The 2025 season is in the books, which puts the rebuilt Pac-12 featuring San Diego State on the clock. Kickoff is just eight months away. There is no schedule, no location for the conference championship, no tiebreaker procedure and no bowl lineup.<\/p>\n
That should change on Wednesday, when university presidents and athletic directors gather in the Bay Area with commissioner Teresa Gould and conference executives to finalize details for the fall.<\/p>\n
The packed agenda covers three days and includes the following topics:<\/p>\n
The 2026 football schedule<\/p>\n
The Pac-12 waited to finalize its schedule until clarity came to the College Football Playoff format. Late last week,\u00a0the CFP announced it would remain a 12-team event\u00a0after the Big Ten and SEC failed to agree to an expansion plan.<\/p>\n
(As was the case the past two seasons, an automatic bid will be reserved for the highest-ranked conference champion outside the power leagues.)<\/p>\n
With eight football members, the Pac-12 has three options:<\/p>\n
1. A seven-game conference schedule that would require teams to play five non-conference games, a potentially costly and logistically difficult plan.<\/p>\n
2. An eight-game conference schedule with one home-and-home series for each team against another conference member, thereby reducing the number of non-conference dates to four.<\/p>\n
3. A combination of the two models that features a home-and-home series for each team but only seven conference games. In other words, one of the home-and-home matchups would not count toward the conference standings.<\/p>\n
The meetings this week should produce a resolution. But because the official schedule likely would require a comprehensive review at the campus level, the Pac-12 could delay the formal announcement until early February.<\/p>\n
The football championship game location, tiebreaker formula and bowl partnerships<\/p>\n
The Pac-12 could stage its championship at a neutral site (e.g., Las Vegas) or allow the No. 1 seed to host the game. As with the 2026 schedule, an official announcement could come next month.<\/p>\n
The bowl lineup for next winter likely will take more time because of the interconnected nature of the postseason. The Pac-12 must work with both bowl partners and other conferences to determine tie-ins.<\/p>\n
The 2027 football schedule<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t expect any news here as the Pac-12 continues to explore expansion options for the 2027-28 academic year.<\/p>\n
Because both the Pac-12 and the CFP could expand prior to the fall of 2027 \u2014 playoff executives are considering 16- and 24-team formats \u2014 the conference intends to maintain maximum flexibility before finalizing anything beyond next season.<\/p>\n
Men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball schedules<\/p>\n
As a nine-school basketball conference, the Pac-12 is expected to play a true round-robin schedule with 16 league games for each team.<\/p>\n
That would constitute exactly half the regular-season allotment for each team following the NCAA\u2019s decision (last summer) to approve a 32-game regular season for 2026-27. (The current maximum is 31 games.)<\/p>\n
The Pac-12 men\u2019s and women\u2019s tournaments are expected to be played in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
Jersey patches<\/p>\n
Last week, the Division I cabinet approved the use of commercial patches on jerseys and uniforms, opening a new revenue stream for schools in dire need of cash to support revenue sharing.<\/p>\n
Depending on the school, the move to jersey patches could generate as much as several million dollars annually, according to sources in the sponsorship space.<\/p>\n
The Pac-12 must determine whether the endeavor will be directed by the conference or at the campus level.<\/p>\n
The Olympic sports<\/p>\n
The Pac-12 website currently shows an 18-sport portfolio, including football and men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball. But one or two more could be added to the lineup.<\/p>\n
Federal legislation and NCAA governance matters<\/p>\n
This agenda item could fill a three-day meeting on its own as college sports leaders continue to deal with a roiling landscape.<\/p>\n
Will Congress offer antitrust protection or codify NIL laws in 50 states?<\/p>\n
Should athletes be declared employees, which would allow them to unionize and collectively bargain with the schools?<\/p>\n
Many legal experts view that momentous step as the only way to end the transfer portal and NIL chaos, but the schools and conferences are reluctant to grant employment status.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2025 season is in the books, which puts the rebuilt Pac-12 featuring San Diego State on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1327,181,74,76,75,305,127],"class_list":["post-151785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-college-sports","tag-latest-headlines","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-sdsu-aztecs","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}