San Diego State to the Big 12? Aztecs Still a Wild Card as Realignment Drama Continues – NBC 7 San Diego

The Pac 12 Conference is, at best, on life support. The only conference to boast 500 national titles (earning the nickname "The Conference of Champions") only has four teams left and that number might drop even more.

Stanford and Cal have shown an interest in joining the Atlantic Coast Conference, and the ACC is starting the process of seeing if they'd like to expand to the west coast. Yes, travel would be a nightmare but their payout would be better than the reported $23 million or so the Pac 12 was offering with its streaming idea. The next domino to fall could be Oregon State. The Beavers are talking to the Big 12 about following Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and Arizona State to greener pastures.

Oh, by the way, so is San Diego State.

The idea of the Pac 12 merging with the Mountain West is very likely not going to happen. There are too many questions about media rights contracts:

Can the MWC renegotiate with CBS and FOX immediately to increase revenue? Would the Apple TV+ money be the same if Oregon and Washington are replaced by Boise State and UNLV? Does Stanford really want to share a conference academically with Fresno State? Would the new conference be able to retain its NCAA Tournament credits or even its status as a Power 5 conference with the new lineup?

So, the Aztecs' on again-off again relationship with the Big 12 is on again. At least, they're talking. When the 2024-25 sports calendar starts the Big 12 will have 16 teams. The Big 10 will have 18 teams so adding two more is certainly not out of the ordinary in today's world of collegiate athletics. The biggest question from the Big 12's perspective is how many times to they want to slice their media rights pie?

Starting in 2025 Member institutions will receive about $31.7 million a year from the deal the conference signed with ESPN and FOX. Adding more schools means that share has to go down a bit, even if SDSU and OSU take less to start (something that's common for jumping conferences). But, that money could very well be made up with athletic performance.

More schools means more chances to play in the expanded College Football Playoff and more spots in the NCAA Basketball Tournament, both of which carry the potential for big-time cash infusions for the conference. Basically, it's going to be up to the conference schools to determine if they want to give up a little in guaranteed money for the chance there's a larger pool to swim in at the end of the year. To me that, along with the chance to have a foothold in the fertile recruiting grounds of Southern California, makes a lot of sense but you never know how folks in different spots will view their situations.

As for why it makes sense for San Diego State, they're getting less than $7 million a year from the Mountain West right now. Even if they left for a deal that gave them, say, $12 million in 2024, $22 million in 2025, and full shares every year after that they would make ... in just the first two years ... $34 million instead of $13.5 million. Over the next six years they'd be handed a check for about $128 million as opposed to the approximately $40 million the MWC would give them, and that's if they just play their regular schedules and have no success at all.

That sure wounds like enough motivation to pony up the $34 million exit fee and go to a conference that has vision and a clear sense of direction. And as for Washington State, the last remaining Pac 12 school? They can take SDSU's spot in the Mountain West.