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AAC spurns Pac-12 expansion advances, leaving SDSU and new league to settle for Utah State

September 24, 2024

The conference realignment carousel continued to turn Monday. This time, only one school got off.

Sources said Utah State will join San Diego State in the Pac-12, which amounted to a disappointing concession on a wild day when the reformed conference with ambitious plans was spurned by one school after another.

The day started with Memphis, Tulane, South Florida and UT-San Antonio all announcing that they’re staying in the American Athletic Conference. Air Force and UNLV, the prize of the remaining Mountain West schools, reportedly signed financial agreements to stay. Then everyone else in Mountain West inked them as well.

That left Utah State, which means the Pac-12 now has three members — Oregon State, Washington State and Utah State — in cities under 70,000.

It also means the Pac-12 is up to seven, one shy of the mandated eight required for NCAA certification by the 2026-27 academic year: SDSU, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Oregon State, Washington State and Utah State.

And expansion options are evaporating like rain puddles in Las Vegas in July.

“Convos ongoing,” one Pac-12 source said.

The league could try to establish a foothold in Texas, but that would mean adding less desirables like Rice, North Texas and Texas State. After that, you’re picking through the remainder bin with the UTEPs, New Mexico States and Sacramento States of the college football world.

The initial plan was to add three football-playing members to reach nine, allowing for an eight-game conference schedule, and then get Gonzaga, which doesn’t play football but has a powerhouse basketball program, for an even 10.

One media outlet said Monday that the Gonzaga deal was done. Shortly after, another reported it was not, presumably amid the sudden uncertainty about the Pac-12’s viability.

The biggest blow came from the AAC, which posted a statement on social media with the four universities’ logos and the heading: “We are the American Athletic Conference.”

“While we acknowledge receiving interest in our institutions from other conferences,” the joint statement from Memphis, Tulane, USF and UTSA said, “we firmly believe that it is in our individual and collective best interests to uphold our commitment to each other.”

That’s likely code for financial incentives. The conference’s legacy members currently receive about $9 million each in annual distributions, about $3 million more than Mountain West schools. AAC commissioner Tim Pernetti is known to have pursued private equity investments that could provide additional money to get them to stay.

Another factor, sources said, was the prospect of increased travel in a conference that would stretch across all four time zones and 2,276 miles between Washington State in Pullman, Wash., and South Florida in Tampa, Fla.

Yet another factor: With less than the required 27 months’ notice of departure, any AAC defectors would face an estimated $25 million in exit fees.

The Pac-12 had presented potential members with a proposal estimating annual payouts in the $12 million to $15 million range, but that’s pure conjecture in an increasingly volatile and unpredictable media rights market. In the end, the four AAC schools did something the four Mountain West defectors did not: contact their commissioner to cut a better deal.

At the news conference announcing SDSU’s move to the Pac-12, which was so secretive that it caught Mountain West commissioner Gloria Nevarez and the other eight members off guard, president Adela de la Torre was asked why they didn’t seek a counteroffer from the Mountain West.

“I would say within that context, we have to maintain our decision-making within a confidential manner,” de la Torre said. “I don’t think it’s like other business deals, where they’re offering me this, hey, what are you going to give me? This is (not) really how presidents operate. You have to understand the constraints that we live in, and they are different than the constraints that (athletic directors) live in. We did what we thought was important, and we got the job done.”

The question now becomes whether the Pac-12, without AAC or other Mountain West targets, can command a large enough TV rights deal to offset the $18 million exit fee in a reasonable amount of time. The Pac-12 is understood to be covering the separate “poaching fee,” which is part of the 2024 football scheduling agreement between the Mountain West and Pac-12 remnants Oregon State and Washington State (and applies until Aug. 1, 2027).

“We had very good data available to us about best- and worst-case scenarios,” de la Torre said Sept. 12. “We did our due diligence. We looked at the context of potential media (rights) deals. … Without giving any strategy out, we were able to move forward understanding that all of us would be taking shared risks.

“That risk was far less than the opportunity.”

UNLV and Air Force also played the negotiating game, receiving what one source said was an offer of $12 million plus other considerations in exchange for staying in the conference at least through 2032, which covers the remaining two years of the current TV deal and a new five-year contract starting in 2026-27. That figure is believed to be slightly higher than what other remaining Mountain West schools were offered.

Nevarez, the commissioner, reportedly gave schools until 5 p.m. Monday to sign it and all did except for Utah State, also leaving the Mountain West with seven members – one below the NCAA minimum for football.

That money would come from the poaching and exit fees due the conference from the four defectors – $55 million for former and between $90 and $100 million for the latter. The exit fees, with more than 12 months’ notice, are three times the conference’s annual average payout per school. That’s expected to be between $6 million and $6.5 million next year.

SDSU, Boise State, Colorado State and Fresno State have already signed “long term” agreements to join with the Pac-12, according to Oregon State athletic director Scott Barnes, making it harder for them to reverse course now.

Utah State was not a charter member of the Mountain West, which broke away from the Western Athletic Conference in 1999. The Aggies jumped from the WAC in 2013-14 and, while having some success in football and men’s basketball, didn’t move the television needle in remote Logan (population 53,200).

Orange County Register

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AAC spurns Pac-12 expansion advances, leaving SDSU and new league to settle for Utah State

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