Does San Diego State, Mountain West fit into Pac-2’s plans?

Oregon State played at San Diego State in football Saturday night as part of a one-year scheduling agreement with the Mountain West.

The question hanging in the hot, humid air at Snapdragon Stadium: When will they play again?

The short answer is 2026, for a nonconference game that was scheduled years ago. But when or if they might regularly meet as members of the same league is more complicated, especially after a Sept. 1 deadline passed without an agreement to extend the scheduling pact with the Mountain West through 2025.

“There are so many different scenarios,” SDSU Athletic Director John David Wicker said.

“What do I think is going to happen?” Mountain West Commissioner Gloria Nevarez said. “That question is so difficult in this environment. … If I knew, I would not be working here. I would be playing the lottery.”

Oregon State and Washington State were the two schools left on the helipad when Pac-12 broke apart two summers ago and everyone scrambled onto the last choppers out of Saigon. An NCAA rule gives the Pac-2 a two-year waiver before it must have eight members to be considered a recognized conference, and the Beavers and Cougars quickly signed a $14 million deal to complete their 2024 football schedules with six games each against Mountain West opponents.

The contract set Sept. 1, 2024, as the deadline to extend it for 2025, and that came and went, multiple sources said, after OSU and WSU presented the Mountain West with an offer well under $14 million for another 12 games.

They technically could still negotiate an agreement for 2025. Nevarez didn’t sound optimistic.

“I think we have to move on,” the commissioner said Saturday before Oregon State’s 21-0 win at Snapdragon. “The Sept.1 date was picked because this is the outer edge of the time when we can be making decisions about next year’s football schedule. There’s a lot that goes into it. Our schools need certainty so they can plan their nonconference schedules.”

Oregon State and Washington State, the sources said, consulted with college football matchmaker Dave Brown to build an alternate 2025 schedule as independents that would cost less than $14 million.

It remains to be seen, though, who exactly might be on that schedule in the back half of the season, when the rest of the nation is playing conference games and nonconference dates are booked years, sometimes decades, in advance. Or if Mountain West schools are willing to bail them out on an individual basis. (Nevarez said there is no conference-wide embargo on scheduling the Beavers or Cougars.)

The larger question is what happens after 2025, when the Pac-2 must be at least a Pac-8 to remain in NCAA compliance. And if that involves adding members of other conferences given sometimes steep exit fees, plans need to crystalize by spring.

“If there are opportunities that come our way, we’re going to be ready to take advantage of them,” Nevarez said. “But it’s probably a better question for other programs.”

The Union-Tribune requested by email and in person to speak with Oregon State Athletic Director Scott Barnes at Saturday’s game, but he was not made available (even though he did appear in the press box before kickoff).

Several sources inside and outside the Mountain West walked through the options for Oregon State and Washington State, in order of preference:

1. Big 12: The two have lobbied hard for an invite, but there has been little appetite from the 16-team conference for more mouths to feed from Corvallis, Ore., and Pullman, Wash. One source said they were recently given “a hard no.”

2. ACC chaos: In this scenario, Florida State and Clemson succeed in their legal challenges to the seemingly ironclad grant of rights binding ACC members to their long-term media rights contract. That might spit out recent additions Stanford, Cal and SMU to join OSU and WSU in a west-centric conference with the top of the Mountain West. But there’s no guarantee the ACC will implode, or when, and the clock is ticking for the Pac-2.

3. Pac-8: OSU and WSU would add six Group of Five schools by 2026-27 to reach eight under the Pac-12 banner, leaving room for any disgruntled former Pac-12 members to return in the future. All six additions could be from the Mountain West – most likely SDSU, Boise State, UNLV, Colorado State, Air Force and Fresno State – or they could be split between the Mountain West and other conferences.

4. Reverse merger: Instead of joining the Mountain West, OSU and WSU would convince the Mountain West to dissolve and take everyone but the bottom feeders. Dissolution requires nine votes, so presumably all nine would have guarantees of joining. (Translation: San Jose State, Utah State, Nevada and Hawaii likely would be fighting for the final spot.)

5. Independent: This would follow the BYU model (and many of OSU and WSU’s other sports are already playing in the WCC this year). The problem is without a conference affiliation, access to the 12-team College Football Playoff gets substantially harder since you’d be fighting the SEC, Big Ten and other power conferences for an at-large berth with an inferior strength of schedule.

6. Mountain West: This gives them a better shot at the CFP, because the conference champ in most years will have an inside track for an automatic berth. But it also constitutes an admission of no longer being a power conference school, which neither appears ready or willing to make.

There is also the matter of the fine print of the Mountain West scheduling agreement, which includes, for lack of a better term, “poaching penalties” should OSU and WSU invite any of the current members to the Pac-12. It’s $10 million for the first school, $20.5 million for two, $31.5 million for three, $43 million for four, and so on.

The even finer print: The penalties extend for two years after the agreement ends, or Aug. 1, 2027.

It was a non-negotiable part of the deal for the Mountain West. OSU and WSU, desperate for a 2024 football schedule, swallowed and signed it.

“That was a very important piece for us,” Nevarez said. “At that point, there was so much unknown, so we just tried to protect ourselves against what we knew could potentially break us apart.”

And that’s separate from what Mountain West defectors would owe in exit fees, which will approach $20 million with more than a year’s notice and $40 million inside that. The Mountain West’s current TV deal expires after 2025-26, but the exit fees remain in perpetuity unless university presidents vote to change them.

Reports emerged earlier this summer that OSU and WSU were setting aside $65 million of the Pac-12 treasure chest they inherited to help attract new members should they fail to secure a power conference invite. That presumably could be used to pry free Mountain West schools like SDSU and Boise State.

But then they’d each have to fork over $20 million in exit fees, and for what? To join a league with schools in Corvallis (population 61,000) and Pullman (population 34,000)?

Say you could get $3 million more in TV revenue compared to staying in the Mountain West? It would take nearly seven years to pay off the $20 million exit fee.

“With anything you look at, you have to do the financial calculus of does it make sense?” said Wicker, SDSU’s athletic director. “It’s like with the Big 12. The Big 12 wanted us to come in at basically a half-share with no opportunity to make any money in the new TV deal that they just started. Why would we do that? We would have been sitting at the bottom of the league looking up, with no opportunity to do anything.

“We have a great opportunity in the Mountain West to make the College Football Playoff. We’ve already shown we can play in the national title game (in men’s basketball) and we were one win away from the (softball) College World Series. So yeah, financially it has to work.”

The cheaper option for OSU and WSU is a reverse merger with the Mountain West if they can get nine votes for dissolution.

Could they?

“Today, no,” Nevarez said. “I talk with all of our schools regularly and I don’t think there’s a desire to dissolve the league. I think we have a strong core that really believes what we have is a recognized league (with a path) into the (football) playoff. That’s really important for our coaches and athletes. We have that chance now.”

And it doesn’t sound like Nevarez is content waiting to see if the top of her league gets poached. She has been actively working behind the scenes to change the conference’s revenue distribution system to appease the upper half that would coincide with a new media rights contact starting in 2026-27.

That is believed to include unequal distribution for NCAA basketball tournament units and CFP or bowl appearances, incentivizing programs to spend more with a greater return on investment. Nevarez also said they have been “modeling” ways to create minimum budget levels to elevate the bottom levels of the conference with the threat of expulsion if they don’t meet them.

“Just like we’ve always done, we will continue to work on what is the best place for San Diego State to be most competitive,” Wicker said. “We’ve made the investments. Our goal is for everybody in our league to be making investments to play at the top level, to be as close as possible to the Big 12 and the ACC.”

Where do the Beavers and Cougars fit into all this?

It’s an increasing unknown, as the two leagues suddenly seem further apart than they were a year ago. Alliance became adversarial.

“Oregon State and Washington State are going to find a home, whether it’s West Coast based or nationally based, I don’t know what it is,” Wicker said. “I’d love to have them in the Mountain West because they’re quality programs, they’re great brands, and they would walk in the door and have a bigger national brand than any of the people in our league probably.

“I certainly hope it works out, at some point, in some way, that benefits us all.”