would follow a few minutes later.

A source at Air Force told me that the academy, and the other Mountain West members about to be left behind, were blindsided by it.

“Nobody knew,” the source said.

The Pac-12 didn’t want to sit around all morning, letting others tell their story, and risk the Mountain West or anyone else scrambling to interfere. The new-world version of the Pac-12 wanted to be nimble and take control of the message.

In that way, Gould’s conference feels more proactive, and strategic, doesn’t it? It also has contracted with some of the same industry consultants and handlers who worked on ‘other’ sides of the table from the Pac-12 a couple of summers ago.

On that front, the Pac-12 hired Navigate, a consulting firm with expertise in data and strategy. Its fingerprints are all over the expansion push. Navigate previously worked for Oregon, helping the school study and assess its move to the Big Ten.

Is the Pac-12 keeping two seats warm for Stanford and Cal in the event there’s chaos in the ACC? Or is it now focused on looking eastward at the American Athletic Conference for additional members? The top schools in the Mountain West — the ones with the top media value — just banded together and joined the Pac-12. What did they see exactly that made them jump?

I spoke with Gould on Thursday. She declined to put a timeline on the conference’s next expansion move and didn’t talk specifically about other expansion candidates, but her comments provide some framework for what comes next.

Why a pause at six?

Why not go straight to eight members?

Said Gould: “As we looked at our criteria and what we wanted to evaluate in potential institutions it became really obvious that these four institutions, based on their tradition of athletic excellence, their academic profile, how they prioritize athletics, their desire to compete at the highest level. I would also say there’s a mindset they have that is consistent with Oregon State and Washington State. All of those things made it really clear there was a great fit… the idea is that the six of us will get together as a conference now and strategically talk about and think about our vision for the future.”

Will expansion result in the Pac-12 receiving more College Football Playoff money?

“There’s a look-in provision within the CFP agreement,” Gould said. “While we were successful in negotiating a great agreement for Oregon State and Washington State for the three years beyond this current agreement, we obviously are going to have conversations with my colleagues at the CFP level about our new conference and positioning of our new conference moving forward.”

The current playoff guidelines provide automatic berths to the five highest-ranked conference champions. Does this provide the Pac-12 with regular access to the CFP?

“As these four institutions applied and got accepted by our board commitment to football success at the highest level and our ability, year in and year out, to be in that mix of the five highest ranked conference champions and having regular access to the CFP — not only as one of the five highest ranked champions — but hopefully in consideration for at-large berths. I think these four institutions bring a lot to the table in that regard.”

The four Mountain West schools will pay $17 million in exit fees and there’s another $43 million in potential poaching penalties. What did those four schools see on the media rights front that made joining the Pac-12 a no-brainer?

“We’re really excited about the possibilities in front of us,” Gould told me. “Not just media rights. I think media rights is certainly a piece of it that we’re looking forward to… but I really think looking holistically at our entire commercial enterprise and what that’s going to look like moving forward with these six, and ultimately long-term any additional members that apply for membership.”

The Pac-12 still must schedule for the 2025 football season and fill those two empty seats by the summer of 2026. There’s a chance the conference could swell beyond eight members. Some have suggested that nine is the right number for football and basketball scheduling purposes. Adding the four best Mountain West schools was a solid first step. But the Pac-12 needs to be smart about rounding out the group. These are interesting times, aren’t they? Gould sure has seen some stuff, hasn’t she?

She worked under the two prior commissioners, Larry Scott and George Kliavkoff. She watched as the conference splintered in the last couple of years. She was promoted and hired to engineer the Pac-12 rebuild. From her first day on the job, Gould talked about feeling a duty to do right by the athletes on her campuses.

Then, she got to work.

“At the end of the day,” she said on Thursday, “my No. 1 stakeholder will always be these student-athletes. I will always put them first.”

---

Please consider a gift subscription for a friend or family member or the donation of a paid subscription to a senior on a fixed budget:

This is an independent reader-supported project with both free and paid subscriptions. Thank you for opting for a paid subscription. You are helping provide vital assistance to bolster my independent coverage.