San Diego State to Pac-12?

San Diego State to Pac-12?

16 June, 2023

Several media outlets have reported that the institution has informed the conference that it “intends to resign.” According to the article, no other conference has invited San Diego State to join.

From Pete Thamel of ESPN:

The SDSU president Adela de la Torre sent the league a complicated withdrawal letter on June 13 that led to a short back-and-forth between the two parties. This includes San Diego State later alerting the league that the letter from June 13 was “not the official notice of resignation,” according to sources.

If San Diego State wants to leave in June of next year, they must give a year’s notice. The exit price they would be required to pay would increase from roughly $16.5 million to almost $34 million if they continued past June 30.

If San Diego State exits the Mountain West, the Pac-12 seems like a logical place for them to go. The Pac-12 would apparently like to maintain a presence in Southern California since it will lose USC and UCLA to the Big Ten at the end of the 2023 academic year. San Diego State would be a sensible addition to the conference, even if it would in no way replace the Los Angeles TV market.

No other clear contender for the Pac-12 exists either. The only other Mountain West institution that seems to match the region naturally is SDSU.

Currently, the Pac-12 is likewise coping with a unique set of problems. The conference has not yet signed a new television contract, which will expire on July 1, 2024. USC and UCLA left for the Big Ten in large part due to the absence of a new TV deal. And a significant factor in the Pac-12’s inability to settle on a new one. Each Pac-12 school will receive slightly more than $30 million in 2022 thanks to the current rights deals with ESPN and Fox. However, the league’s premier programs are the two Los Angeles schools. It is challenging to ask broadcasters to pay more to the Pac-12, a league with fewer teams and/or without a significant Los Angeles presence.

The Big 12 and commissioner Brett Yormark have made it plain the conference intends to acquire members even after Cincinnati, Houston, UCF, and BYU arrive, and it has caused suspicions of conference realignment to persist.

a Pac-12 member Despite having previously belonged to the Big 12 before switching to the Pac-12 in 2011, Colorado has been considered as a potential Big 12 candidate. In a report on ESPN earlier this week exploring the likelihood of Colorado leaving the conference, San Diego State was specifically identified as Colorado’s successor in the Pac-12.

Given the success of both its football and men’s basketball programs, SDSU would be moving to a bigger conference if it left the Mountain West for the Pac-12 or another one. Football at SDSU has finished above.500 since 2009 and has at least 10 victories in five of the last eight seasons.

In 2022–2023, the men’s basketball team had a 32–7 record, reached the national championship game, and lost to UConn. It was 30-2 in 2020 when the COVID-19 epidemic canceled the 2020 NCAA tournament, and it has since qualified for the tournament each of the last three seasons.