{"id":382968,"date":"2026-07-02T02:07:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T02:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/382968\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T02:07:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T02:07:13","slug":"sdsu-completes-big-move-joining-pac-12-with-other-former-mwc-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/382968\/","title":{"rendered":"SDSU completes big move, joining Pac-12 with other former MWC schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"SDSU<\/a>San Diego State fell 80-67 to Gonzaga in 2024. As of Wednesday, both schools are members of the rebuilt Pac-12 conference. (File photo courtesy of SDSU Athletics)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s officially official. San Diego State<\/a>, nearly two years after the first announcement of the shift, has become part of the rebuilt Pac-12 Conference.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, SDSU and four other former Mountain West Conference schools \u2013 Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State and Utah State \u2013 formally traded their old home for the Pac-12. <\/p>\n

John David Wicker, San Diego State\u2019s athletic director, called it a \u201cmomentous day\u201d for the program.<\/p>\n

\u201cEntry into the Pac-12 ushers in the next great era of Aztec Athletics,\u201d he said in a news release.<\/p>\n

The new members were announced in September 2024<\/a> but due to contractual obligations and legal reasons, their move to the Pac-12 just now became official. Texas State, which came over from the Sun Belt Conference, and Gonzaga, which had been in the West Coast Conference, also join them in the Pac-12, which had retained holdovers Oregon State and Washington State.<\/p>\n

And yes, despite the name, there\u2019s only nine schools in the current version of the Pac-12, at least for now. The conference has a dozen \u201caffiliate\u201d members in Olympic sports, including UC San Diego.<\/p>\n

And as for why SDSU and the other universities made the move, the answer is easy: a chance to increase their national profiles and make more money.<\/p>\n

Until most of its previous members fled, the Pac-12 had been a \u201cPower Five\u201d conference, meaning it had been one of the most prominent and highest revenue-generating conferences in college sports.<\/p>\n

Even now, it has higher name recognition nationally than the Mountain West, and that translates to higher-value media rights for conference games, which in turn means more revenue that can be poured into athletic programs in the form of facility improvements, NIL money for players and coaching salaries.<\/p>\n

In fact, the reason why 10 former members of the Pac-12 \u2013 including USC and UCLA \u2013 left for the Big 12 and Big Ten in 2024 was to chase even higher media rights revenue.<\/p>\n

The newly launched Pac-12 debuted<\/a> with CBS Sports, USA Network and The CW as its media partners for all league-controlled football broadcasts. Most of its regular season men\u2019s basketball home games and about two dozen women\u2019s basketball home regular season games will air on one or more partner networks.<\/p>\n

Additionally, all of the Pac-12\u2019s football games will appear on national television \u2013 either over the air or on cable TV \u2013 culminating with the Pac-12 championship game on CBS and Paramount+.<\/p>\n

About 70% of the conference\u2019s men\u2019s home basketball games will air on CBS, CBS Sports Network, USA Network or The CW. The Pac-12 men\u2019s basketball tournament will air on USA, with the exception of the championship game, which will be broadcast on CBS.<\/p>\n

Fifteen regular season women\u2019s basketball games are set to air on The CW and up to 10 on USA, with the conference tournament semifinals and championship slated for The CW.<\/p>\n

The 2027 men\u2019s and women\u2019s tournaments will be held March 9-13 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, with the women\u2019s games taking place ahead of the men\u2019s each day.<\/p>\n

So, from a purely sports perspective, what does this shift mean for the Aztecs\u2019 basketball and football teams, as well as the school\u2019s other athletic programs?<\/p>\n

Since San Diego State used to play four of the other teams in the new Pac-12 at least once a year in football and two or three times every season in basketball, there\u2019s obviously going to be a familiarity. A plus for the Aztecs is that they\u2019ll be able to keep alive the rivalries they developed over the years with the other ex-Mountain West programs.<\/p>\n

As far as the other schools, Gonzaga doesn\u2019t field a football team, but its men\u2019s basketball team has been stellar for a generation. It typically finishes in the Top 20 of the Associated Press and Coaches Polls each season and last played in the NCAA national championship game in 2021, losing to 86-70 to Baylor.<\/p>\n

Since then, the team has appeared in the NCAA tournament each season, advancing as far as the Elite 8.<\/p>\n

Pac-12 holdovers Oregon State and Washington State each have football and men\u2019s baseball and basketball programs. The OSU Beavers are traditionally strong in baseball, and have won the College World Series three times, most recently in 2018.<\/p>\n

The WSU Cougars have not been standouts in any of the big three sports over the decades, but have periodically won conference crowns. They have yet to capture a national championship in any men\u2019s sport.<\/p>\n

One football team the Aztecs will likely to butt heads with for a place at the top of the conference standings is old rival Boise State, one of the more complete teams in the new Pac-12 due to returning 13 starters total from last season\u2019s squad.<\/p>\n

And in baseball, Washington State, which beat SDSU in the 2026 Mountain West Conference baseball tournament in May before bowing out in the NCAA Division I baseball tournament, is a team to watch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Diego State fell 80-67 to Gonzaga in 2024. As of Wednesday, both schools are members of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[13389,35294,74,76,75,301],"class_list":["post-382968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-mountain-west","tag-pac-12","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-state-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382968","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=382968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}